. She is author of six award-winning cookbooks, including Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore.
Goldstein applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, The Kingdom of Rye: A Brief History of Russian Food, and reported the following:
Page 99 of The Kingdom of Rye falls in Part 3, titled “Hospitality and Excess.” Halfway down the page comes a section on “Exorbitant Illusion,” where I describe the antics of the Russian aristocracy, for whom meals were performative:Visit Darra Goldstein's website.With attention focused on table service, rather than on any extrinsic entertainment such as musical interludes, the elite Russian meal was in itself a performance. Russia certainly had its share of dwarves and jesters to entertain guests (their antics were particularly enjoyed by Peter the Great, who had naked dwarves instead of blackbirds “baked” into pies), but the Russian aristocracy did not develop the art of mealtime pageantry as diversion, as was the custom in Western Europe. And because the needs of the gentry were largely taken care of by the many serfs they owned, the gentry had plenty of time to dream up grand, inventive dinners that helped dispel boredom. Mikhail Pyliaev, in his study The Old Way of Life (Staroye zhit’yo, 1892), documented the dinner parties of some of Moscow’s most hospitable—and unconventional—hosts, who often relied on illusion for maximum effect. At one memorable meal, Count Alexander Sergeevich Stroganov decorated his dining room to recall ancient Rome, with swansdown-stuffed pillows and mattresses arranged around a triclinium where his guests—all male—could recline during the meal, like the dissolute ancients. Each guest was served by a graceful boy who carried in one exquisite dish after another, Russian style.In one way the Page 99 Test works well for my book. Describing over-the-top hospitality is both enormously entertaining and revealing of Russian culture, and I admit that this part of the book was the most fun to write. But at the same time, the page isn’t at all representative of the book’s larger message, which is that Russian culinary practices were born of hardship and hunger. Part 1, “The Land and its Flavors,” shows the Russian ability to preserve and to persevere by transforming a meager choice of foodstuffs into a delicious and wholesome culinary repertoire through fermentation, slow cooking, culturing, and baking. Part 2, “Hardship and Hunger,” is perhaps most crucial to understanding Russia through its food culture. Here I discuss the many famines that have occurred over the centuries, both those caused by natural disasters like drought and those brought on by social upheaval and cynical political determinations.
Any discussion of Russia, even of its food, ends up being a balancing act between what is beautiful about the country’s culture and what is horrific—especially at this moment of Russia’s war against Ukraine. As I write in the Introduction, “It is tempting to tell [Russia’s] culinary story in terms of dualities and easy juxtapositions: scarcity and abundance; feasting and fasting; poverty and wealth; restraint and excess; modesty and flamboyance. And such pairings can reveal a lot about social structures and about the way food is consumed. But they can’t begin to communicate what is, to me, most crucial: food’s taste and texture, the technologies of preparation, the aesthetics of the table, and, perhaps above all, its cultural resonance and the emotional value of traditional flavors, how people know who they are by what they eat together.”
--Marshal Zeringue
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