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The origin of the word dumplings. Vareniki: hearty homemade meal

Vareniki - classic dish Ukrainian cuisine, akin to dumplings, manti and sorcerers. Vareniki are pieces of pastry stuck together. various fillings inside, which can be varied with various additives, in classic dumplings a novelty is usually made from mashed potatoes.

Dumplings have the same symbolism as, for example, borscht - among Belarusians. However, their roots are far from Slavic. Initially, this dish was popular in Turkey, they made it from unleavened dough, making stuffing from meat or vegetables. Apparently, "Dush-Var", as the Turks called it, liked the ancestors of the Ukrainians, and renaming it to a more "related" one - dumplings, changing the recipe and filling, made it a classic for their people. So, for example, references to dumplings, as cult for Ukrainians, are found in the work of N.V. Gogol "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka"

Ingredients

For about 30 dumplings you will need:

potatoes - 1 kg. or 10 pieces of medium size.
onion - 2 pcs.
carrots - 2 pcs.
egg - 1 pc.
flour - 2 cups
milk - glass
2-3 tablespoons of salt
spices

Additional Ingredients

As additional ingredients there may be cherries, mushrooms, cottage cheese. And you can also experiment with the recipe by adding something "from yourself"

Cooking method

Thoroughly wash and clean the potatoes and put them to cook on the stove for about 20-30 minutes.
While the potatoes are cooking, let's fry them. Cut the carrots on a large grater. We cut the onion in half rings. Then heat the pan, add sunflower oil and send our carrots and onions to him. Simmer for 10 minutes. Night roast can also be done different ways by adding other vegetables, spices, etc.
After the potatoes are cooked, we crush them, and add the roast to it. We mix all the ingredients.
While the potatoes are cooling, let's make the dough. Take 2 cups of flour. Pour them into a deep container. Add one egg and a glass to the flour warm water With salt. Thoroughly mix the resulting ingredients. Our dough is ready. Of course you can buy ready dough, but then control over the quality of the dough and its taste is lost
We roll out small cakes from the dough and put a teaspoon of our filling on them, and we begin to sculpt our dumplings.
We send the resulting dumplings to cook for 10 minutes in boiling water.

At the time of cooking dumplings, you can add greens or sour cream to taste. Bon appetit!

Conclusion

In addition to potatoes, cherry jam or cottage cheese is often used as a filling, however, the main plus of dumplings is that the filling preserves everything beneficial features vegetables or fruits, as well as a large complex of vitamins. In addition, dumplings are really tasty dish, and practically everyone will like it. On the table, dumplings are served, as a rule, with sour cream or other types of sauces.

You can discuss this recipe, dish in a specially created topic of our forum. We will also be glad to any additions or corrections to the article.

Any minced meat, fish and vegetables, in any variations, carefully wrapped in the thinnest dough, For national cuisines several nations is traditional dish. Analogues of dumplings, such as khinkali, sorcerers, manti, jiao chi, have long been known to world culinary. So where did dumplings come from? Whose dish? The history of this amazing and much-loved product remains dark and unclear. Russian and Siberian cuisines have long recognized their dumplings.

So who invented dumplings? We have to admit that it originally has Chinese roots. Today, in this cuisine with its history of five millennia, there are analogues of almost every modern dish. The history of dumplings takes us to a very distant past. But only here to challenge the fact that it is in Russia that this dish has the greatest popularity, no one will undertake.

So dumplings - is it or not? The traditional idea of their history is as follows: they were brought into Russian cuisine by the peoples who once inhabited the Urals. Russians appeared in these parts in the XIV-XV centuries. And only as an idea, the theory is put forward that among the Komi, Permians, and other peoples in the European north-east of Russia, dumplings appeared from China and other ancient states of Asia.

Pelmeni: origin story

One thing is obvious, dumplings got to Russia by a difficult, even roundabout way. So who was the first to come up with this unusually tasty and so common dish, native to different national cuisines, peoples and countries? And not many culinary inventions are ready to boast of this. So what will the history of dumplings tell us?

