How the Upper Crust Dined

The nineteenth-century St. Petersburg aristocrat Petr Pavlovich Durnovo regularly entertained at his mansion on the city’s fashionable English Embankment. Thanks to a trove of his dinner menus from 1857-1858, we can get a good sense of the foods that the mid-century aristocracy enjoyed.* Here, for instance, is the menu for September 25, 1857:

Soup with vermicelli
Oysters on the half-shell
Pozharsky cutlets with garnish
Roast great snipe
Cauliflower
Meringues with ice cream

Durnovo’s St. Petersburg table was far more restrained than the groaning-board style of traditional Russian hospitality associated with Moscow. After the soup, Durnovo’s dinners always moved on to a cold dish (often fish), then a hot dish, then a roast, a vegetable, and dessert. Not surprisingly, St. Petersburg’s cuisine was more cosmopolitan than Moscow’s, with dishes prepared “French style,” “English style,” and “Italian style,” in addition to “Russian style.”

The piquant appetite-whetters known as zakuski were so well understood that they needed no description in Durnovo’s menus. Most likely the zakuski in his household were served with assorted vodkas in a parlor before the guests filed into the dining room for the main meal.

This September menu begins with a frustratingly generic description of a soup identified only by the cognate sup, which gives little indication of how it was prepared, except that it had an Italian accent thanks to the vermicelli, fashionably thin Italian noodles. Fresh oysters came next. A couple of famous literary works remind us how beloved oysters were in Russia. Chekhov’s poignant short story “Oysters” revolves around these mollusks, while Oblonsky, in Anna Karenina, displays his connoisseurship by inquiring about the freshness and provenance of the oysters he’s offered at a restaurant.

Durnovo’s guests were no doubt delighted to be served two deeply Russian dishes, Pozharsky cutlets and roast great snipe. The delectable cutlets are said to have originated in the town of Torzhok, where travelers stopped for refreshment when traveling by coach between Moscow and St. Petersburg. There an innkeeper named Pozharsky became famous for his wildfowl cutlets (Pushkin mentioned them in a letter to his friend Sergei Sobolevsky). The Russian passion for wildfowl and game is also evident in the roast course. After hunting season opened in September, hazel hen, grouse, woodcock, snipe, great snipe, pheasant, partridge, hare, and venison all made frequent appearances on Durnovo’s table.

The kitchen prepared a wide variety of vegetables, including many that disappeared during Soviet times, such as artichokes, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cardoons, cauliflower, and Jerusalem artichokes. The vegetable course provided an important balance to the rich dishes that preceded it.

Desserts at the Durnovo table, like the meringues offered here, most often came from the French repertoire, although certain Russian specialties like Guriev kasha and hot compote appeared with regularity. Almost all of them were so-called “wet” desserts, to be eaten with a spoon (as opposed to “dry” desserts like pastries for eating out of hand).

Though we can’t easily recreate the taste of roasted great snipe, we can happily sample a modern rendition of Pozharsky cutlets, now made with chicken or veal instead of wildfowl.

* These menus are presented in Yuri Lotman and Jelena Pogosjan’s High Society Dinners: Dining in Tsarist Russia (Prospect Books, 2014), reviewed in the May/June 2015 issue of Russian Life.

Chicken Cutlets

Пожарские котлеты

2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
½ cup light cream
3 large slices day-old French bread (preferably sourdough), trimmed of crusts and torn into pieces
1 egg yolk
1/3 cup softened butter, creamed
¾ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Flour
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Sautéed sliced mushrooms

In a food processor, grind the raw chicken finely.

In a large bowl, pour the cream over the bread. Mix with a spoon until the bread has absorbed all the liquid.

Add the ground chicken to the bread mixture, along with the egg yolk, the 1/3 cup of butter, salt and pepper. Beat until smooth.

In a large frying pan heat the 4 tablespoons of butter and the oil.

Shape the chicken mixture into 8 oval patties, dredging each one well in flour so that it is not sticky. (It helps if your hands are also well floured.)

When the butter is hot, put the patties in the frying pan and cook them over medium-high heat until golden brown, about 5 minutes on each side. Be careful not to overcook them. Serve immediately, garnished with sautéed sliced mushrooms.

Serves four.

Variation: Substitute 1 pound of veal for the chicken; proceed as directed above. Or use half veal and half chicken.

Adapted from A Taste of Russia cookbook