Food and Drink of Eastern Europe:

Primarily Poland and Rus

Disclaimer: This class and this handout, being based entirely on English-language secondary or tertiary sources, is an overview for persona purposes and an introductory point for further research. It does not, nor is it currently intended to, meet the research standards of exemplary SCA cooks. The reader should be aware that the use of secondary materials and translations introduces a risk of misinterpretation, and that I am primarily a researcher rather than an expert at medieval cooking and recipe redaction. It is my hope that someone may build on this research to pursue a more accurate re-creation of Slavic cuisine in the future; for the moment, I hope it will be helpful to those interested in Slavic and East European foodways.

Problems:

General Influences

Religious fasting/food restrictions. The difference in food regulations between the Roman and Byzantine churches causes significant differences between West Slavic (Polish, Bohemian, etc.) and East Slavic (Rus, Ruthenian, etc.) foodways. Poland strictly followed the fasting rules of the Church of Rome (meatless Wednesdays and Fridays, Lenten fast); Russians and Kievans followed the Byzantine Church, which were even stricter (certain meats, and meat slaughtered in certain ways, were forbidden). Certain kinds of food-- strangled animals, 'vermin' like beaver and squirrel--were eaten less due to Orthodox regulations but not always avoided entirely.

From the Domostroi, chapter 51:

'As everyday food, servants recieve rye bread, cabbage soup, and thin kasha with ham. Sometimes they may have thick kasha with lard.. . . On Sundays and holy days servants sometimes get turnovers (piroszhki), jellies, pancakes, or other, similar food. At supper they eat cabbage soup and milk or kasha.
On fast days the servants have cabbage soup with thin kasha, sometimes with broth, peas, or turnip soup. At supper on these days, you may offer cabbage soup, cabbage, oatmeal, pickles, or fish and vegetable soup. On Sundays and holy days, for dinner, give them various kinds of pies, barley-pease porridge, barley groats, or kasha mixed with herring (or whatever elseGod sends). For supper, serve cabbage, pickles, fish and vegetable soup, and oatmeal.
The serving women, maids, children, other kinfolk, and dependents should get the same food, but with the addition of leftovers from the master's and guest's tables. As for the better class of merchants, the master should seat these at his own table.
The mistress honors seamstresses and embroiderers as the master does merchants: she feeds them at her own table and sends them food from her own dish.
The servants' drink is second-grade beer; on Sundays and holy days, ale. Trading people always drink ale, and the master may give them any drink he wishes, or order it given. If they drink merely to quench their thirst, merchants should be served weak beer.'

---

Raw ingredients:

The question of Capsicums (New World 'peppers', aka paprika).

"There is not a lot readily available on the subject. Most food histories tend to date the arrival of capsicums in Eastern Europe to 1526, coinciding with the Ottoman conquest of most of Hungary, however the actually date of introduction could be anytime up to around 1621, when the Turks were pushed
out.

The earliest published reference from the area can be found in Leonhard Fuchs' Primi de Stirpirum published in Basil in 1545. Fuchs was a physician and naturalist who was living in Tübingen (south of Stuttgart on the Neckar River). There are three plates on pages 425-427, 1) Capsicon rubeum & nigrum - Roter und brauner Calcutischer Pfeffer, 2) Capsicum oblongius - Langer Indianische Pfeffer, and 3) Capsicon latum - Breyter Indianische Pfeffer. Fuchs appears to have been familiar with the plants, but confused about their origins.

The fact that Fuchs very carefully and correctly pictures the capsicum plants suggests that they were available to him and that the 1526 date for the introduction of the plant into Eastern Europe may be correct.

If you are interested, Fuchs' work has been webbed at:
http://www.med.yale.edu/library/historical/fuchs/

Capsicums were also reported as being grown in a monastary garden in Brno, Moravia in 1566, but I haven't found the source of the report."

