Every Russian has eaten solyanka at least once in his life - a nutritious and satisfying dish that replaces both the first and the second at the same time. It’s unlikely that anyone would have thought about the fact that solyanka, an original Russian dish familiar far beyond the borders of Russia, in the old days was called nothing more than “hangover”, and serving it to the table of the Russian aristocracy was considered the height of bad form.

History of Solyanka

The name “solyanka” was first mentioned in literature in the 15th century. This type of spicy and fatty soup was originally served with vodka and served as an excellent snack for it, simultaneously serving as both the first and second. It was cooked fatty - this helped to drink for a long time and not get drunk, and at the same time it was filling and quick to eat. shala. In those distant times, it had two names that accurately reflected its essence: “hodgepodge” and “hangover”. In the 18th century, the aristocracy recognized solyanka exclusively as a dish for the poor, as well as peasants who had a weakness for vodka. Solyanka or “hangover” was eaten with pleasure only by commoners, while the nobles considered it too simple and unworthy of a noble table. Perhaps this is why the original name of solyanka was distorted and the dish was included in old cookbooks under a new name - “selyanka”. The name has taken root in culinary literature, and, despite the fact that it has long ceased to be considered a sign of uncouthness and simplicity, it has gained great popularity among the highest circles of society. In old cookbooks, as well as in recipes for rural cuisine, the name “selyanka” remains to this day.

The taste of solyanka

Solyanka can always be recognized by its characteristic pungent taste and strong spicy aroma. Any hodgepodge is always based on concentrated broth. Depending on the type of broth, three types of solyanka are traditionally distinguished: meat, mushroom and fish. The sour-salty-spicy taste of this soup is formed due to the presence of such integral components as pickles, olives, capers, lemon, kvass, salted or pickled mushrooms. Depending on a particular recipe (and they vary greatly in different regions of Russia), these components can be added to the soup at the same time, or only some of them. Thus, solyanka is, moreover, an original soup, which combines in its composition the characteristics of cabbage soup, rassolnik, fish soup , mushroom and regular meat soup, depending on the ingredients put into it. Spices are what were always added to hodgepodge and in large quantities. Most often they are represented by dill, parsley, onions, pepper, and garlic. Preparing hodgepodge is not difficult, however, to obtain a tasty and aromatic hodgepodge, it is important to observe temperature conditions and the order of adding ingredients to the soup.

Is hodgepodge healthy?

Due to its rich composition, hodgepodge contains almost all the elements that are necessary for the health of the human body. It contains especially a lot of vitamin C due to the content of cabbage, pickles, herbs, lemon, and olives. Meat, fish, mushrooms are a valuable source of proteins, and sour cream is also calcium, which is necessary for normal growth and bone formation. The greens that make up hodgepodge contain a large amount of antioxidants and pectins. Antioxidants, which include vitamin C, help protect cells from harmful factors. Pectins improve digestion processes in the intestines and remove excess toxins from it.

Incredibly, such a successful combination of products in one dish was obtained completely by accident. Few people know about this, but Solyanka was “invented” in the same way as the American pizza we all know: housewives simply prepared a dish from those products that remained in the house, practically from waste. Amazingly, both pizza and its Russian analogue in preparation - solyanka - subsequently enjoyed enormous popularity.

Today, solyanka is considered a restaurant dish and is served in many establishments, from student canteens to expensive elite establishments. It stands on a par with popular exotic Japanese, Caucasian and European dishes.

Galina Yampolskaya

Not many traditional dishes of Russian cuisine have survived to this day, which enjoy constant popularity throughout the world. One of them, of course, is the meat solyanka - a dish with a rich and mysterious history.

The origin of hodgepodge is shrouded in deep mystery. Some researchers believe that this dish was originally called “selyanka”, that is, rural, rustic food, and in a broader sense, peasant food in general. It was supposedly prepared on major holidays as a common meal: one brought fish or meat, another brought vegetables, a third brought something else... In general, “everything from the world.” Over time, the village turned into a solyanka - which is quite logical, considering that in Rus' any hodgepodge, confusion and confusion was called a “hodgepodge”.

Other historians do not agree with this version, and argue that Solyanka has always been Solyanka, and the etymology of the name directly depends on the ancient recipe, which was based on pickles, olives, capers - in general, all sorts of “salt things”. In general, whether solyanka is related to selyanka is not known for certain; one thing is clear - first appearing in cookbooks in the 15th century, solyanka was, after all, fishy and was a spicy, fatty soup, which was usually served with vodka and strong liqueurs. In the mornings, solyanka was also in great demand - it was not without reason that it was also called “hangover”. After the Russians tried tomatoes, the recipe for making solyanka radically changed - they began to add tomato paste or fresh tomatoes to it. Other varieties of solyanka appeared, including meat one. Starting from the 18th century, solyanka began to be considered a peasant dish and gradually disappeared from the tables of aristocrats. Perhaps it was at this moment that she turned into a “village girl”, so that she could later triumphantly return to the menu of the most sophisticated restaurants under her original name.

