Image: IgorMagic · Public domain
A Gift to Young Housewives
- Year
- 1861
- Era
- 19th century
- Origin
- Russia · Europe
- Language
- Russian
- Category
- Eastern European
A Gift to Young Housewives, compiled by Elena Molokhovets and first issued in 1861, became the dominant household manual of Imperial Russia, expanded across successive editions into an encyclopedic guide encompassing recipes, menus, provisioning, and the management of servants and stores. Its detailed picture of gentry domestic life has made it an indispensable source for culinary and social historians, most accessibly through Joyce Toomre's scholarly abridged English translation of 1992.
Cooking from this book
Kulebiaka
Signature dishThe kulebiaka, a tall enclosed pie of enriched dough filled with layered fish, rice, mushrooms and herbs, stands as the emblematic centrepiece of Molokhovets's vast compendium. It captures the abundance and ceremony of the pre-revolutionary Russian table that her book documented for generations of middle-class households. Through Joyce Toomre's scholarly English abridgement, this festive pie became the dish most readers associate with the work, symbolising a vanished world of domestic hospitality.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