Preservation

• Salt pickling: cabbage, shredded turnips, cucumbers, beets, corned beef, mushrooms, lemons, possibly fish. The Domostroi says to pickle cucumbers, plum, and lemons in brine (though that may be sugar syrup).
• Smoking/Salting/drying: fish and meat (the Domostroi speaks of sturgeon 'hung in long pieces or preserved in boxes')
• Honey or sugar syrup: berries, apples, pears, plums
• Alcohol preserving: apples & pears in kvass
• Drying: mushrooms and beet greens

Prepared Foods

Root vegetables were roasted, stewed, and sometimes radishes were even dried and made into flour for sweets; turnips were used in the same way potatoes are now. In summer, fresh beets, melons, beans, cucumbers, carrots were eaten. Beet greens were eated cooked (and if Domostroi can be believed, also dried for later use); the roots pickled, cooked or added to other dishes. Dried peas were added to other dishes or made into strained peas. "Hemp and flax seeds... were used in dishes with peas" (Smith and Christian). German sources speak of serving raw vegetables with oil, vinegar and salt, and this probably what the Domostroi intends when it mention serving radishes to guests.

Mikolaj Reg in "Zywot czlowieka pozciwego" (1568) describes a sauerkraut method: "Having romoved the outside leaves of some nice heads of cabbage, cut them in half and fit them neatly into a vat, spreading beet chards & dill between the layers" (Dembinska) [and presumably covered in a salt and/or vinegar brine and left to ferment...] and a cucumber pickle: 'pickle cucumbers in salt, add some dill and sour cherry or oak leaves...'

Rumpolt, Ein Neue Kochbuch (1581) suggests sauerkraut was known and used in Hungary and Bohemia, as he includes it in is Banquets for Kings of Hungary and Bohemia: "... Ein saur Kraut gekocht mit einem geräucherten Speck/ vnd dürren Würsten/ vnd auch mit geräucherten Capaunen vnd Hüner" [sauerkraut cooked with smoked bacon].

Thomas Gloning said on the SCA-Cooks list (http://www.ansteorra.org/mailman/htdig/sca-cooks/2000-October/044191.html):

"For Prussia, there are inventaries of the German order mentioning vats or barrels with "kompost", "kompostkol", "suercompist" etc. in the 15th century, with "sawerkrawt" in the 16th century. (Quotes from these inventories can be found in: Brunhilde Reitz: Die Kultur von 'brassica oleracea' im Spiegel der deutschen Sprache [The culture of brassica oleracea/cabbage in the mirror of the German language]. Diss. Marburg. Giessen 1964.) However, the earlier Jeroschin chronicle says that "kol", from which sauerkraut is made, was unknown to the Prussians in early days ("... gesen die brudre ezzin kol, des di Pruzin nicht inpflagin nutzin dennoch bi den tagin", roughly '(a visitor) saw that the brethren were eating cabbage, which the Prussians themselves did not eat in those early days')."

From the Domostroi: "Chop cabbage, greens, or a mixture of both very fine, then wash them well. Boil or steam them for a long time. On meat days, put in red meat, ham, or a little pork fat; add cream or egg whites and warm the mixture. During a fast, saturate the greens with a little broth, or add some fat [oil?] and steam it well. Add some groats, salt and sour cabbage soup. Cook kasha the same way; steam it well with lard, oil, or herring in a broth."

Bread
Bread, usually combining white and rye flours (the more wheat flour, the more exalted the position of the eater). Dembinska lists nine categories in Poland: 'common rye bread, black rye bread, common white bread, binavice [twice-baked, first baked, then sliced and dried], wheat or manchet rolls, bagels or ring pretzels, rogale or crescent rolls, placki or flat cakes, and tortae.  Food was served in heavy bread trenchers, and white bread rolls were served to important folk at feasts. (Wheaten manchet rolls could be bought from vendors on the streets, along with round twisted sweet 'pretzel' type rolls and other bread and pastry treats.)
Smith and Christian say that in Russia, rye was the primary bread grain and unleavened flat 'hearth' breads are undocumented, though bread and pies could be bought in the street, and horned rolls are mentioned in the Domostroi.

Leavening, in Poland, was 'thick beer', a 'sourdough'-type leavening made from beer yeast dregs-- probably beer barm, the yeast sediment from the brewing vat. (However, the Domostroi mentions storing yeast, but it's not clear how.) Flour was sifted, then mixed and kneaded in 'kneading troughs' and put to bake in moistened ovens or wrapped in vegetable leaves.
Pancakes, fritters, pies and cakes made with leavened dough in were common in  Russia. (Smith and Christian). Noodles were also made with peas.
The Domostroi says that the housewife should know 'how to sift the flour, prepare the kneading trough, mix and roll the loaves. She should know how to bake sourdough breads and sweet rolls and, when they are cooked, buns and filled pies also.'

