''The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food'' (', ''Kniga o vkusnoi i zdorovoi pishche'') is a
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
cookbook
A cookbook or cookery book is a kitchen reference containing recipes.
Cookbooks may be general, or may specialize in a particular cuisine or category of food.
Recipes in cookbooks are organized in various ways: by course (appetizer, first cour ...
written by scientists from the
Institute of Nutrition of the
Academy of Medical Sciences
The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society.
Its mission is to adv ...
of the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
. The cookbook was first published in 1939,
and a further edition was published in 1952. An English translation (by Boris Ushumirskiy) appeared in 2012.
Origins
Following the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...
, the official ideology promoted communal food preparation and dining, to maximise use of labour and resources and to liberate women to work. However, combined with widespread food shortages, this resulted in poor food quality and limited choice.
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan (; russian: Анаста́с Ива́нович Микоя́н; hy, Անաստաս Հովհաննեսի Միկոյան; 25 November 1895 – 21 October 1978) was an Armenian Communist revolutionary, Old Bolshevik an ...
, who was
People's Commissar of the Food Industry of the USSR in the 1930s, became convinced that the USSR needed to modernise the way it produced and consumed food. He travelled widely, bringing many innovations back to the USSR, including the manufacture of canned goods and the mass production of
ice cream
Ice cream is a sweetened frozen food typically eaten as a snack or dessert. It may be made from milk or cream and is flavoured with a sweetener, either sugar or an alternative, and a spice, such as cocoa or vanilla, or with fruit such as str ...
. In the late 1930s, he spearheaded a project to produce a home cookbook which would encourage a return to the domestic kitchen.
[
Prior to its introduction, the staple cookbook of ]Russian cuisine
Russian cuisine is a collection of the different dishes and cooking traditions of the Russian people as well as a list of culinary products popular in Russia, with most names being known since pre-Soviet times, coming from all kinds of social ...
had been Elena Molokhovets' ''A Gift to Young Housewives
''A Gift to Young Housewives'' ( rus, Пода́рок молоды́м хозя́йкам, r=Podarok molodym khozyaykam) is a Russian cookbook written and compiled by Elena Ivanovna Molokhovets (née Burman; ) and usually referred to as "Molokho ...
'', which had been published in numerous editions in late 19th- and early 20th-century Russia and remained in many households after the Revolution. However, as it had been aimed at middle- and upper-class households, it was frowned upon as being bourgeois
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
. Moreover, many of its recipes relied on ingredients that were unavailable and techniques that were impractical in Soviet Russia.
''Tasty and Healthy Food'' was subtitled "To the Soviet Housewife from the People’s Commissariat of the Food Industry" and represented its recipes as a reference work
A reference work is a work, such as a paper, book or periodical (or their electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information is intended to be found quickly when needed. Such works are usually ''referred'' to f ...
for the new Soviet cuisine
Soviet cuisine, the common cuisine of the Soviet Union, was formed by the integration of the various national cuisines of the Soviet Union, in the course of the formation of the Soviet people. It is characterized by a limited number of ingredi ...
.
Content
Recipes range from the sumptuous (sturgeon
Sturgeon is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. The earliest sturgeon fossils date to the Late Cretaceous
The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretace ...
in jelly, cold piglet with horseradish
Horseradish (''Armoracia rusticana'', syn. ''Cochlearia armoracia'') is a perennial plant of the family Brassicaceae (which also includes mustard, wasabi, broccoli, cabbage, and radish). It is a root vegetable, cultivated and used worldwide ...
) to the everyday (cabbage stuffed with meat, bean soup). They were accompanied with lavish full-page illustrations of prepared dishes and food production. Its inclusion of recipes for borscht
Borscht () is a sour soup common in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. In English, the word "borscht" is most often associated with the soup's variant of Ukraine, Ukrainian origin, made with red beetroots as one of the main ingredients, wh ...
, kharcho
Kharcho, also spelled as Harcho ( ka, ხარჩო), is a traditional Georgian soup containing beef, rice, cherry plum purée and chopped walnuts (''Juglans regia''). The soup is usually served with finely chopped fresh coriander. The characte ...
and teiglach
Teiglach , also spelled taiglach or teglach ( yi, טייגלעך, singular teigel, literally "little dough") are small, knotted pastries boiled in a honeyed syrup. They are a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish treat for Rosh Hashana, Sukkot, Simchat T ...
have been used as examples of gastronationalism
Gastronationalism or culinary nationalism is the use of food and its history, production, control, preparation and consumption as a way of promoting nationalism and national identity. It may involve arguments between two or more regions or countri ...
and cultural appropriation
Cultural appropriation is the inappropriate or unacknowledged adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from ...
.
In popular culture
British chef Mary Berry
Dame Mary Rosa Alleyne Hunnings (; born 24 March 1935), known professionally as Mary Berry, is an English food writer, chef, baker and television presenter. After being encouraged in domestic science classes at school, she studied catering at ...
modified one of the book's recipes, which combined herring with egg, on her BBC 2
BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...
cookery program '' Easter Feasts'' (first aired April 13 2017).
References
Further reading
*
External links
Soviet kitchen: a culinary tour of Stalin’s iconic cookbook
The great Stalinist bake off: Russia's kitchen bible
English translation (Amazon.com)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Book of Tasty and Healthy Food, The
Russian cookbooks
1939 non-fiction books
1952 non-fiction books
Collaborative non-fiction books