Although the modern version of solyanka can only be classified as a soup with a stretch - thick solyanka is more likely a second course than a first course - we will focus on this classification. So, solyanka is a soup made with a strong meat, fish or mushroom broth, combining the components of other traditional Russian soups: cabbage soup (meat, onion, sour cream) and rassolnik (pickles, cucumber brine). Due to the addition of ingredients such as pickled cucumbers, olives, capers, lemon, kvass, salted or pickled mushrooms, as well as a large number of spices - pepper, parsley and dill - the base of the solyanka is sour, salty, spicy, aromatic.

Solyanka comes in three main types: meat, fish and mushroom. The most popular is undoubtedly the mixed meat solyanka.

2 liters meat or bone broth

500 g boiled beef meat

3 sausages

300 g of ham or other smoked meats - the more varied the meat products, the tastier the hodgepodge will be

1 boiled beef kidney

1 tbsp. spoon of butter or vegetable oil

2 tbsp. spoon of tomato paste

2 onions

1/2 cup sour cream

10 olives or olives

1\2 lemon

2 large pickled cucumbers

salt, a few black peppercorns, bay leaf

1 tbsp. a spoonful of chopped parsley and dill.

Place onions, cut into strips and sautéed in oil with the addition of tomato, pickled cucumbers, peeled (optional) and cut into slices, as well as meat products cut into slices/straws into the boiling broth. After the soup has boiled for 5-10 minutes, add salt, pepper, bay leaf and cook for another 5-7 minutes. Olives or pitted olives are added at the very end of cooking or directly to the plate. If desired, you can pour boiled cucumber brine into the soup (about 1 glass for 2 liters of broth) - for “spiciness” - 5 minutes before readiness.

When serving, the hodgepodge is sprinkled with herbs, and a slice of lemon and a spoonful of sour cream are placed on each plate.

Solyanka Solyanka

Thick broth with strong meat, fish and mushroom broth with lots of spices. Dahl defined this dish as “hot stew with meat, cabbage, onion and cucumber.” It combines the features of cabbage soup and rassolnik and is a truly folk food. Solyanka also refers to another dish - fried cabbage.

(Culinary Dictionary. Zdanovich L.I. 2001)

* * *

This is a modified name for the dish "Selyanka", i.e. rural village food, and in a more expanded sense - peasant food in general. However, over time, the letter “E” was replaced by “O”, and “selyanka” turned into “solyanka”.

* * *

This is the name of spicy soups that combine the components of cabbage soup (cabbage, sour cream) and pickle (pickles, cucumber pickle), with the addition of seasonings such as olives, capers, lemon, lemon juice, kvass, salted or pickled mushrooms

Solyanka

(Source: “Culinary Dictionary” compiled by EdwART, 2008.)

Solyanka

Solyanka is a thick broth made with strong meat, fish and mushroom broth with a lot of spices. Dahl defined this dish as "hot stew with meat, cabbage, onion and cucumber." It combines the features of cabbage soup and rassolnik and was a truly folk food. Solyanka also refers to another dish - fried cabbage.

Glossary of culinary terms. 2012 .

See what “hodgepodge” is in other dictionaries:

Solyanka ... Wikipedia

SOLYANKA- (or selyanka) 1) Solyanka soups with a spicy taste are prepared in meat, fish or mushroom broth. To prepare meat hodgepodge, one or more types of the following meat products are used: beef, veal, lamb, pork, ham, meat... ... Concise Encyclopedia of Housekeeping

1. SOLYANKA, and; pl. genus. nok, dat. nkam; and. 1. Thick soup with finely chopped pieces of meat or fish and spicy seasonings. Team s. (also: colloquial; about a varied and heterogeneous mixture of something). 2. A dish of stewed cabbage with meat, fish or... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

A genus of herbs, dwarf shrubs or shrubs in the goosefoot family. Over 200 species, in Eurasia, Africa, mainly on saline soils. Forage, medicinal (lower blood pressure) plants; sand fixers... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

SOLYANKA, solyanka, female 1. A plant growing in salt marshes (bot.). 2. wrong. instead of a villager. Ushakov's explanatory dictionary. D.N. Ushakov. 1935 1940 … Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

SOLYANKA, and, female 1. Thick soup made from fish or meat with spicy seasonings. Team s. (also translated: the same as a prefabricated village; see village 1). 2. A dish of stewed cabbage with meat, fish or mushrooms. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu.... ... Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

- (Salsola), a genus of plants of the family. goosefoot. Annual herbs, shrubs, subshrubs and subshrubs. Flowers bisexual, often prototypical, sessile b. h. one at a time in the axils of the bracts or form a spike-shaped or paniculate inflorescence. From … Biological encyclopedic dictionary

