Gift for young housewives. Elena Molokhovets - a modern hostess. Veal leg windsor soup

It does not hurt every housewife to have a good cookbook, and then it will not be difficult or difficult for her to draw up a dinner menu, both formal and simple. I am talking here, of course, only about those housewives who do not keep expensive cooks, but are content with cooks who cook according to their instructions (Hygieno-economic dictionary of practical knowledge necessary for everyone to preserve and extend life in the economy and economy. In 2 volumes / Ed. I. Kustarevsky. M., 1888. T. 2. S. 12).

In 1932, Yevgeny Zamyatin, who fled the USSR, noted in his notebook: “In exile there are two most popular authors: Elena Molokhovets is in the first place, Pushkin is in the second.” Elena Molokhovets, author of a pre-revolutionary culinary bestseller, died in 1918. At the same time, her second life began - the life of a myth about a beautiful pre-revolutionary past.

In Soviet times, those few "former" who carried and preserved through the seals, purges, wars, fires and famine one of the 29 editions of the thick "Gift to Young Housewives" became the owners of an ideological weapon of incredible power. The book written by Molokhovets was evidence of a great bygone era, "when Rus' was free and a goose cost three kopecks." At the mention of the name Molokhovets, any Soviet person quoted with a mixture of irony and admiration: “If twenty guests suddenly appear, don’t worry - go down to the cellar and take one or two hams that hang there.” There is no such advice in the books of Molokhovets - this is a fantasy that arose when remembering the past, because to Soviet citizens who stood in lines for amateur sausages and glazed curds, pre-revolutionary Russia seemed to be a world of full-blooded abundance. In fact, the bourgeois cuisine described by Molokhovets was the antipode of gluttony, wastefulness and conspicuous consumption. In the recipes of Elena Ivanovna, there were almost no products that in the 19th century were associated with a luxurious life, the life of the aristocracy or the nouveau riche.

However, war communism, the first five-year plans, the war, the Brezhnev deficit made Molokhovets an apostle of grouse and pineapples in champagne. Even its basic recipes required what was simply absent in Soviet life: good beef, a variety of vegetables and spices, which culinary lovers learned about from the books of William Pokhlebkin, and not from personal experience.

According to the Molokhovets book, they did not try to cook - it was impossible. With her, they dreamed of the lost past, reading "A Gift to Young Housewives" as a novel. Her recipe for sterlet in white wine, like the furniture from the palace in Pavlovsk or the Kustodievsky "Merchant for Tea", served as a kind of Proustian madeleine - with the difference that none of the Soviet readers could even imagine the taste of this fish.

This feeling is wonderfully conveyed in an essay by Tatyana Tolstaya, who reviewed the English translation of A Gift for Young Housewives in 1992.

Another common anecdote about Molokhovets was the advice to give half-eaten leftovers to "people" - that is, servants. This recommendation also spoke of the lost welfare, but did not meet the sympathy of a Soviet person who was brought up on the idea of equality. Evidence of this was the famous and offensive poem dedicated to Molokhovets by Arseny Tarkovsky in 1957:

Where are you, salted writer,
Molokhovets, little holuyka,
The bliss of ten-pound carcasses
Owners of ten thousand souls?

This text is not only unfair, but also inaccurate: the phenomenon of Molokhovets was formed as a result of the great reforms of Alexander II, neither she nor her readers were and could not be "owners of ten thousand souls."

* * *

Elena Ivanovna Burman (married Molokhovets) was born on April 28, 1831 in the family of the commander of the Vilna Infantry Regiment Ivan Ermolaevich Burman, who, upon retirement, served in the Arkhangelsk customs, and his wife Ekaterina Dmitrievna. After the death of her parents, the girl was taken care of by her grandmother. She secured a place for the orphan at the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens (it was not easy: they were admitted to the institute from the age of six, they were admitted to the senior classes only on special requests, and Elena Burman was already fourteen at the time of admission) and paid for her maintenance and education.

