Sat 12 Jul 2008
From the New York Times:
When she [author Lara Vapnyar] was growing up in Moscow in the 1970s and 1980s, her family — like most other Soviet-era Russian families — had one cookbook: “It was a big book full of canned food, published by the government,” she said. That book, “The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food,” was first published in 1939, a move by Stalin’s regime to replace what had been Russia’s classic cookbook from 1861 until 1917, when it was banned: the aristocratic tome “A Gift to Young Housewives.”
“You couldn’t make a case that that book was anything but bourgeois,” said Darra Goldstein, a professor of Russian at Williams College and editor of the food journal Gastronomica. “It was for the upper classes and their servants.”
By contrast, the recipes in “The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food” were accessible to ordinary Soviet citizens.
“It was the 1952 edition that took off, just as the Soviet food industry was really getting going,” Professor Goldstein said. Alongside photographs of cans of fish and recipes using dried soup were vistas of wheat fields and orchards. “It was a powerful piece of nationalistic propaganda, but also very useful as a cookbook,” she said.
Not that there is anything wrong with that!
July 14th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Indeed, cook books are a reflection of their times as much as noted tomes. I sit with a copy of Mrs Beeton’s Hors d’oeuvres & Savouries from the early 20’s in my hand, as interesting for the advertisements in the fly pages as the recipes:
ATORA Beef Suet, Marzawattee All-British Tea, Tridant Salmon and Shrimp Paste, BORWICK’s the Best Baking Powder in the World, REFUSE ALL SUBSTITUTES - Insist on having Borwick’s!
A BH&G cook-book from the 50’s in my kitchen is a slice of mid-century taste and culture complete to typeface and layout.
By the way, in that 20’s period, one could write for a free copy of ‘Subtle Seasoning’ to Lea and Perrins, 64 Midland Road, Worcester. It is pleasant to note that, although now a division of HP, Worcestershire Sauce is still made in the eponymous town.
Except in the US, where it is made in Fairlawn, New Jersey.