Noun, number of synonyms: 14 cabbage (38) concert (25) food (183) ... Synonym dictionary

solyanka- and an outdated village... Dictionary of difficulties of pronunciation and stress in modern Russian language

(Source: United Dictionary of Culinary Terms)- Cut mushrooms, onions, parsley or celery into strips and simmer in oil, add broth and cook for 10-15 minutes. Cut off the skin of the pickled cucumbers and remove the seeds. Cut cucumbers and tomatoes into thin slices, along with capers or olives... ... Mushroom picker's encyclopedia

Books

• Solyanka. Walks through old Moscow, Alexey Mitrofanov, Solyanka Street - small, crooked, intimate. It seems to be the center, but the notorious “quiet center”, which still remains quiet for unknown reasons. Yes, there are cars driving there and even... Category: Biographies and Memoirs Publisher:

For example, is this also about hodgepodge?

Novgorod birch bark charter (1340-1360)

But when was Solyanka (Selyanka) first mentioned?

In written sources - inXVIIIcentury. And then, of course, it is not yet a soup (pottage), but a hot dish of cabbage, cucumbers, meat, poultry, fish, mushrooms or other products. The defining factor is the sour taste, which could be provided by brine and even vinegar. Here, for example, is a recipe from Vasily Levshin’s “Dictionary of Cooking, Henchman, Candidate and Distiller” (1795):

Even in the “Dictionary of the Russian Academy” of 1822, solyanka is not yet the first dish, but the “second serve”:

What about hodgepodge, like soup? It appears later - already in the 1830-40s. One of the first books with a similar recipe is “The Hand Book of a Russian Experienced Housewife” (1842) by Ekaterina Avdeeva. Here is a later edition of it from 1846, which already contains solyanka soup with cucumbers and saffron milk caps:

And already in the second halfXIXcenturies, the hodgepodge actually takes on the appearance we are familiar with. Intricate, fantasy versions appear - with sturgeon, capers, lemon, smoked meats. Each innkeeper showed his talent in it, attracting customers with unimaginable tastes and smells. Moreover, there was simply no “classic” recipe for this soup.

The next episode of the program “Second and Compote” on the Moscow-Doverie TV channel is dedicated to investigating the past of this dish. There are many expert participants talking about all sides of the matter. The presenter of the show, Irina Shikhman, and I talked about the past of this dish and prepared the very first - Levshinsky recipe for solyanka - with cabbage, quails soaked in kvass and ham.

Solyanka meat with an excursion into history

Ingredients:
Pork on the bone - 300-400 g.
Beef or lamb - 200-300 g.
Chicken breast or ham - 250-350 g.
Ham or other smoked meats - 100-150 g.
Beef or pork kidneys - 150-200 g.
Sausages or boiled sausage - 100-150 g.
Cabbage - 400-500 g.
Salted mushrooms - 100-150 g.
Pickled cucumbers - 2-3 large, + 1-2 cups of brine.
Tomatoes - 2 pcs.
Onion - 1 pc.
Olives - 20-30 pcs.
Lemon - 0.5-1 pcs.
Sour cream - 2-4 tablespoons.
Pepper and other spices - to taste.
Greens - dill, parsley, green onions - to taste.