The Smolny Institute of the times of Nicholas I was the most prestigious educational institution for girls in Russia. In any school, first of all, two sides are important - the program and social connections (and it is not known which is more important). Elena Burman studied with the daughters of noble and enlightened noble families - Olimpiada Turchaninova, Varvara Delvig, Elena Golitsyna, Vera Bunina, Zoya Bagration, Nadezhda Shenshina (Fet's niece).

Institutes of noble maidens brought up future "good wives and useful mothers of the family" - educated, seasoned, able to keep up a conversation with anyone, from the king to the guard. Necessary secular skills were perfect French, the ability to play music, draw and supervise the upbringing of children. Contemporaries already had many complaints about this program, but no one denied that in terms of self-discipline and accuracy, college girls who measured the distance from the edge of the apron to the hem of their uniform coffee dress with a ruler had no equal.

In addition to French and dancing, Smolensk women were taught needlework, the beginnings of home economics and home economy - according to a detailed plan drawn up in 1818 by Empress Maria Feodorovna, the widow of Paul I. High school students were taken to the storerooms, explained to them "the properties and use of life supplies and how to save them", and taught to cook exemplary kitchen, that is, equipped with the latest state of the art of that time. In the 1840s, college girls got up at six in the morning, prayer began at 6:30, tea was served at seven, then, from 7:30 to noon, there were lessons, from noon to two - lunch and a walk, then until five again lessons, a break for an afternoon snack until six o'clock in the evening 1
Memoirs of a pupil of the XVIII grade Sofia Cherevina, by marriage Rodzianko, from December 1847 to February 1853. St. Petersburg, 1898, p. 5; Lyadov V. N. Historical sketch of the centenary life of the Imperial Educational Society for Noble Maidens and the St. Petersburg Alexander School. St. Petersburg: Printing house of the spiritual magazine "Wanderer", 1864. P. 46; Cherepnin N. P. Imperial Educational Society for Noble Maidens: A Historical Sketch. In 3 volumes. T. 1. St. Petersburg: State Printing House, 1914. S. 480–481.

After which the girls were dancing; Dinner at eight, went to bed at nine. Pupils helped to make the menu and calculate the cost of dishes. In this sense, their training was far ahead of its time.

For townswomen of other classes - merchants or petty bourgeois - housekeeping was a vital necessity. They learned this knowledge "from the hands", from their mothers, aunts and grandmothers. The noblewomen, up to the last third of the 19th century, had more theoretical knowledge than practical skills. Overseeing the household was a feature of the old estate life: Tatyana Larina's mother "salted mushrooms for the winter, kept expenses, shaved her foreheads"; Gogol's old-world landowners do the same. But it is impossible to imagine secular beauties from "War and Peace" who would be guided by market prices and knew how to butcher a chamois. In Russian urban culture, interest in cooking, knowledge of the latest French cuisine and game processing methods, and the ability to understand wines were predominantly male knowledge. It was the owner of the house who leafed through French cookbooks, he also gave orders to the barman and hired a cook - usually a Frenchman (Russian cooks with French training began to serve in wealthy homes only from the 1810s). Since Pushkin's time, unmarried youth of the nobility learned cuisine in restaurants, where the French also served as cooks.

Public demand for literature on home economics and cooking arose in the 1830s. It is formed against the background of the "impoverishment" of the nobility and the appearance of raznochintsy on the public stage. From the Rostovs and Bolkonskys, the landlords are gradually turning into the Manilovs and Nozdrevs. A hereditary nobleman, now dressed in a bureaucratic uniform, is easy to meet in the office or - in an officer's overcoat - in a Ukrainian town. For these people, economy and simplicity of cooking becomes an urgent need, because they - or their wives - are no longer dealing with a French chef, but with a cook. And although French cuisine has not lost its prestige, cookery literature is beginning to drift towards cheaper, simpler and more accessible Russian dishes.

