Educated Tastes: Food, Drink, and Connoisseur Culture

2. The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food: The Establishment of Soviet Haute Cuisine

24 The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food The Establishment of Soviet Haute Cuisine jukka gronow and sergey zhuravlev Cultural politics were an essential and important part of the building of socialism in the Soviet Union. Socialist society—and even more so the coming Communist society—demanded not only the industrialization of the country and high levels of economic and technical development, it also presumed the emergence of a new kind of citizen with new and greater needs and capabilities. This meant the overall cultivation of human needs. Food culture was no exception. Culinary culture did not enjoy as prominent a profile as some other fields of “highbrow” culture, such as literature, film, and theater—which were the main targets of ideological and political interference from the Communist Party. The authorities and experts on nutrition did nonetheless codify a Soviet etiquette and actively influence the culinary habits, desires, and tastes of their citizens. To promote these goals they opened new exemplary restaurants , workplace canteens, and cafés, as well as propagating “proper” ways of eating and dietary manners. The Soviet case did not, after all, differ that much from many other rapidly industrialized and urbanized countries in Europe or North America. New Chapter Two The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food 25 socially mobile and urban classes had to be taught, and often were willing to learn, manners of eating more appropriate to their new social position and urban life styles. In addition to more formal school education—obligatory cooking classes for girls at school— books of etiquette and cookbooks as well as other popular instructions , such as recipes in the daily press and journals, served this purpose in the Soviet Union just as they did the capitalist West. This chapter is based on a wide variety of sources from official documents and culinary publications to the authors’ personal experiences and interviews. The Soviet cookbooks are, however, our main source. As historical evidence of the culinary culture, they undoubtedly have their limits. Using them as a source, however , we can analyze the culinary instructions and recipes as well as draw conclusions about the ideals of proper eating and table manners propagated in these publications. Less systematic evidence is available about how these instructions were received and used and how they might have, in fact, influenced both everyday and festive eating in the Soviet Union. No one has, to our knowledge, studied the reception of Soviet cookbooks and it would be almost impossible to reconstruct it in any comprehensive manner after so many decades. In this respect the Soviet Union is no exception: we have, in general, very little systematic information about how cookbooks are read, understood and used. In the capitalist West, cookbooks have belonged not only to the bestselling book genres but the number of individual titles has been on the increase for a long time as well. However, it is questionable whether this has had any remarkable and visible effect on the general cooking skills and eating habits of ordinary households. Equally, it is notable that, for example, products named by popular British tv cook Delia Smith have frequently sold in substantially increased quantities immediately after their media appearances. Cookbooks are clearly pleasurable to read, to look at, and think about, but assessing their impact on culinary and social practice is far from straightforward. In the Soviet Union, which suffered from serious shortages of 26 Learning to Taste many quite basic food items long after the Second World War, the more festive cookbooks must have been to many readers real “dream worlds of eating,” perhaps reminding them of their grandmothers ’ stories of the “good, old times.” It is most likely that people used those recipes, for example from the different Soviet ethnic cuisines, which were relatively cheap, easy, and quick to cook. Recipes that were either too complicated or the ingredients of which were difficult or impossible to get, or too expensive to buy, were either simplified or not used at all. In many households the housewives experimented occasionally with the more complicated and new dishes or cooked them on some more festive occasions to celebrate a birthday or a national holiday. The advice of the general books on housekeeping on how to preserve fruit, vegetables, and mushrooms or how to cook jam was certainly highly appreciated and needed in the Soviet dacha or summer cottage culture. In addition to cooking skills and new recipes, the...