Russians generally arrange a genuine banquet for Christmas and New Year. A visitor who visits his Russian friends will never return home hungry. There will be salt fish, meats, and various plates of mixed greens. Also, certainly, there will be popular Russian pirogi: rasstegays with rice and egg, vatrushkas with curds, and pirozhki with potato. In the event that a Russian housewife wants to dazzle her visitors, she will definitely opt to prepare a kulebyaka — one of the eldest and sophisticated pies throughout the entire existence of Russian food. This pie ought to have little mixture with heaps of filling. The mixture must be flimsy and sturdy to hold such various delectable things while being eaten.
So, what makes kulebyaka pie different? Why is kulebyaka pie considered a special thing on Russian Christmas Day? We are about to find out.
The History of Kulebyaka Pie
Kulebyaka or Coulibiac is a Russian hot pie that has an oval shape and a few fillings. Pies are consistently cherished in Russia. Even acclaimed Russian authors like Gogol and Turgenev celebrated pies in their works.
Different pies were constantly made for each occasion and celebration. However, it was rich regal festival or little laborer event. Enormous pies loaded down with a few fixings were extremely mainstream. They were heated on Butterweek and Easter and served in bars and little tea-houses where every proprietor had an exceptional recipe.
Just in the seventeenth century, the amazing elongated pie that features a few fillings was named ‘kulebyaka’. The cake shell was generally produced using the yeast batter. The primary differentiation of the kulebyaka pie from some other Russian pies is that the amount of the filling ought to be a few times surpasses the amount of the baked good; the filling of kulebyaka is normally muddled and isolated with dainty flapjacks.
The most well-known fillings are salmon with buckwheat, ground meat with bubbled eggs and rice, cabbage with mushrooms and onions, or visiga — a spinal marrow of the sturgeon. The last one is the irregular element for these days, however, in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, it was normal.
In the nineteenth century, French culinary experts, who had worked in Russia, carried the recipe to France and adjusted it to the advanced cookery. Subsequently, the kulebyaka became well-known pie not just in Russia.
Difficult Tsarist-Style Pie
The word ‘kulebyaka’ likely has its starting points in the old Slavic action word signifying “to shape with hands.” Kulebyaka varies from different kinds of pies with its shape (for the most part, it is a greater cake) and complex filling. Customary recipes recommend preparing kulebyaka with different kinds of stuffing. For instance, mushrooms, meat, cabbage, and rice. The sweet filling in this pie is likewise well-known. Fillings ought not to be blended; they must be isolated by slight flapjacks so that when cutting the pie, the filling will be found in one piece.
Fillings could be spread out vertically, yet in addition, diagonally, depending upon the creative mind of the cook. Kulebyaka can contain up to twelve layers of filling. In tsarist occasions, the more layers the cake had, the more extravagant the household.
Cited in Numerous Books
Precisely, this pie was portrayed in the “Moscow and Muscovites” book composed by Vladimir Gilyarovsky toward the finish of the nineteenth century. The acclaimed Moscow kulebyakawas loaded down with meat, distinctive fish, new mushrooms, chicken, and wildfowl. This kulebyaka was served uniquely at the trader club and at Testov’s place and it ought to be requested a day prior.
In the Nikolai Gogol’s tale “Dead Souls”, a four-cornered kulebyaka was requested for the main character, “Put on the one corner sturgeon cheeks and vyazigi, on another, buckwheat and mushrooms with onions, and sweet milts, and cerebrums, and something different.” Vyaziga, the ligament from the rear of the sturgeon, used to be a well-known element for fish pies. Like sturgeon cheeks, these stunning fillings stay just in writing.
Today, numerous Russians cook kulebyaka with just one filling. What is more, the outcome is likewise scrumptious.
So, that is why kulebyaka pie is considered a special thing on Russian Christmas Day.