Filled small pies (pirozhki), turnovers or 'blintzes [sic] filled with mushrooms, poppy seeds, kasha, turnips, cabbage, or whatever God sends' are mentioned in the Domostroi; filled noodle/dumplings may have been known in Russia but were a later import to Poland.

Domostroi: "When the servants bake bread, order them to set some of the dough aside, to be stuffed for pies. When they bake wheat bread, have pies made for the family from the coarse flour left in the sieve. For meat days stuff them with whichever meat is to hand. For fast days use kasha, peas, broth, turnips, mushrooms, cabbage, or whatever God provides...."

"I only know about pirozhkis.  Yes, they are period, no, we don't have a "recipe."  But, we do know what types of fillings were used in pies, and pirozhki means "little pie."  The Domostroi (in the definitely period section) lists pie fillings . . . On page 151 and 161, "turnovers" are mentioned.  In Pouncy's footnote of the latter entry, she calls them "pirozhki."   No mention of the cooking technique, but I would guess they were probably baked, like the bigger pies, if only because they would be slightly easier to bake for an entire household instead of frying them in batches." (sca-cooks@ansteorra.org, email message on 1/27/01)

Kasha and grain dishes
Kasha, or groats, hulled or pounded grain cooked up into gruels, porridges and/or rice-like dishes, is mentioned continously in both Polish and Russian sources. Kasha could be wheat, millet, barley, buckwheat or other grain, and as fine of cream of wheat or as coarse as pearl barley or rolled oats. Soupy 'thin Kasha' was fed to servants and others of low status; thicker, frumenty-type or rice-like dishes went to those of higher status. Kasha was generally cooked with lard (Lemnis), but meat, broth, spices and milk were also possible additions.

Flours (oat, millet, etc) were also used in soups and porridges also, as well as hemp and flax seeds. Whole grain gruels and frumenties, were also made.  Kut'ya, a frumenty or porridge, was eaten on festival occasions, and taken to church to be blessed as a meal for the dead. Eggs may normally have been served on it, as in 1499 it was forbidden to put eggs on Kut'ya as an offering.

The Italian source, Platina, gives a recipe for cooking millet. Szymon Syrennius' 1613 herbal apparently gives several variations for cooking millet, according to Dembinska: ". . . millet kasha was 'cooked in milk with butter and sugar'," "servants ate millet kasha 'cooked with water, butter, and salt'," or "hulled millet was 'cooked until fluffy and loose, then browned in butter and thus served'." (Dembinska, pgs. 109-110)

Dembinska mentions a dish eaten primarily by the poor called prazmo, described in Syrennius, made from oven-dried unripened grains of rye: "When needed, the green grains were soaked in warm water, then cooked with milk and bacon. Upper-class versons of this dish used capon stock and better quality ingredients" (p. 112).

Hempseed porridge/soup appears to have been served in monasteries, garrisons and to the poor; it's unclear whether the hempseed oil was extracted first (Dembinska, p 113-114). The Italian physician Platina also gives a recipe for hempseed porridge.

Kisel is the oldest porridge dish that we have record of, though the information we have about the recipe is scanty.

According to Yana (Jen Miller):

'From the Primary Chronicle entry for the year 997:

<To sum up the text, so's I don't have to type everything.>  The Pechenegs are laying seige to Belgorod, keeping everyone from leaving.  The Belgorodians, seeing that they will starve to death if they allow this to go on much longer, seize the opportunity to trick the Pechenegs into letting them go.  They dig two deep holes (wells) and put barrels in them.  In one, they put a honey-water mixture.  In the other, they put a flour-starch mixture.  Then they ask the Pechenegs, "why are you killing yourselves?  Can you outlast us?  If you stay for ten years, what can you do to us?  For we have nourishment from the earth."  So they invite some Pechenegs in.

"And they took them to the well where the flour-starch mixture was and they brought some up in a bucket and poured it into pans.  And when they had cooked up the kisel', they took it and went with it to the other well, and they drew up the honey-water.  And they began to eat, first the townspeople
and afterward the Pechenegs."  The Pechenegs take some of the flour-starchmix and honey water back to their Princes (apparently they wanted to cook it up themselves), the Princes are amazed, and they all "retreated from the town and went back home."'

