Painting dishes: the menu of royal meals as a work of art and a cultural monument
Lunch menu — it would seem that what could be more ordinary in a card with a simple list of dishes intended to be served, even if it is a dinner with the participation of top officials? However, in Russia of the 19th century, the creation of such leaflets was elevated to the rank of high art, important ideological attitudes were read in their design, and the best masters of their time were engaged in this. Izvestia presents a book of the week dedicated to the history and culture of one of the most unusual testimonies of that era.
Archive of the court deli.
The menu of meals of the Russian Imperial Court from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum, with essays and recipes.
St. Petersburg: Hermitage XXI Century Foundation, 2024, 205 p.
The menu of royal meals is a wonderful historical document. On the one hand, it is a clear evidence of the celebration that took place, an important event that will never happen again. On the other hand, it is a real monument of the era, containing a lot of unique information about the history of gastronomy, court routines, social structure, dominant artistic tastes, ideological attitudes, family ties and political alliances. An impressive collection of such documents is kept today in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum. Part of it has now been published in very good quality in the "Archive of the Court deli".
The history of the menu in our country dates back a little over 200 years. It is believed that the first painting of dishes familiar to us appeared in 1810 at one of the dinners of the diplomat Prince Alexander Kurakin. Contrary to the so—called French serving, which is generally accepted in Russia, when all dishes were put on the table at the same time, from appetizers to desserts, he ordered the dishes to be served one at a time. This made it possible to keep each dish fresh and maintain the required serving temperature, which ultimately made the meal more interesting and certainly more delicious. And in order for the guests to understand what awaits them, Kurakin ordered to put a small card with the names of the dishes next to each device. This innovation quickly caught on and, due to its convenience, gained incredible popularity in all strata of society, and the unusual serving began to be confidently called Russian.
The menu was also regularly used at court. At first, we were talking about fairly simple formats. But since the second half of the 19th century, meal cards have become authentic works of art. They were created by the best masters of their time — Nikolai Karazin, Adolphe Charlemagne, Albert Benoit, Ernst Lipgart, Victor and Apollinary Vasnetsov, Sergey Yaguzhinsky, Ivan Bilibin and many others. This genre had an extremely flexible visual aesthetic and quickly adapted to current artistic trends.
Of course, in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the lion's share of the menu was printed in the printing house. However, on special occasions they were painted manually. Technological progress also had an impact on the decor. For example, the production of a menu for one of the dinners on the occasion of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov was entrusted to the Artistic Photomechanical Workshop of Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. There, using the method of photocincography, they skillfully worked with color printing and brilliantly fulfilled the most complex orders.
Under Alexander III and Nicholas II, the Russian style finally became fashionable and, in general, a steady interest in national history and culture was formed. At court, almost exclusively Russian cuisine was served at dinners, and even domestic wines seriously displaced European ones. All these trends are reflected in the design of the menu. Russian Russian artists and graphic artists began to actively integrate into the composition the characteristic elements of icon painting, the national landscape, images of a generous Russian village, recognizable architectural monuments, famous scenes from Russian history, and royal regalia. In addition, the masters worked a lot with fonts, stylizing them to match the letters of ancient manuscripts and old printed books. It is important to note that the painting of the dishes itself was now made in Russian, and not in French, as before.
In other words, the menus of royal banquets and official meals in general served as a tool of soft power on a variety of occasions, vividly expressed important ideological attitudes and undoubtedly contributed to the establishment of the values of Russian history and culture inside and outside the country.
It is characteristic that elegantly painted dishes were treated very early on as valuable and sometimes self-sufficient evidence of an important event in the life of an individual, a specific organization or the whole country. The menus were collected, pasted into albums and hung on the wall in a special frame. Even the sovereigns did it. For example, they hung in the rooms of Alexander III in the Gatchina Palace.
In the book, all the menus are divided into thematic sections, depending on the occasion of a particular celebration. Coronation meals, dynastic marriages, diplomatic and high-society receptions, regimental and medal dinners, meals on a yacht and hunting are highlighted separately. And if the composition of the dishes sometimes did not change too radically, then the menu design, on the contrary, was strikingly different. Only one thing remained unchanged — the exceptionally artistic design.
In general, the main value of the book lies precisely in this — in every sense of the word — luxurious selection of menus from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum. Each painting is carefully attributed to the dishes. The publication also presents numerous tableware items, table decor elements, clothes, paintings, medals, drawings, photographs, various historical documents such as invoices, etc. The visual series is accompanied by detailed expert comments, historical essays, publications in the pre-revolutionary press, memoirs, diary entries, fragments of literary works and excerpts from cookbooks. All this allows us to get the necessary idea about the historical and cultural context, about the amazingly vibrant and diverse social environment in which the menus existed.
In addition, the inquisitive reader will find a lot of interesting household details in the book and learn, for example, why chairs on the beloved royal yacht Shtandart were sometimes placed with their backs to the table during lunch, how the court chefs technically solved the problem of serving the royal dinner, which was supposed to take exactly fifty minutes, and who got the gift candies., after the highest reception, left by the guests on the table.
The book is accompanied by a small appendix, which presents recipes adapted to modern realities of several dishes of pre-revolutionary high Russian cuisine with their step-by-step execution. Therefore, even for the most inexperienced culinary specialist, it will not be difficult to cook at home, for example, Russian soup, stuffed pulard, Guriev porridge, royal Easter, St. George's ice cream or Roman punch. It's a great way not only to please your friends with delicious food, but also to literally touch one of the most interesting and, unfortunately, much forgotten pages of Russian gastronomic culture today.
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