But we’ve already covered that dish here. The rightful star of the mayonnaise chapter is the famous Salad Olivier – the king of potato salads.
This book has so much to give – an embarrassment of food riches – that I was overwhelmed with choice on what to make for Food Anthology. She just equated a mayonnaise jar to the importance of Gogol’s “The Overcoat” to Russian culture, and name dropped Dostoevsky. If, as Dostoyevsky supposedly said, all Russian literature comes out of Gogol’s story “The Overcoat”, then what Gogol’s garment was to nineteenth-century Russian culture, the Provansal mayonnaise jar was to the domestics practices of Mature Socialism.” “Specifications of a totem: short, 250-gram, pot-bellied and made of glass, with a tight-fitting lid. In the chapter “1970s: Mayonnaise of My Homeland,” we find out that mayonnaise is literally the glue that holds the Soviet Union together and its infinitely repurposed jar an invaluable vessel for anything a Soviet citizen might need to carry or contain – from spring flowers to booze (obviously) to pregnancy samples. Deep down inside, I always knew its heritage was hamburger. I would get two slices of bread out of the pantry, splash the kotleta with some ketchup and eat it like that. I remember wondering why we ate them with a knife and fork when it was so clearly a bizarre kind of burger. My mom used to make these when I was growing up! This failed Soviet attempt at the American hamburger had even made its way to the far western reaches of the Soviet empire. The hamburger patty – no longer sandwiched between bread – became a kotleta. But when WWII happened, the bun got lost in the shuffle. He returned with the ways and means to give the Soviet citizenry the hamburger American hamburger grills were purchased and installed in major Soviet cities, enough to turn out 2 million orders a day. In the chapter on the 1930’s, Stalin’s commissar of Soviet food production went to the United States to research American food. That’s not my only revelation from this book. Maybe it’s time to reread Dead Souls just for the food. Maybe when I was reading these authors in university I was more into chicken wings, beer and nachos (still am – for the record) and I just didn’t get it. I majored in Russian language and literature and I was, and still am, absolutely, completely unaware of the delicious treasures in these stories. They aren’t the only Russian authors to make them smack their lips Pushkin and Tolstoy have the power, too. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von BremzenĪnya and her mom Larisa salivate over Chekhov short stories and Gogol’s Dead Souls.
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