Soups:
A fermented soup similar to zur (traditional Easter fare) is mentioned in period documents. Kyssiel, a fermented barleyflour soup, is documented to 997 in Poland. In the Rus Primary  Chronicle, a tribe makes a flour soup that resembles kissel. Grain soups were also popular such as millet flour soup.
Beer soup (with or without cheese)-- Poland (Dembinska, Lemnis)
Cabbage soup (?)- thick or thin, with fish or meat broth; sometimes with kasha, was a staple of the diet. 'Sour cabbage soup' made with beer and/or fermented (Domostroi).
Curiously enough, beet soup is not documented for Poland, but a borscht-like cow parsnip soup is.

Meat:
In Poland, Beef was the favored meat, in many incarnations, roasted, boiled, spit-roasted, etc.. Auroch meat (wild beef) was considered a game dish. Game, including venison and other wild game, was consumed sporadically. Pork was also also roasted, spit roasted, or fried, and in the form of fat pork/fatty bacon (salted, smoked or fresh) it appears to have been the most-consumed meat of the majority of the population. Poultry, especially chicken, made mass appearances atlarge banquets, and was generally roasted or stewed. Zrazy (sliced or rolled stewed meat) and tripe were served at the table of Wladyslaw Jagiello; tripe was also cooked and packed in brine as a reliable emergency food.

Because of the dome-shaped stoves in Russia, frying was a common way of preparing meats and fish.
Vinegar instead of wine marinades were popular. Sauerbraten, especially veal, is period for Poland. (Dembinska) The german cookbooks -- Rumpolt and Welserin-- include vinegar-marinated meat.

Sausages: included both traditional meat filled sausages, and sausages filled with kasha mixed with meat bits. Domostroi: "They stuff the entrails with kasha cooked with suet and summered (the kasha can be made from oatmeal, buckwheat, barley, or whatever is available. If these [sausages] are not eaten up in the autumn, they make a pleasant Christmas feast.. " Blood puddings and blood sausages were common in Poland but forbidden by Orthodox law in Russia (though still sometimes eaten).

From the Domostroi on cooking meat:

• Mutton: "from the breast she makes soup. She stuffs the kidneys, roasts the rib, stuffs the shoulders with eggs, boils the feed. She cuts up the liver and wraps it, with the onion, in its membrane, then fries it in a frying pan. She stuffs the lung with a little milk mixed with flour and egg, and the sweetbreads with eggs. She makes soup from the ram's head, brain and entrails. She stuffs the tripe with kasha. She boils pieces of kidney, or stuffs them for grilling."
• Beef: "salt the meat so it will last the year and hang it... eat the entrails through the autumn... render the suet.. stew the cow's entrails, head, ears, lips, jawbones, brain, intestines, tripe, stomach, fatty flesh, feet, liver, and kidneys. You can make the cow's tripe, lips, ears and feet into broth that will last all year. Such broth is especially good with sour cabbage."
• Pork: "salt this meat, too, to last your through the year. Render the lard and eat the head, feet, stomach, intestines and spine during autumn and winter.

Aspic: fish or meat in aspic (jelly) was a common dish. The writer of the Domostroi points out that you must keep dishes in jelly on ice or in cold storage.

Fruit:
Fruit, except apples and sometimes pears, is only mentioned eaten cooked in Rus; in Poland, eating fruit raw may have been more popular. The Domostroi mentions Cherries in syrup, apples and pears in kvas or syrup, cooked apple candy, berries cooked in honey and dried in layered sheets like fruit leather. Dried raisins, 'cranberries' and other fruit appeared in grain dishes and vegetable compotes.

The Domostroi says to have on hand 'bilberry wine, cherries in syrup, rasberry juice, and desserts (apples and pears in kvass and syrup, pastilles [fruit candy], doughnuts).'

Drink:

"To brew ordinary kvass, take four parts honey and strain it until it is clear. Put it in a jar and ferment it using an ordinary soft loaf, without additional yeast. When it is done, pour it into a cask."