Plato's treatise called "Feast" (385-380 BC) describes a dish that painfully resembles dumplings - pieces of meat wrapped in noodles. And the ancient Roman Petronius writes about him. And in the comedy of Aristophanes, a contemporary of Plato, it is said that at the feast the nobility regaled fried test bags stuffed with other products.

But still, culinary historians agree that it was China that “dumplings” Europe.

Russian history of dumplings

There are many versions of the appearance of dumplings on Russian soil. First of all, it is worth recalling that until the 1820s. there is no mention of dumplings in any Russian cookbook. Even the "Soldier's Kitchen" of 1786 never mentions them - the most popular cookbook S. Drukovtseva

Someone explains this by the fact that for too long dumplings in the Ural and Siberian cuisines were considered a regional dish, and they gained all-Russian fame only in the 19th century.

And some argue that this cuisine was not particularly recognized by the Great Russians from the center of Russia.

Artifacts about dumplings

A well-known author of culinary articles of that time, Ekaterina Avdeeva, wrote in 1837 about “dumplings” as a word that was used in Siberia. That in Russia they are called ears, what is made from pasta dough with minced beef, also with mushrooms or fish, are frozen and they turn into pebbles. In this form, they are taken on the road, and as soon as they are lowered into boiling water, the food is ready and very tasty.

If we turn to documents of an earlier time, it is worth familiarizing ourselves with a journal review of 1830 of the common words of the inhabitants of the Orenburg province, where the author has to compare them with Ukrainian dumplings to describe dumplings. He says that dumplings (pelyany or permeni) look like tiny boiled pies, “a kind of Little Russian dumplings, only not with cheese, but with beef”, which are the favorite food for Permians.

The history of dumplings tells that in 1817 it was still a real exotic. This is how his collegiate adviser N. Semivskiy described it: “Dumplings, small pies with minced meat or stuffing, prepared following the example of the Chinese. They are good especially in winter, they must be boiled in water. A very good travel soup is made from dumplings. They are eaten boiled with red vinegar."

Although there are other documents. "Painting for the royal dishes" (1610-1613) contains a mention of "mantu with lamb". And Karamzin, in stories about food that was on the table of Tsar Fedor Ioannovich, mentions manti.

Four nations that fight for dumplings

Disputes and disagreements about dumplings - whose National dish have not subsided to this day.

Finno-Ugric peoples living in the Cis-Urals (Udmurts, Komi-Permyaks).

The most important proof that dumplings should be considered their invention is the very word “dumplings” for them. It translates as "ear-bread". Yes, and the dumpling looks like an ear. It is perfectly stored in the winter in an ordinary bag, if left in the cold, in a cellar or hallway. Yes, and cooking dumplings is easy. And for the filling, it was possible to take the meat of sacrificial animals, since the inhabitants of the Urals have enough rituals of animal sacrifice.

Chinese.

Although the word "dumpling" is Finno-Ugric, but this food is exclusively Chinese, moreover, a festive New Year's one. Jiaoqi in China is prepared with a wide variety of fillings that the Chinese consider edible. And their meat is not the most important thing. And in shape, jiaoci are similar to a coin, they even have a hole in the middle, a real symbol of prosperity, a wish for health and wealth.

Siberians.

These are convinced that only in Siberia the most generous dumplings are the original food of the Siberian. The thinnest layer of dough and filling, to which finely crushed ice is added - and here you have huge amounts of the product after the cattle have been slaughtered or the hunt has been successful. Yes, and you can store all the time that frosts are kept.

Minced meat, which is wrapped in dough cakes, is made only from minced meat, salt ... and ice. And no onions and garlic, as is customary in the European part of Russia. Only, yielding to modern taste, pepper is added.

Mongols.