* * *

The Russian tradition of culinary and, more broadly, domestic literature goes back to Domostroy, that is, to the era of Ivan the Terrible. The economic treatises of that time were reminiscent of the Torah in their thorough didactics. The same "Domostroy" contains not only recipes and advice, but also moralizing and prohibitions concerning all issues - both economic and religious and moral. This cannot be called a Russian invention: such books were widely distributed in medieval Europe.

With the beginning of the secularization of knowledge, they did not disappear - publications that tell about cooking, and about church holidays, and about raising children - in a word, about everything that a moral and pious family needs to know, were regularly published until the beginning of the 20th century. Food appeared in them not as an object of gluttony (gluttony is a mortal sin), but as a gift from God, and the task of the owner or hostess was to dispose of it reasonably and prudently 2
??These are the medieval French treatise Le menagier de Paris or its translation into English - The Good Wife's Guide.

But from the time of Peter the Great, cookbooks proper began to appear in Russia. They were translated - first from Polish and German, and at the end of the 18th century - from French 3
? The treatise “Article of the Cookery” (end of the 17th century) was translated from Polish, from German - “The New Cookbook with Instructions” by A.-Kh. Christa (1775). N. M. Yatsenkov translated from French the culinary books of Menon (“The Newest and Complete Cookbook”, 1790), V. A. Levshin - “Cooking Dictionary” (1795–1797) and “The Royal Cook” by A. Viard (1816).

There were also original Russian records of recipes. The first edition with recipes for Russian cuisine - "Economic Instruction for Nobles, Peasants, Cooks and Cooks" by S. V. Drukovtsev, an official of the Main Provisional Office - was published in 1772. It was followed by N. P. Osipov’s “Old Russian Housewife, Housekeeper and Cook” (1790), the anonymous “Lenten Cook” (1793), published in Kostroma, “Folk Cookery” (1808) and “Russian Cookery” by V. A. Levshina (1816).

But they could only be used by a professional chef who was able to decipher and put into practice a short record like “Greuse grouse or small birds fried with egg yolks, with turnip juice, a glass of Rhensky, with red broth” 4
Drukovtsev S. V. Economic guidance to nobles, peasants, cooks and cooks. SPb., 1773.

During the reign of Nicholas, in the 1830s and 1840s, culinary literature multiplied and was in increasing demand. Publications on housekeeping and cookery become an indispensable accessory for the home library of the small and bureaucratic nobility and enlightened merchants. In the late 1830s, the Encyclopedia of a Young Russian Housewife appeared. Its author advised all young ladies "to have cookbooks and cook from them from time to time" so as not to be deceived by cooks and merchants. 5
Volzhin B.[Burnashev V.P.] Encyclopedia of a young Russian housewife. At 2 pm St. Petersburg, 1839, p. 118.

A new reading public appeared in Russia, which needed non-binding literature, written in understandable language, on all important issues. One of the hottest things was cooking. In boarding schools, and then in women's gymnasiums, practical home economics courses were introduced, this knowledge was considered necessary for home teachers and governesses, books and brochures were published, addressed to readers and readers of average incomes.

Their key words are "savings", "cheapness", "simplicity". If in the first third of the 19th century the imaginary space of the Russian cookbook was an aristocratic city house or estate, now we are talking about a rented apartment. The first real bestseller was "The Manual Book of a Russian Experienced Housewife" by E. A. Avdeeva, the elder sister of the journalist and historian Nikolai Polevoy (1842). The fame of this book was so great that they immediately began to imitate it, and copy the advice and recipes from it. The same fate - huge popularity and many pirated publications - awaited the book of Elena Molokhovets.