Berry/fruit juices (rasberry, cherry, cranberry), made by boiling down the fruit, and stored for the winter, were known also, either directly consumed or used to flavor mead or wine. (Domostroi, Smith & Christian)

Beer (piwo) or ales were the most common drink in Poland, and very popular in Russia. (In Russia, families or fraternites often obtained permission to brew a beer for a holiday.) Many different grains and combinations of grains -- wheat, millet, barley, oat and rye-- were used in Polish and Russian brewing; wheat beer was preferred in Poland. The Domostroi mentionsmalt for brewing , and ale. Poles added poraj (marsh tea or Labrador tea) herb tea to their beer brews to increase the intoxicating effect.

From Food and Drink in Medieval Poland:
"... one of the better breweries in Poland was located at Nowe Miasto near Korczyn . . Medieval records are quite clear in singling out certain breweries for thei beer, and there was even a royal brewery. . . the leading breweries during the Jagellonian regins were located in Proszow, Wilsica, Bochnia (also known for its salt), Busko, and Cracow, which made a famous 'double' beer (potus marcialis) recommended for invalids. There are also well-known bereweries at Niepolomice and Wiliczka, and Zator produced a famous black beer (perhaps a type of stout). The best Silesian beer, maded a Swidnica (Schweidnitz) was also sold in Cracow. Warka beer was by far the best beer producd in Mazovia, although breweries at Sierpiec and Gostynin are also mentioned. The list of Polish beer breweries from the medieval period is huge, and these are only a few of the best known ones."

Mead, the distinctive drink of the Poles, was less common than beer, used only on special occasions. Flavored, spiced and fruit meads were known in Russia and also to the Teutonic Knights.

Dembinska gives a recipe from a 1567 text that came from a Marcin of Gniezno in 1543: "Ten pounds of honey are cooked with forty pounds of water, and the ensuing foam skimmed off. One pound of hops is then boiled in water and placed in a sack. The sack is put into the honey and water mixture after it has cooked, along with beer yeast or bread starter. It is then allowed to ferment."

Wines were imported; In Poland the best came from Hungary, where 'ImperialTokay' is still made. Rhenish wine was used in Northern Poland and Russia. Bilberry wine is mentioned in the Domostroi, so they probably had fruit wines. Poland had oskola, a highly alcoholic birch-sap brew.

The Domostroi mentions making hypocras, also spiced mead and wine: "He should put nutmeg in one little bag, cloves in a second, beneficial herbs in a third. He will warm these on the stove and mix them with the mead. He should mix cherry juice with warmed wine and put it in a jug, combine raspberry juice and wine in a second jug, and add wine to prepared syrup in a third" (Pouncy:155). Also, a bachelor 'adds a little honey to ordinary beer, keeping it on ice and calling it mead or March beer.'

Note: the author of the Domostroi felt that women should not drink wine, mead or beer, or drink in public ever; but these may be his personal strictures. He limits women to weak beer or kvass.

From 
Dmitriy Shelomianin, on the Slavic Interest Group list:

"This info is from "Ocherki Ruskoy Kul'tury XIII-XV vekov", editor A.V. Arcihovsky, MGU Publishing, Moscow, 1969 -- a lovely book if you read the 
language . . .

It says that a drink made of honey was the main drink of the period in question (XIII-XV, remember). It quotes a lot of mentions of drinking it from period sources.  (I have a question about this, btw.. not being a brewer, I do not know what mead is -- is it exclusively honey-based? Because 
Russian word for honey is "miod" or "meod" which sounds awfully close. I gather from Misha's post that it is, but wanted to check on the "exclusively" part)

Beer was second in importance.  The author points out the use of malt in the brewing process.  He also mentions wine -- imported only, none made in the country. It was imported a lot, however, because it was used often in church ceremonies, liturgy in particular.

He specifically points out that there are absolutely no mentions of vodka or a similar drinks until the 16th century.
(Caveat -- somebody on the Russian reconstructor's board mentioned that vodka is first mentioned in 1386, when foreign merchants brought it to Lihtuania. She says that it was used for pharmaceutical purposes for hundreds of years, into the 16th centurm, though, and quotes a request to bring vodkas from the tsar's pharmacy written in the 16th century).