It was they who, having galloped all over Southern Siberia and the Urals on cavalry, without leaving China alone for a long time, tied all these peoples together and adopted the recipe. For nomadic pastoralists, they serve as an excellent semi-finished product, which is a real salvation on a long hike. The Mongols will be very surprised if someone, when asked about dumplings - whose national dish, will claim that it is not theirs.

So who is the author?

So the question of who invented dumplings is both difficult and simple to answer. The idea of wrapping meat in dough is so obvious that anyone could come up with: the Chinese in China, the Russians in Rus', the Greeks in Greece, the Mongols in Mongolia, and the Germans in Germany. By the way, the latter are convinced that the authors of dumplings are Protestant monks. In besieged fortresses, they allowed people to survive.

National features

To cook dumplings today, it is enough to buy finished semi-finished product in the store and already at home to cook, steam, fry. But the recipe for delicious dumplings should be in the arsenal of every housewife.

How to make dumplings

Rarely today there is a house where dumplings are made like in the old days, almost festively and in a family way. When the head of the family cuts minced meat in a meat grinder, the hostess prepares the dough and then all the household members put the stuffing into circles of dough, squeezed out with spoons, cups or glasses. The dumplings curled up and stuck together. Sometimes the rolled dough is cut into even squares. In this way, you do without scraps and save time.

By the way, for true craftsmen, any cutting is completely unacceptable. No one will convince them that only from rolled out pieces of dough separately for each dumpling can you make real dumplings. And the smaller they are, the tastier.

It seems to be the simplest dish. But over the entire period of fame and popularity of dumplings in Russia, many various recipes their preparation. It has long been known that the classics - Siberian dumplings - can also be prepared in different ways.

All the differences are, first of all, in the filling: it can be beef with a small addition of fat or fatter pork and, of course, onions and crushed ice. So the filling does not stick to the hands when sculpting, and the dumplings remain juicy.

For dumplings, the shape remains very important. After all, she was the one who gave it its name. And what should it be? Any housewife will say that it is necessary to mold a dumpling like a plump crescent moon and easily, without pulling too hard, connect the ends.

Siberian dumplings

To prepare the dough for them, only flour with water is taken. That's right, no salt. Flour is poured in a slide, and almost ice water is poured into the recess in it. The dough is kneaded stiffly, easily lagging behind the hands. Now it should lie down for half an hour, covered with a damp towel.

Three types of meat are used: beef, pork (it is selected with lard), sukhatin. And again without salt, without onions and other spices. The mince is finely chopped.

But dressings for dumplings can be any: plain sour cream, ghee, carrots, onions, garlic, etc.

Chinese dumplings

The dough is traditionally kneaded with flour and water. But the filling is chosen very different: meat, vegetables, eggs with leeks, meat with vegetables. The most famous dumplings in China are “lotus on the water”, refers to the most complex type, molded by hand with 13 holes, or “empress mother”, stuffed with chicken and so small that they resemble pearls.

Ural dumplings

It is much more correct in this case, in fact, to talk about dumplings. In Rus', two words were mixed up - “dumplings” and “Permyani” (Permyak food) - and dumplings, so loved by many, have survived to this day. And for those who live in the Urals, they have been a ritual dish for a very long time, a real symbol of livestock sacrifice. By the way, a partridge egg or other game could be added to the dough.

Ural dumplings - a dish that is prepared as follows. The meat in the filling is formed in a strict proportion: beef - 45%, lamb - 35%, pork - 20%. Pepper was also added to the minced meat and a large number of Luke. So inside each dumpling accumulated delicious broth. Minced meat was certainly prepared exclusively in a wooden trough with the help of a cut. The dumplings themselves were steamed, it was not customary to boil them in water or broth.

When this recipe for delicious dumplings was adopted by the Tatars, their dish was exclusively lamb. The Russians, on the other hand, came up with the idea of mixing beef and pork in equal proportions.

How dumplings are cooked

To cook dumplings, you need to boil water, salt it, add bay leaves and onions there, and then throw the dumplings themselves.

But it's much better if meat broth, cooked on the bone. If you do not cook in it, then simply dip the already cooked dumplings into it. Their taste will become much better and richer.