* * *

After graduating from the Smolny Institute in 1848 with a gold bracelet and excellent marks in foreign languages, literature and the Law of God, Elena Ivanovna Burman returned to Arkhangelsk, where she married the architect Franz Frantsevich Molokhovets. Nothing is known about his architectural activities, he had a low rank - a collegiate secretary. The family grew - the Molokhovets couple had ten children (nine sons and a daughter), it was difficult to support them on one salary. Franz Molokhovets retires, and the family moves from port Arkhangelsk to prosperous noble Kursk, where he is promised lucrative orders - there is work for an architect on the estates of the black earth belt. Most likely, the constant need for money taught Elena Ivanovna to exemplary household savings. And this also becomes an impetus for the writing and publication of A Gift for Young Housewives in 1861: the abundance of then culinary literature suggests Elena Molokhovets the idea to contribute to this genre. On May 21 (June 3), 1861, on her name day, the first edition of A Gift to Young Housewives was published in Kursk, containing one and a half thousand recipes. During the life of the author, this book will go through 29 editions with a total circulation of about 300,000 copies and will become one of the most widely read Russian books of the 19th century.

A Gift to Young Housewives” came out in the year of the liberation of the peasants, in an era when Russian youth fell ill with “nihilism”. Estate girls dreamed not of becoming “young housewives,” but sought to cut their braids, put on blue glasses, fictitiously get married and leave to study medicine at the universities of Zurich and Geneva. Molokhovets's book, on the one hand, ideologically contradicted the "spirit of the times": the ideal she portrayed was a conservative, religious, child-loving and faithful to her husband housewife. In this sense, it directly continues the tradition of Domostroy. On the other hand, this book is evidence of the coming era of women's emancipation. Elena Ivanovna Molokhovets, the author of the culinary Bible, became one of the first successful women writers in Russia.

At first, Molokhovets' books were published anonymously, under the initials "E. M ... ts. " A woman writer was considered a comic figure, all the more strange and indecent for a lady to earn money in this way. However, over time, attribution became a necessity: a successful publication was shamelessly copied by pirates. Molokhovets puts his full name and facsimile signature on the flyleaf, threatening the plagiarists with a court (this does not help much). New editions of "Gift ..." came out regularly, each next one is thicker than the previous one: Molokhovets tirelessly supplements and refines his work. They all sell out instantly.

Prosperity comes to the family: the Molokhovites move from Kursk to St. Petersburg and rent an apartment in the prestigious Mizhuev house (26, Fontanka river embankment), side by side with the Sheremetevs, Naryshkins and Panins. This is the most aristocratic section of the Foundry part: the house with a view of the Mikhailovsky Castle was built in 1804 by the author of the Admiralty A. D. Zakharov, Karamzin and Vyazemsky used to live there.

By the 1880s, Molokhovets' book had finally eclipsed all its competitors. When reading "Gift ...", an image of an ideal hostess is created, hospitable in Russian and economical in German. Molokhovets serves a generous and plentiful table for guests and does not forget to feed the servants. Among the many recipes - in the latest edition there are about 4,500 of them - there are both common cabbage soup and thin French pâtés. The writer took care of all conceivable cases: Molokhovets described economic menus (offering two rubles - the price of one restaurant dinner - to feed 6-8 people), gave recipes for the sick and convalescents, advised soups and diet cutlets for children and 25-ruble ceremonial dinners. Armed with this book, it was possible to give a worthy welcome to a poor relative, and her husband's colleagues, and, on occasion, members of the royal family.

The Molokhovets author was generous, but she knew the value of money - hence, in her book, a guide to prices for basic products and calculations of the cost of meals. In that era, a cook was sent to the shop and to the market, she also stood by the stove. The task of the hostess was, first of all, control, she was not a worker, but the foreman: “the hostess can sometimes give herself the pleasure of removing cream or sour cream herself, ordering to churn butter, etc.,” wrote Molokhovets, but the rest of the work was done by the servants . Therefore, advice appears in the cookbook on how to treat the servants - what to feed, what to wear, how to "improve morality."

A good hostess will not be deceived - she knows how much, what when to buy, what to cook. She knows both the old secrets of cleaning diamonds and washing lace, as well as newfangled hygiene knowledge. She doesn’t lose anything, nothing gets spoiled, and if this suddenly happens, there is always advice at hand on “how to freshen spoiled hazel grouses.” Molokhovets advised preparing "economic oil from potatoes", candied barberry sprigs for the winter, growing mushrooms in the cellar and using chlorine water twice - first for cleaning cast-iron dishes, then for washing clothes.

