One of the most famous "historical" dishes is the "Guryev porridge", which is made from semolina on milk with the addition of nuts, creamy foams and dried fruits. For a long time this porridge was considered a traditional element of Russian cuisine. In fact, her recipe was created at the beginning of the XIX century by Zakhar Kuzmin, a serf chef of the major of the Orenburg Dragoon Regiment, Jurisovsky. And the name of porridge was received by the name of the Minister of Finance Count Guriev, who so much liked the new dish, that he bought the cook together with the whole family.
Sweet Victory
Did the emperor Napoleon, crushed by our glorious ancestors, know that attacking our country will give an occasion to show not only the strength and glory of the Russian troops, but also the skill of domestic cooks? Hardly, especially since the famous cake, named after the defeated Corsican, appeared a hundred years after the battle of Borodino. According to the official version, in 1912 Nicholas II decided to organize a grand banquet in Moscow on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of Kutuzov's victory. And for the sake of this event, a talented confectioner, whose name, alas, history has not preserved, came up with a recipe for a new cake and baked it in the form of a Bonaparte cocked hat. According to eyewitnesses, the cake was juicy and pompous. The original recipe for Napoleon was later lost. In many respects this was facilitated by the post-revolutionary situation. In the 1920s, due to a shortage of foodstuffs stolen by restaurant employees, and their desire to make the cake simpler and quicker, they turned the sublime and solemn culinary miracle into a flat, crumbling for any movements refreshments for podgulyavshih Nepmen. That is, modern recipe has been gained through theft and laziness!
Personally, I first learned the taste of "Napoleon" under a more prosaic name. My mother received this recipe from some Polina Sergeevna, so he was called "Polina Sergeevna's Cake" for a while. Then the cake got a different name. It happened by itself, because of the nuances of preparation. Cut out on the outline of a folded four-fold gilt plate of chopped dough baked in the oven and stacked on the table with a pile. Broken hunchbacked plates were smeared with cream and covered from above with a sheet of white A4 paper. The unusual thing was that a stool was used to create a press at home, for which a school bag filled with books was put on! Because of this, we nicknamed "Napoleon" a "cake from under portfolios".
Cut this masterpiece with guests on a starched tablecloth was impossible: an abundance of crumbs, creeping cream, uneven cut of a piece ... Then they began to cut the cake on cakes with a hot knife. The cake looked more neat and created the impression of an original confectioner's decision, "not in the format" of generally accepted equal faces. The cake had natural forms, and the sun-cream-colored crumbs created the effect of mobility and lightness. Immediately after cooking, the torus was ready for serving, as it did not require painstaking finishing. However, at times it was covered with powdered sugar - to create the effect of frost - or crushed hazelnut, which significantly influenced the taste.