Kvas is also mentioned in a 14th century manuscript.  Out of curiosity, why do you rule out kvas? I love it.. National remedy for hangovers, by the way. 
Kvas, and pickles ....

So -- sorry, no exotics here. No mentions of herbal beers either. What is melomel? How s it made? There is not mention of anything made of berries in my book, but it is not an exhaustive study of the matter. . . "

Service:

Sources used for this class:

Food and Drink in Medieval Poland: Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past. Maria Dembinska, rev. and adapted by William Woys Weaver. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1999). This is an excellent overview of Polish foodways between 1350 and 1500, but it has several faults, including the nationalist bias and the fact that the included recipes are re-creations, not redactions. Furthermore, it is an adaptation of a translation of Ms. Dembinska's book, originally published in 1963 as Kosumpcja Zywonsiowa w Polsce Sredniowiecznej (Food consumption in Medieval Poland). Using a translation by Magdalena Thomas, Weaver edited and adapted the text, and included a number of recipes that he and Dembinska had worked on re-creating from mentions in records and known recipes from non-Slavic sources. Unfortunately, many of the notes and charts were removed and the notes for the recipes do not give sufficient source data.

Bread and Salt: A social and economic history of food and drink in Russia. R.E.F. Smith and David Christian. (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Only about three chapters in this cover the time period before 1600 (and up to 1650). But there is an excellent discussion of Russian food, of drinking practices, and of the salt extraction industry.

"Archaeobotanical Evidence for Food Plants in the Poland of the Piasts (10th-13th Centuries AD)", M. Polcyn. Biological Journal of Scotland, vol 46, no 4, p 533-537. This gives a list of the foodstuffs found in archaelogical digs in Gniezno.

"Baked Turnip Pudding: An Exercise in Russian Cookery," Ilyana Barsova, in Slovo: The Slavic Interest Group Newsletter, Vol VI, Iss 2: http://slavic.freeservers.com/slovo/news21.html

Food  in Russian History and Culture. Edited by Musya Glants and Joyce Toomre. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997). Two articles of interest: "Stovelore in Russian Folklife" by Tempest, and "Food in the Rus' Primary Chronicle" by Lunt.

Old Polish Traditions: in the Kitchen and at the Table. Maria Lemnis and Henryk Vitry. (NY: Hippocrene, 1996). This popular work includes a good bit of food history, but the recipes are all modern and some of the dating in the history is questionable. I would not consider it a reliable source for pre-1650 material except where sources are specifically referenced.

Polish Customs, Traditions, and Folklore. Sophie Hodorowicz Knab. (NY: Hippocrene, 1994). Though primarily folklorish, includes insights to ethnography and also references to medieval custom.

Polish Herbs, Flowers, and Folk Medicine. Sophie Hodorowicz Knab. (NY: Hippocrene, 1995). Though primarily postperiod & sometimes spotty on the dating, includes herb references not found elsewhere. Especially useful for the names of period herbals.

A Russian Herbal: Traditional Remedies for Health and Healing. Igor Vilevich Zevin, with Nathaniel Altman and Lilia Vasilevna Zevin. (Rochester, VT: Healing Arts, 1997). Primarily modern with occasional medieval references.

George Lang's Cuisine of Hungary.  George Lang. (New York, Random House, 1994). Lang is regrettably vague about spices but includes an interesting sidelight about the possible cultivation of paprika (capiscum or hot pepper) before 1600, as well as some recipes supposedly period.

"Four Banquets of the Kings of Hungary and Bohemia" from Max Rumpolt's Ein New Kochbuch, translated by M. Grasse: http://clem.mscd.edu/~grasse/GK_ASkings1.htm

Struzková, D. and M. Beranová, "The medicinal and culinary use of the cabbage, onion, garlic and leek in the Bohemian Region during the 15th and 16th centuries". In press.

Internet references:
Yana's "Medieval Food and Drink" page in the Slavic Knowledge/Slavianskoe Znan'stvo Project: http://medievalrussia.freeservers.com/food.html and her personal page at: http://braid.freeservers.com/russianfood.html
The Russia Food messages in Stefan's Florilegium:  http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-BY-REGION/fd-Russia-msg.html

Note:  a new volume on Magyar foodways is now available: Tender Meat Under the Saddle (Sonderband VII) which I have not had an opportunity to examine.