According to the Molokhovets book, housewives learned how to behave correctly in the market: not to buy products at the beginning of the season when they are expensive, to be able to distinguish whole milk from diluted milk, to dose perishable supplies (recall that there were no refrigerators then, and basement glaciers did not cope with the task perfectly). In her world, all the details were tightly fitted together, there were no gaps in which money flew out. Its basis is common sense, common sense, which suddenly makes Elena Ivanovna related to Victorian housekeepers. Conservativeness connects her with them: Molokhovets treated outdated and archaic recipes with the same frugality - suddenly come in handy! When the fashion for hygiene prompted her to write a medical manual, modern remedies coexisted in it with advice to heal sweaty hands with young frogs, and epilepsy with "magnetized water" 6
Molokhovets E. I. To young housewives: A collection of hygienic and most useful simple, allopathic and homeopathic remedies for various diseases of adults and children. St. Petersburg: Printing house of Dr. M. A. Khan, 1880; Molokhovets E. I. Help for doctors and patients: questions and answers, especially for remote consultations and remote use of various methods of treatment. St. Petersburg: G. Dyuntz Printing House, 1883.

Which caused an outraged review in the journal "Health".

Housewife Molokhovets is an Orthodox married mother of the family, who with Protestant thoroughness monitors the family budget and opposes any sloppiness and extravagance. The audience to which it is addressed is constantly growing: the characters of Tolstoy and Turgenev are being replaced by Chekhov's characters. The estate is replaced by a dacha, and not a hazel grouse, but a goose becomes a gastronomic symbol of the time. In the parallel world, Faberge, the guards restaurants "Kyuba" and "Donon", furs from Mertens and fresh oysters from Eliseev continued to exist, but they no longer determined the development and course of Russian life.

The world of readers of Molokhovets is raznochintsy, educated merchants, officials, zemstvo employees, writers and doctors, that is, a new middle class that is being formed on the ruins of Russian class society as a result of the great reforms of Alexander II. From now on, women were charged with bourgeois virtues - the ability to receive guests, manage the household, "set up a house." They were interested in the gymnasium successes of their children, read the Niva with supplements and followed the servants, who in this era were not numerous: a nanny, a cook and a maid, and in poorer families there was one servant “for everything”. Such were Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya, Maria Pavlovna Chekhova and Serafima Vasilievna Pavlova-Karchevskaya, the wife of the great physiologist. These women consider their family and household to be their main business, but they have an idea of “good manners”.

An educated woman had to dress discreetly, but elegantly, have her own dressmaker, and understand furniture. She knew how to provide first aid (this is the time when sisters of mercy and women doctors appear), she knew how to entertain children, she could keep up the conversation about politics and literature - and at the same time remain in the image of a “charming lady”.

The little that we know about Elena Ivanovna Molokhovets allows us to attribute her to this female type. In addition to cookery and household books, she composed music (and even published a polka in 1854), wrote a French textbook for children and a medical questionnaire. She had her own circle of friends (in 1889 she became a widow), and, in addition to the economy, she was very interested in spiritual and political issues. She had ultra-conservative convictions and was an ardent supporter of the monarchy. Her views on modern politics, regularly presented in pamphlets, far from being as popular as her cookbooks, seemed to contemporaries a parody of the journalism of F. M. Dostoevsky and N. M. Danilevsky.

Elena Molokhovets. Gift for young housewives

“If guests unexpectedly come to you, send the girl to the cellar, let her bring cold veal and strawberries with cream. It will be quite decent ”- I come across various variations of this quote, which is attributed to Elena Molokhovets, on the Internet with enviable regularity.

