The chief national dish of the Russians is their " Shtshee," which, as far as the Russian name extends, neither moral nor political revolution has ever diiven from their table, or their hearts. It is seen on the board of the serf, and is constantly to be found at the tables of the rich, where it maintains its place amid the ragouts and pasties of France. One can hardly believe, when the Russian in a foreign land is heard to lament in a strain of pathetic eloquence the loss of his " shtshee," or when one hears in Riga, that the three mightiest gods of the Russian nation, are Tshin, Tshai, and Shtshee, (rank, tea, and cabbage-soup,) — one can scarcely believe, I say, that the beloved shtshee, is simply cabbage-soup, and neither more nor less — but so it is ; shtshee and shtshee again is the staff of life with all the people Uving between Kamtshatka and the Prussian frontier ; indeed, the bones, nerves, muscles, and flesh of the great majority of the Russians, may be looked upon in some sort as the solid essence of shtshee. Forty millions of human beings put up their daily prayer for their daily shtshee. It is the main subsistence of the mighty Russian army, consisting of a million of fighting men. Wherever the Russian comes as a settler, or as a conqueror, in the Baltic provinces, in Finland, in the lands of Tartary, at the foot of the Caucasian or the Altai mountains, be assured he will not fail to lay out a mighty cabbage-garden, wherewith to gladden his stomach with the much beloved shtshee.
The mode of preparing this remarkable dish varies greatly, and there are almost as many kinds of shtshee as of cabbages. Six or seven heatls of cabbage chopped up, half a pound of barley-meal, a quarter of a pound of butter, a handful of salt, and two pounds of mutton cut into small pieces, with a can or two of " Kwas," make an excellent shtshee. With the very poor, the butter and the meat are of course left out, which reduces the composition to the cabbage and the kwas. In the houses of the wealthy, on the contrary, many ingredients are added, and rules laid down to be closely observed ; " bouillon" is used instead of kwas, tlie meat is salted and pressed for six-and-thirty hours, and is put raw to the already boiling cabbage ; thick cream is added, and the whole mixture when complete is pronounced unsurpassably excellent.
The second dish in Importance is the " Posdnoi Shtshee" or " Fasting Shtshee," in which fish is used instead of meat, oil instead of butter, &c. Tlie lower classes eat it usually with a kind offish not larger than a sprats boiled skin and all to a pap, and to give it additional flavour, a portion of thick oil is added.
"Botvinya" is another right Russian dish, and nearly akin to shtshee. The latter is the staple of the Russian table the whole year through ; but " Botvinya" is only eaten in the summer. The ingredients, which are warm in the shtshee, are put cold into the botvinya, cold kwas. raw lierbs, red berries, chopped cucumbers, and lastly, salmon or some other fish cut mto square lumps. At the better tables, slices of lemon are sometimes added, toasted blackbread cut small, and to make It yet cooler small lumps of ice. This is the famous " Botviiiya," and if any one be at a loss to imagine how these can all agree with the " kwas" (thin beer) in which they swim about, let him by all means come to Russia, and eat of the dish for a few years, when no doubt he will find the ingredients all equally good and harmonious.
Perhaps the climate of Russia, where the summer is always excessively hot, as the winter always excessively cold, is the cause of the decided and strictly maintained distinctions between the summer and the winter cuisine. Every season has its own soup, its own poultry, its own pastry. To many, a positive date for their enjoyment may be given. Fruit comes in on the 8th of August, ice on Easter Sunday. Religion, which has much to do with the Russian table, prohibits the eating of certain articles of food before a certain day. Saturday's dishes differ throughout the whole country from Sunday's ; Friday and Wednesday, as fast-days, have other food prescribed than Monday and Thursday. It is all one, in Germany, what food is set before the guests at a funeral ; in Russia, it must be a kind of rice-soup, with plums and raisins. The cake broken over the head of the newly-born child, is of a particular kind. Weddings, betrothments, &c., have all their^ appointed dishes, and it must not be forgotten that these household regulations hold good for not less than 300,000 German square miles, and forty millions of people.