Cooking method:
A lot of amazing things are published in various Western reference books. In one of them, for example, the chapter “Russian cuisine” begins with the statement “Russian cuisine practically does not exist.” Why, however, should we be surprised after the article in La Rousse: “Ivan IV is the Russian Tsar, nicknamed “Vasilievich” for his cruelty”? After the great Dumas himself told how, during a trip to Russia, he sat under a spreading cranberry tree and introduced a new idiom into the Russian language? It is enough to simply list the achievements of Russian cuisine that have surprised the world cuisine. For example, sour cream, which is called "Russian cream" or fast food restaurants - "Bistro". And Russia also taught the West to eat red and black caviar (and Shakespeare remembers this delicacy as an incredible curiosity, and that happened recently). Tolokno is the progenitor of sirials, Vologda butter, Kamchatka crabs, Russian kvass, about which Casanova wrote that Russian boyars are so incredibly rich that they give their servants a drink that would delight any aristocrat in France or Italy... And in general, Russian cold a snack table that the West did not know before contacts with Russia! And the pancakes, and the buckwheat porridge, grain by grain! The French, who grow buckwheat exclusively for livestock feed, tried to joke about this, but received a devastating answer: “You eat frogs yourself!” By the way, I don’t see anything bad in this either. And, in my opinion, the most important thing in Russian cuisine is Russian soups.
In the West, soup is so-so, just water. Americans don’t eat soup at all, they just drink ice water with whatever they get. In French and Italian restaurants you don’t even need to order soup - they bring it along with the second one, like mustard, and treat it the same way. There is not even a comparison with real Russian soups. Cabbage soup! Borsch! Okroshka! Pickle! Botvinya served in three plates - soup, red fish and crushed ice! And, of course, that soup, which in American eateries a la russe is incorrectly, but rightly called royal - meat hodgepodge!
The basis of this king of soups is two pickled cucumbers. God forbid pickled ones - there is no comparison! So that it’s pickled, with lactic acid, and leaves, oak, and blackcurrant, but I don’t even know how to say about horseradish leaves... Moderate pungency, hard, crunchy on the teeth... And a glass of the brine itself - on the pan. Solyanka is practically not salted - enough salt here.
By the way, I don’t want to get involved in a battle of the titans over the spelling of the name of this dish - “solyanka”, that is, salty food, or “selyanka”, that is, rural food? Too many authorities have categorically stated that you need to write only as they said, and all the rest are illiterate fools. I agree - it’s better to be an illiterate fool than a self-confident specialist; at least something can be explained to a fool. In Dala there is a solyanka - it is written “look selyanka”, and about selyanka it is written that it comes from the word “salt”. And in Ozhegov there is generally both. Or maybe it’s better to say vaguely: “sylyanka,” and you can guess how it’s spelled. By the way, quite a long time ago you should have put a small piece of meat, two hundred to three hundred grams, and always with a bone, to cook in a small saucepan. We'll get a piece of boiled meat and some broth. Another piece of meat should be grilled, sprinkled with pepper and coated with curry. No grill - a frying pan will do. We’ll also boil the chicken breast and use the broth from it too. We will very carefully clean and boil the kidney, and add salt to the broth. A piece of ham and sausage - that's all there too. Let's cut it all up, and while we're cutting it, let's think about how this set can be varied. I haven’t found such a set in any cookbook - this is my taste, and you find yours. But I don’t recommend hard smoked meats, a piece of boiled pork is probably ok, but not Ardennes ham, but that’s for the best - where you can get hard smoked Ardennes ham, this dry meat at Christmas ’45 even stifled Manstein’s offensive, to our common joy. You should also not use something that is very soft and of poor quality, such as liver sausage, brains or liver. But a boiled piece of tongue is not at all bad for the most luxurious options. But we’ll get by anyway, and that’s enough, especially since everything has already been cut up for this conversation.
We're done with the meat - let's cut the vegetables. Chop a quarter of a head of fresh cabbage finely and thinly. Let's cut up 150-200 grams of salted mushrooms (I emphasize - use pickled mushrooms only as a last resort!). Let's cut long-cooked cucumbers into cubes, two large tomatoes; if it's not in season, a large spoon of tomato paste will also do, and we'll also cut a large onion smaller. For this we will prepare a cup of black salted olives. We also cut half a lemon quite finely, including the peel. It would be great to add capers if anyone knows what they are. If you just heard from me that these are pickled buds of such a bush, be glad that it will be very tasty even without them, and don’t fool yourself with the fact that you also want capers. Let's prepare the spices: black and allspice - to taste and peas, what else you decide - think for yourself. Let's chop some greens: parsley, dill, if you like - cilantro and green onions. Still an incomplete glass of sour cream - immediately, not later, although, of course, you can season it later, like borscht. It looks like everything has been prepared.
Now let’s start collecting (and not cooking, that’s why it’s a team!) the hodgepodge itself. Pour cucumber brine into a saucepan and bring to a boil. You see - it’s also foam, like broth. Take it off! Now let’s pour some broth in there, since we were cooking the meat anyway. There is no broth - you can add water, but then admit where it managed to go. Now we throw everything that has been chopped, except for the greens (it goes straight into the plate), into the pan - and onto the fire! Let's heat this whole mixture for about 15 minutes, trying not to let it boil too much - the taste will coarse. All is ready! Ask everyone to come to the table. You can eat it right away, or you can wait a little - the real thing will even taste better.
Be sure to stir with a spoon before pouring! However, even without these efforts, every plate will contain EVERYTHING: a bunch of types of meat, and vegetables - boiled sour and acidified fresh ones, and sour cream, and herbs, and flavor, and on a red background, green cucumbers, yellow lemons, black olives and who knows what mushrooms will look like a good abstract painting. Quality control is very simple: if no one asked for more, the hodgepodge is no good. But this doesn’t happen, that’s just me, just in case. What, after all, can compare with real, hot, properly prepared hodgepodge? A lot - but when you eat hodgepodge, you forget about all this. And you forget about all the other solyanka - the ceremonial fish one, the exotic mushroom one, and the second dish, which is also called “selyanka” (or “solyanka”, who knows). We'll remember about them another time... and learn how to cook them too. But after we finish this one. A third plate will probably be too much, but I’ll add another ladle - it’s too hard to resist...