And everything would be fine, but only in the book "A Gift to Young Housewives", which became the work of Elena Molokhovets's whole life, you will not find anything like this. This is not a guide to a beautiful life (it is no coincidence that the subtitle of the book is “A Remedy for Reducing Household Expenses”) and not a collection of wonderful recipes from mysterious products that reads like science fiction in modern times. No, this is Russian cuisine in the very form in which we know about it, a cast from the image of the festive and everyday table of a Russian person more than a century ago.

I always come up with recipes in different ways, but when it comes to traditional Russian dishes, about something that has long been invented by people of a completely different caliber, I act according to a proven methodology over the years - I turn to trustworthy sources to read what they wrote about that or a different dish, the authors, whose thorough knowledge of Russian cuisine can not be doubted. . . . But Molokhovets always comes first, it is with the “Gift for Young Housewives” that I always start my searches - and often it is the recipe of Elena Ivanovna Molokhovets that turns out to be the simplest, most understandable, straightforward and, most importantly, practical even in today's realities.

This book, which can be called a mini-encyclopedia, contains numerous practical tips and advice on housekeeping, as well as hundreds of homemade recipes that provide a glimpse of Russian cuisine in its heyday. Take a look and realize that Russian cuisine was not so meager and monotonous as it seems to us from the height of this century. It was not so closed and isolated, as they sometimes try to present it: dishes with clearly foreign roots - French, Italian, German - look quite natural and organic when surrounded by Russian dishes.

You can praise the book Molokhovets for a long time, but I will not waste my time and yours - several dozen reprints of "A Gift to Young Housewives" during the author's lifetime are much more eloquent than any words. So I'll just finish. If you cook Russian dishes, if you want to know how they were prepared several generations before you were born, if Russian cuisine is, in principle, not an empty phrase for you, and at the same time, Elena Molokhovets’ Gift to Young Housewives is not in your home library, then you made a mistake somewhere. It's time to fix it.

