Ivan Glushkov And it did not go into your mouth About forgotten Russian drinks 26.05.2023, 08:10

Recently, I Wrote About little-known products of Russian cuisine that deserve greater fame. Today’s column is devoted to such drinks.

Number one flyer. Take a closer look at Chekhov’s stories – in every second story, the characters drink the same leaflet and vividly discuss its taste. A completely forgotten drink – so seasonal now that it’s in vogue. A leaflet is a tincture of buds and very young leaves of currant (on ordinary vodka). The leaves and buds, the first, soften the taste of alcohol, the second give it a very bright aroma of currants, and the third give it a very rich, even kind of chemically bright green color, it is hard to believe that they are frozen Do not add any dyes.

Number two casserole. This is not what you think, it’s a tincture again. Berries, honey, spices, fragrant leaves (the same currants, but also apples and cherries) are added to a bottle (or earthen pot) with strong alcohol – of course, there is no exact recipe. The dishes are hermetically wrapped in steep rye dough and sent to a well-heated, slow-cooling oven.

Modern bartenders like to prepare tinctures in sous vide – with this technology, the product is sealed in a vacuum bag, immersed in water and heated for a long time to a constant, rather low, 60-70 degrees. It’s essentially the same as a stew, sorry, “analogue” sous vide. Flavors and aromas merge as much as possible, penetrate each other and even reduce production time – a few hours instead of days and weeks.

Number three sour cabbage soup. And again, it’s not what you think. Sour cabbage soup is not sauerkraut soup, but a kind of kvass. Sour cabbage soup has two main symptoms. Firstly, very strong carbonation: the drink was poured and sold in champagne bottles, ordinary ones could burst. Secondly, several types of malt and flour were used for sour cabbage soup: rye, wheat, buckwheat, barley and others. The 1910 recipe for “Moscow sour cabbage soup”, for example, suggested brewing dough from rye malt, wheat and buckwheat flour with boiling water, then draining the water from the dough, adding honey and honey twice, with an interval of several hours. add yeast, leave to ferment, pour over bottles and after half an hour close the corks so that the fermentation continues under the cork. Now Gogol’s famous “cold beef and a bottle of sour cabbage soup” sounds pretty understandable to you, right?

The fourth is Volga kvass. And now the situation is reversed. Not kvass at all. So on the Volga, and more precisely, at the Makariev Fair in Nizhny Novgorod, they called a proto-cocktail in the style of a European cobbler or crucson: champagne with ice and fruits, especially peaches and pineapples. For more appetizing fruits, they can be pre-marinated with rum and sugar and only then pour champagne. The emphasized foreignness of all ingredients (almost no one dares to put apples or pears in Volga kvass) is fundamental. Nizhny Novgorod merchants emphasized their status with Volga kvass. If they had known about the existence of guava or carambola, they would certainly have added them.

The fifth number is half a beer. Everything is very clear and clear here. Half a beer is the most common beer and is only brewed with half the diluted mash. Accordingly, his castle is quite small, it turns out about 2-3%. This type of beer was considered completely innocent, for example, it was allowed to be sold to soldiers.

By the way, there is an analogue of half a beer, for example, in Norway. There are quite strict restrictions – regular beer in supermarkets is sold only until 8:00 pm on weekdays and until 6:00 pm on weekends (all other alcohol is in specialty stores only). But littol – the same half beer with 3% hardness – stands unhindered on the shelves until closing time.

Number six is ​​blueberry juice. He can certainly not harm anyone anymore because you cannot find him with fire during the day. Pity – this is an original, peculiar and extremely simple drink. In its basic version, it is ordinary water filled with fresh blueberries. In the complex version, the water can be sweetened with honey, but from this bad one: the initial bitter-sour taste with a thin, light pink color is quite enough (especially if properly cooled on a hot day). With the current craze for soft drinks that don’t look like traditional lemonade juices, lingonberry juice can make a splash. Moreover, you can insist water on the mulberries 2-3 times in a row in this way, it does not lose its taste. Also, blueberries are a natural antiseptic, such water (and the blueberries themselves in it) can keep for months without going sour or moldy. And soaked blueberries were then served as a seasoning, for example, for fried meat.