A Mythical Dessert

This rich dessert bears the name of Count Dmitri Alexandrovich Guriev (1751-1825), Minister of Finance under Tsar Alexander I. The classic preparation is made from mannaya kasha, or semolina, best known in the US as Cream of Wheat (confusingly, this soft-wheat product is sometimes also known as farina). Semolina is used widely in northern European cooking as a sweetened porridge, often paired with fresh fruit. The Russian treatment is distinguished by the addition of nuts and dried, candied, or brandied fruits. But what really makes traditional Guriev kasha stand out is its use of golden skins, formed by baking rich milk or cream in the oven. The skin that appears on the top of the milk is lifted off and used to separate the layers of semolina and fillings. As a finishing touch, the porridge is sprinkled on top with sugar and browned under a broiler in the fashion of crème brûlée – a technique borrowed from French haute cuisine.

Guriev kasha lends itself well to individual interpretation, and this flexibility is, perhaps, one reason why the exact origins of the dessert have been lost to history. Different versions of the story abound, almost all circling around Count Guriev, who was renowned for his excellent table.

The nineteenth-century memoirist Filipp Filippovich Vigel, a confidant of Pushkin and the Arzamas group, wrote that Guriev frequently traveled abroad, where he “perfected himself gastronomically. He had a real genius for invention...” In The Food and Cooking of Russia, Lesley Chamberlain writes that Guriev created the dish in 1812 “to commemorate his country’s victory over Napoleon. Two years later it was already being shown off in Paris.” Another, more widely circulated version of the story claims that Guriev didn’t invent the dish himself, but that it was created by a serf who belonged to a retired major of the Orenburg Dragoons. When Guriev visited this major, he was so impressed with the serf’s dessert that he bought him and his family and installed him as chef of his own household. The most reliable source, the culinary historians Olga and Pavel Siutkin, believe that Guriev created the dish himself, most likely in the late eighteenth century.

In any case, by the mid nineteenth century Guriev kasha was appearing on Russia’s most fashionable menus, and it even found a place in Yekaterina Avdeyeva’s famous 1842 cookbook, Ручная книга русской опытной хозяйки (The Experienced Russian Housewife’s Hand Book). Tsar Alexander III was especially fond of the dessert, which featured on his coronation menu in 1883. Guriev kasha went on to play an even greater role in the tsar’s life. In 1888, when Alexander III was traveling in his private train from the Crimea to St. Petersburg, he was in the dining car, about to partake of his favorite dessert, when the train derailed at high speed. Twenty-three people died, but the tsar, miraculously, survived—some say because he was in the dining car instead of elsewhere on the train.

Vladimir Gilyarovsky mentions Guriev kasha in his cultural history of Moscow, Moscow and Muscovites, published in 1926 (see page 48). He describes the founding of Moscow’s famous tavern, Testov’s, in 1868, where the suckling pig, rasstegai (small fish pies) and Guriev kasha were so renowned that the Petersburg nobility regularly made special trips to Moscow to eat them. Before opening his own place, Testov had worked at a competing tavern called Gurin’s. Gilyarovsky takes pains to note that Guriev kasha had nothing to do with Gurin’s tavern. Instead, he writes, it was thought up by “some mythical Guriev.” Although Gilyarovsky’s failure to ascribe the dish to Count Guriev is surprising, he is right to find something mythical in the dessert, whose many creation tales attest to our continuing romance with it.

Guriev Kasha / Гуриевская каша

This simplified version of the classical dessert foregoes the laborious milk skins, but it is equally delicious. Semolina is sold in natural-food stores. Just be sure to buy the soft-wheat product used for porridges, not the hard-wheat semolina flour intended for making pasta. Cream of Wheat can be substituted, but it must be the regular, long-cooking variety – the quick or instant types will not work in this recipe. Serve the dessert in glass bowls to show off its layers.

6 ¾ cups half and half (light cream)

¾ cup semolina

Pinch of salt

⅓ cup sugar

1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract

½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

½ pound walnuts, coarsely chopped

12 ounces brandied fruit, well drained and coarsely chopped

2 teaspoons sugar

Bring the cream to a boil in a deep saucepan, then slowly pour in the semolina, stirring constantly. Add the pinch of salt and cook over medium heat, uncovered, until thick, 8 to 10 minutes. Then stir in the 1/3 cup sugar and the vanilla extract. Keep warm.

While the mixture is cooking, caramelize the walnuts. Place the ½ cup sugar in a large frying pan along with the lemon juice. Carefully heat until the sugar begins to melt, stirring constantly. Continue to cook until the sugar turns golden brown and syrupy; be careful not to let it burn. Immediately stir in the walnuts and coat them well. Remove from the heat.

Grease four 8-ounce serving bowls. In the bottom of each bowl place a layer of the cooked semolina, then top it with a layer of caramelized nuts. Top the nuts with some drained brandied fruit, then repeat the layering. The top layer should be semolina.

Decorate the tops of the desserts with extra nuts and fruit. Sprinkle each dish with ½ teaspoon of sugar and brown under the broiler.

Serves 4.

Adapted from A Taste of Russia