> Thematic catalog

Preface 3
DIVISION I 7
Table of measures and weights 7
Table of approximate prices of different products 8
General rules regarding the amount of provisions, for 6 people 12
Table of approximate roasting times for different foods in the oven 13
Roasting table on the stove 14
Table of approximate cooking times for various foods 14
Table of measures of pickles 16
Drawing and analysis of an ox, the quality of meat and its weight 16
Relative weight of different types of meat, in half an ox carcass, medium size 20
Meat Quality Recognition 21
Economic parsing of some large cuts of beef 24
Meat saving 26
A list of heterogeneous basic rules when preparing food 26
Eating leftovers 37
DIVISION II 40
Lunch menu 4 divisions 41
Register of cold snacks 87
SECTION III. Soups 104
A) Clear, yellow and red broths 109
B) White soups with flour dressing 121
Shchi 124
Borscht 128
C) White soups with egg yolks and cream 133
D) Soups from white, meat broth with cereals and sour cream 135
D) Meat soups 136
E) Fish soups 150
G) Butter soups (i.e. without meat and fish) 160
H) Milk soups 165
I) Hot, sweet soups from apples, beer, wine and berries 166
K) Cold soups 169
SECTION IV. Soup accessories 172
Toasts, croutons and tarts 172
Meatballs 173
Meat and fish quenelles (minced meat) 174
Olives, tomatoes 176
Cereals and noodles 177
Roots and vegetables 178
Dumplings 182
Eggs 184
Ears for cabbage soup 185
Pelmeni 185
Pies 186
Pie dough 187
Puff pastries 192
Pies from crumbly dough, chopped and yeast 195
Donuts or donuts 198
Yeast patties deep fried 198
Cheesecakes 100
Pancakes and loaves of pancakes 200
Pies-buns 201
Pies in tin molds and fried in batter 202
Minced meat in shells 203
Porridge for broth, cabbage soup and borscht 205
Croutons, otherwise croutons from cereals 206
SECTION V. Gravy or sauces 207
A) Preparation of various seasonings for sauces 208
B) Hot, flour sauces for meat dishes 211
C) hot sauces for vegetables 218
D) Hot sauces for hot fish and pâtés 219
E) Cold sauces for cold boiled and fried beef, piglet, game, poultry, ham, mayonnaise, aspic and cold fish 223
E) Sweet sauces for puddings, cereals, vegetables 224
SECTION VI. Dishes from vegetables and herbs and various side dishes for them 228
I-th group. Green vegetables 228
II group. herbaceous vegetables 234
III group. roots 250
IV group. fragrant herbs 270
V-th group. Mushrooms 272
SECTION VII. Beef, veal, lamb, piglet, pork, hare 281
A) Beef 281
B) Veal 312
C) Lamb 331
D) Piglet 339
D) Pork 342
E) Ham 346
G) Wild pig, chamois, venison, fallow deer 347
H) Hare 349
SECTION VIII. Poultry and game 351
A. Poultry 351
B. Game 375
Small game 383
SECTION IX. Pisces 387
SECTION X. Salads for meat and fish roasts 438
SECTION XI. Pies and pates 442
A) Pies 442
B) Pates 452
SECTION XII. Aspic, mayonnaise and other cold dishes for lunch and breakfast 466
A) Jellied, roll 466
B) Mayonnaise 472
C) Vinaigrette 481
D) Marinated fish and poultry served with breakfast or snack 483
SECTION XIII. Puddings, charlottes, soufflés, air pies and more 484
A) Puddings that are boiled in a napkin 486
B) steamed puddings 488
C) Puddings that are baked in a mould, in an oven 495
D) Charlotte 505
E) Souffle baked on a dish or in a charlotte 507
E) Air pies that are baked and served on the same dish 508
G) Various sweet hot foods that are baked and served on the same dish 510
H) Sweet foods that are mostly served cold 512
SECTION XIV. Apple dishes 516
SECTION XV. Pancakes, Russian pancakes, croutons. Egg dishes 520
A) Pancakes 520
B) Russian pancakes 524
C) Croutons otherwise croutons 528
D) egg dishes 530
SECTION XVI. Sorcerers, dumplings, dumplings, vermicelli or noodles, lazanki, pasta, cheesecakes, dumplings, etc. 533
A) Sorcerers, dumplings, dumplings 533
B) Vermicelli noodles 536
C) Lazanki 538
D) Italian pasta 539
E) Cheesecakes 541
E) Dumplings 542
SECTION XVII. Kashi 544
A) Semolina 544
B) Smolensk groats 545
B) Buckwheat small groats 547
D) Large buckwheat "Yadritsa" 548
E) Rice groats 549
E) Barley groats 552
G) Pearl barley 552
H) Oatmeal 552
I) Various cereals 553
SECTION XVIII. Wafers, tubes, wafers, brushwood, pancakes 554
A) Wafers 554
B) Ducts 556
C) Hosts 557
D) Brushwood 557
E) Fritters 558
SECTION XIX. Sweet pies and pies, cheesecakes, petish, donuts or donuts, dracheny, etc. heterogeneous flour dishes 560
A) Sweet pies, pies and cheesecakes 560
B) small cheesecakes 567
B) Petitsha 568
D) Donuts or donuts 569
D) Dracena 571
E) Miscellaneous sweet pies 572
DIVISION XX. Ice cream, creams, marshmallows, mousses, blamange, kissels, compotes, milk custards 576
A) Ice cream 576
B) Cream 582
C) Marshmallow or cream without glue 587
D) Whipped cream 588
E) Plombir 589
E) Parfait 591
G) Jelly 592
H) Mousse 598
K) Kiseli 601
L) Compotes 604
M) Dairy custards 607
DIVISION XXI. Cakes 610
A) Glaze 611
B) Different masses for transferring cakes 612
C) Cakes 613
SECTION XXII. Mazurkas and other small cakes 628
A) Mazurka 628
B) small cake 630
SECTION XXIII. Vegetarian table 683
SECTION XXIV-XXXVI. Lenten table 698
DIVISION XXXVII. Table setting and dishes 773
DEPARTMENT XXXVIII. Department of amendments and additions 783

Molokhovets Elena Ivanovna

A gift for young housewives, or a means to reduce household expenses

Publisher: Printing house N.N. Klobukova

Place of publication: St. Petersburg.

