In the footsteps of the Courland cake. Ten years later

How to cook Parmantier soup? What is Benya about Pomm? How are sour cabbage soup different from the lazy? Who prepared Marengo"s chickens? Why is porridge called Guryevskaya?
The reader will find the answers to these and dozens of such questions in the book of Elena Mushkina. The basis of the narrative is a lecture in the first practical school of boiled art, in which Zinaida Ivanovna Mushkin studied, the author’s grandmother, in 1894. The menu of dinners, everyday and festive. The main thing here is explanations for recipes: a storehouse of tips, information and disclosed secrets.
More than a hundred years ago, the school ceased to exist. But her traditions remained. The book tells about the courses "Young Mistress", about the culinary competitions held by the editors "Week", where the author worked. And, of course, about the legendary William Pokhlebkin - the author talked with him for almost two decades.
However, the book "in the wake of the Courland cake" is not only about boiled art. The author, the indigenous Muscovite, restores the life of several generations of his family of the late XIX - mid -20th centuries, writes about how the Muscovites lived, how they studied and worked, how they dressed and rested, how they received guests, what was spruce: wine from Leva, caviar From Eliseev, sweets from Abrikosov, milk from Chichkin, bread from Filippov ... and there were meetings - with V. Gilyarovsky, A. Goldenweiser, M. Tsvetaeva, B. Pasternak, Yu. Levitan