On the network you can often find a phrase attributed to Elena Molokhovets, to the author of the famous pre -revolutionary culinary book. She has many options, but in all cases she begins with the words: “If guests suddenly came to you ...” We decided to check if Molokhovets wrote anything like that.
The phrase attributed to Elena Molokhovets can be found in countless options. Here are a few of them: “If you have come to you, and you have nothing, send a person to the cellar, let it bring a pound of oil, two pounds of ham, a dozen eggs, a pound of caviar, red or black, and prepare light snacks” (Fishki.net, "Classmates"); “Send the cook to the cellar, let it cut by cold boles, salmon, add urine cranberries, sprinkle with fresh greens and serve” (Facebook); “If guests came to you unexpectedly, but nothing at home, go down to the cellar and take your leg” (book "" "Perfect dishes for multicooker").
Elena Molokhovets’s book “A gift to young housewives, or a means to reduce expenses in the household” (in some editions - “Gift to the young mistress”) was first published in 1861 and then until 1917 withstood three dozen reprints. With each edition, the number of recipes only increased - from 1,500 in 1861 to 4000 to the beginning of the 20th century.
Book Molokhovets -Not only a collection of recipes, but also to some extent, a housekeeping manual written by a wealthy but lean mistress. In the preface, she writes: “Without before the eyes of the register of everything that is part of the food, not only the hostess, but even the cook, who is exclusively busy, cannot suddenly recall everything; From this it follows that in the continuation of the whole morning until lunch you have to go to the pantry several times after the other, then after another that will not only get bored soon, but also extremely difficult for every mistress, and even impossible with secular life. ”
Regardless of the year of the publication, the structure of the book “Gift to young housewives” always remained unchanged. The preface tells the general rules of homework: how to save, how to arrange a house, about the need to maintain housing in purity and order. Then general culinary rules, comparative tables of measures and weights. And only then - detailed recipes separated by topics, and serving rules.
The advice on what to do if guests suddenly appear, could be in the first part that precedes recipes. But there is nothing even remotely similar there. For the general style of the book, the Council looks rather strange: the manual provides for a detailed description of cooking and serving, and not just the advice “make guests sandwiches from everything in a row”. “The purpose of this book is to deliver the product, with a slight state, with a moderate consumption, sometimes not having an excellent cook, to have a constantly good, tasty, healthy and diverse dinner,” Molokhovets writes.
The origins of this apocryphal quote should be sought in Soviet life. Preparations, pastes, hazel grouse and pheasants from the book of Molokhovets for the Soviet reader looked fantastic and surreal. Historian Natalya Lybina in the book "Soviet everyday life: norms and anomalies"Gives a fragment from the 1929 newspapers:“ The famous book of Molokhovets, which is customary to talk about, in essence, is not as harmless as it is customary to think about it. <...> everyday, moral and kitchen recipes in abundance poured from 1,500 pages. Each pike was blocked in it with frankly black hundred -hay ideas, borsch was seasoned with finely -lacked monarchical maxims, dumplings were filled with piety, a vile bourgeois shredded in the aroma of exquisite foods. ”
The Book of Molokhovets was reprinted in 1939, in the same year, when the long -standing project of the People’s Commissar of Food Industry Anastas Mikoyan "Book about delicious and healthy food". And this is no accident. According to Natalya Lybina, "the authorities considered it possible in the late 1930s to bring to the attention of Soviet people knowledge about quite bourgeois methods of cooking and serving of food."
Most likely, the existence of a quote about the unexpected visit of guests is an oral joke of the Age of the Deficiency, when there were not only a delicate milk pig on the shelves, but also of any other meat used. But then the quote was rooted, and, for example, in the book of the literary critic Alexander Arkhangelsky "1962. Message to Timothy»A mythological quote is adjacent to real recommendations from the book Molokhovets:“ Hundreds of yolks (squirrels - pour!) For one cake; pink ham that can be taken out of the underground if the guests came suddenly; Scarlet mousses and white scherbets, gray heads of sugar. ” Now, when the book is again available to any reader, you can easily make sure that the quote has nothing to do with Molokhovets.
Photo on the cover: Boris Kustodiev, "tea party"/Wikimedia Commons
Incorrect attribution of quote
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