Year of publication: 1901

Number of pages: 1052 pages.

The book "A Gift to Young Housewives or a Means to Reduce Household Expenses" is a culinary bestseller of the 19th century. First published in 1861 in Kursk, it went through more than thirty reprints in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and has not lost its relevance today.

This unique collection of Russian cuisine recipes was originally published as a manual to help young housewives manage their household. The book contains recipes for a vegetarian and lenten table, examples of table setting and dishes, and a description of the various supplies needed in the household.

A distinctive feature of this book, in comparison with previous ones, is the exact, and not approximate, indication of the amount of ingredients used. Guided by the goal of reducing household costs, the author in all placed recipes indicated the exact proportion of all ingredients for 6 people.

A graduate of the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens, Elena Molokhovets strove to help young housewives with a small fortune and moderate expenses to have a constantly delicious, healthy and varied dinner.

The departed complex life - with a huge number of pots, cocotte makers, molds for timbales and pates, dessert forks, spoons for caviar, lafitniks made of colored glass and dozens of types of jam - caused melancholy for the life that was taken away from our ancestors in 1917. This feeling is wonderfully conveyed in an essay by Tatyana Tolstaya, who reviewed the English translation of A Gift for Young Housewives in 1992.

Where are you, salted writer,

Molokhovets, little holuyka,

The bliss of ten-pound carcasses

Owners of ten thousand souls?

In addition to French and dancing, Smolensk women were taught needlework, the beginnings of home economics and home economy - according to a detailed plan drawn up in 1818 by Empress Maria Feodorovna, the widow of Paul I. High school students were taken to the storerooms, explained to them "the properties and use of life supplies and how to save them", and taught to cook exemplary kitchen, that is, equipped with the latest state of the art of that time. In the 1840s, college girls got up at six in the morning, prayer began at 6:30, tea was served at seven, then, from 7:30 to noon, there were lessons, from noon to two - lunch and a walk, then until five again lessons, a break for an afternoon snack until six o'clock in the evening, after which the girls danced; Dinner at eight, went to bed at nine. Pupils helped to make the menu and calculate the cost of dishes. In this sense, their training was far ahead of its time.

A gift for young housewives, or a means to reduce household expenses Elena Molokhovets

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Title: A gift for young housewives, or a means to reduce household expenses

About the book "A Gift to Young Housewives, or a Means to Reduce Household Expenses" Elena Molokhovets

“In emigration, the two most popular authors,” wrote E. Zamyatin, “Elena Molokhovets is in the first place, and Pushkin is in the second.” Indeed, “A Gift to Young Housewives” has become the main Russian cookery book, which was reprinted dozens of times and without which it is impossible to imagine Russia in the 19th - the first half of the 20th century.

A gastronomic symbol of its time, the book by Elena Molokhovets is an excellent guide to housekeeping in our time, and over four thousand of her tips and culinary recipes have withstood the test of time with dignity. This book will help any girl, girl, woman to become a wonderful hostess: generous and hospitable and at the same time economical, teach you to keep track of the family budget, choose and store food correctly, set the table and, of course, cook deliciously for your family and friends the most diverse dishes - both festive and everyday. All the secrets of a happy home - in one book.

On our website about books, you can download the free book “A Gift to Young Housewives, or a Means to Reduce Household Expenses” by Elena Molokhovets in epub, fb2, txt, rtf formats. The book will give you a lot of pleasant moments and a real pleasure to read. You can buy the full version from our partner. Also, here you will find the latest news from the literary world, learn the biography of your favorite authors. For novice writers, there is a separate section with useful tips and tricks, interesting articles, thanks to which you can try your hand at writing.