A Gift to Young Housewives

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A Gift to Young Housewives

A Gift to Young Housewives () is a Russian

Russian literature

This article is about literature from Russia. For the song by Max?mo Park, see Our Earthly Pleasures. Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its ?migr?s, and to the Russian language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union....
cookbook

Cookbook

A cookbook is a book that contains information on cooking, and/or a list of recipes. It may also contain information on ingredient origin, freshness, selection and quality, e.g., the Slow Food movement's ark of taste criteria....
written by Elena Ivanovna Molokhovets . It was the most successful book of its kind in 19th- and early 20th-century Russia. Molokhovets revised the book continually between 1861 and 1917, a period of time falling between the emancipation of the serfs

Emancipation reform of 1861

The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia was the first and most important of Liberalism reforms effected during the reign of Alexander II of Russia....
and the Communist Revolution. The book was well known in Russian households during publication and for decades afterwards.

The original series went through 20 editions and sold 295,000 copies.

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A Gift to Young Housewives () is a Russian

Russian literature

Cookbook

Emancipation reform of 1861

Madeira cake

Madeira cake is a popular Portugal traditional type of England cake.Madeira cake is also a popular Cuisine of England traditional dish. The Madeira Cake is a simple pound cake....
, and hazel grouse

Hazel Grouse

The Hazel Grouse or Hazel Hen is one of the smaller members of the grouse family of birds. It is a sedentary species, breeding across northern Eurasia and central and eastern Europe in dense, damp, mixed coniferous woodland, preferably with some spruce....
. Other recipes included soups, fritter

Fritter

A fritter is any kind of food coated in Batter and deep fried. The word comes from the Latin *frictura by way of Old French and Middle English....
s, torte

Torte

A torte is a cake made with many eggs and usually ground nuts or even bread crumbs instead of or in addition to flour. Tortes are Central European in origin....
s, mushrooms, aspic

ASPIC

ASPIC may be:* Advanced Space Propulsion Investigation Committee* Advanced SCSI Programmable Interrupt Controller* Application Service Provider Industry Consortium...
s, mousse

Mousse

Mousse is a form of creamy dessert typically made from egg and cream , usually in combination with other flavors such as chocolate or pureed fruit....
s, and dumplings. There were also instructions on making jam, mustard, and vodka

Vodka

Vodka is a distilled beverage. It is a clear liquid which consists of mostly water and ethanol purified by distillation ? often multiple distillation ? from a Fermentation substance, such as cereal , potatoes or sugar beet molasses, and an insignificant amount of other substances such as flavorings or unintended impurities....
. Although the number of recipes varied by edition, there were as many as 3,218 in the 1897 edition.

In addition to recipes, the book covered cooking techniques, utensils and cooking equipment, stoves and ovens, household management, relations with servants, menus for feast days, and nutrition; it also gave time- and money-saving hints.

During the Soviet era

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
, the book, written for the middle class and aristocrats, was condemned as "bourgeois

Bourgeoisie

Bourgeoisie is a classification used in analyzing human societies to describe a social class of people. Historically, the bourgeoisie comes from the middle or merchant classes of the Middle Ages, whose status or power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those whose power came from being born into an aristocrati...
and decadent", mainly because of its aristocratic tone and obvious disparagement of the lower classes. The book, for instance, says that "fresh roach

Roach (fish)

The Common Roach is a freshwater and brackish water fish native to most of Europe and western Asia. It is locally simply known as "the roach", but actually the fishes called "roach" can be any species of the genera Rutilus and Hesperoleucus depending on locality....
is not very tasty and barely useful; it is, therefore, best used to feed the servants." Also, it was mostly outdated for the 20th century, as for obvious reasons it didn't cover usage of modern kitchen equipment: refrigerator

Refrigerator

A refrigerator is a cooling appliance comprising a thermal insulation compartment and a heat pump - a mechanism to transfer heat from it to the external environment, cooling the contents to a temperature below ambient....
s, electric

Electric power

Electric power is defined as the rate at which electrical energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt .When electric current flows in a circuit, it can transfer energy to do mechanical work or work ....
and gas

Natural gas

Natural gas is a gas consisting primarily of methane. It is found associated with fossil fuels, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, and landfills....
oven

Oven

An oven is an enclosed compartment for heating, baking or drying. It is most commonly used in cooking and pottery. Ovens used in pottery are also known as kilns....
s, etc.

In the post-war USSR

Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
, a time when people dealt with food shortages, long lines, and a scarcity of the necessary ingredients, cookbooks were mostly seen as a laughable anachronism. For example, one recipe for babka

Babka

Babka, or Bobka, also known as baba, is a sweet yeast cake....
called for ingredients such as 60 to 70 eggs, which few people could afford at that time. But as life was getting better the need for cookbooks and complex recipes was arising. In 1952

1952 in literature

The year 1952 in literature involved some significant events and new books....
"The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food" was published to replace outdated "Gift" as an everyday cookbook.

Joyce Toomre adapted and translated recipes and other content from the various editions into a 1992 book published as Classic Russian Cooking: Elena Molokhovets' a Gift to Young Housewives.

A Gift to Young Housewives

See also