About whether dumplings - or not, you can argue for a long time. How many people - so many opinions. But the fact that dumplings for a Russian person is a real holiday is undeniable. If they are molded in the family circle, this is a double holiday. Because such a product will certainly keep the warmth of the hands and hearts that prepared them. It has a very special taste that cannot be compared with a semi-finished product from a nearby store.

Whatever people consider this dish to be theirs, they will preserve and protect their own for a long time. old recipes, create new ones, and the next generations will eat and praise such delicious dumplings. The origin story was told to the reader in the article. And now, who has an appetite, go cook dumplings!

Know that this is the same cultural heritage of the Ukrainian people as language, literature, art.

As they say: "Dumplings, dumplings, God's praisers, not everyone cooks them, but everyone praises them."

And you think, for the winter holidays, as always, they will be on our table, which we all know about, not by chance: from the constituent parts to cooking. But in reality, few people know everything about them. Even me! Let's talk about the history of dumplings!

For you to know: the name of vareniki is common Ukrainian, but it is Western Ukrainian (Galician). It is believed that dumplings existed in pagan times and even meant something. Their first consumption is attributed to the ancient Trypillians, and this, God knows, what millennium BC. Here in them they symbolized the month and fertility. They were molded from: rye, wheat, buckwheat, barley flour; stuffed with: potatoes, cheese, cabbage, sheep cheese (in the Carpathians), millet porridge or crushed beans (Polesie), buckwheat porridge with cheese (Volyn), boiled beans, sometimes grated with viburnum (Poltava region).

Typical for all regions of Ukraine, there are dumplings with cherries and cheese. And there are from lean fillings: urda (“gurda”, “vurda”) was common, which was prepared in this way: slightly roasted hemp (rarely flaxseed) seeds were crushed and ground in makitra, poured with boiling water, stirred, filtered and put on fire. The yellowish foam that formed during boiling was removed and used as a filling. Instead of seeds, they often took makukha (remains after squeezing oil from seeds). And there were also dumplings with sand! But the fern filling remains an unusual filling.

It was believed that the process of kneading dough for dumplings was a symbol of the process of creating the universe, its structure. Therefore, it was the woman who created this universe, as the mother and progenitor of the human race. Themselves for dumplings in an interesting old-fashioned way - clapping: palm on palm and also with the help of a rolling pin - swinging or splashing loaves on women's hips. In our time food industry such methods have not been resorted to for a long time, oddly enough!

And now I’ll tell you about fun and fortune-telling with dumplings that were on the territory of Ukraine: Ukrainian women could make dumplings and put a piece of paper with any male name, not necessarily familiar guys, into them. It was necessary to carefully monitor when the water boils: with what name the dumpling will float to the surface first - that will be the name of the future husband; or it happened that a girl put her dumpling in front of a cat or a dog, which was a kind of oracle of fate. The animal, choosing a certain one, indicated primacy in married people. But, if the cat bites someone’s dumpling and leaves it, then this meant that both the betrothed and the girl will do this in life, but if the cat takes a certain dumpling far away from them, then this meant that the matchmakers would come from afar and the marriage will be far from his father's house.

This is the story of the dumplings we make.

In the form of boiled products from unleavened dough stuffed with minced meat, vegetables, mushrooms, fruits, cottage cheese, and berries.

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Notes

Literature

// Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg. , 1890-1907.
dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enc_pohlebkin/1349

There are or external references in this article or section, but the sources of individual statements remain unclear due to the lack of footnotes.

Statements not , may be questioned and removed. You can improve the article by adding more precise references to the sources.

An excerpt characterizing Vareniki

The squadron, where Rostov served, who had just managed to get on his horses, was stopped facing the enemy. Again, as on the Ensky bridge, there was no one between the squadron and the enemy, and between them, separating them, lay the same terrible line of uncertainty and fear, as it were, a line separating the living from the dead. All people felt this line, and the question of whether or not they would cross the line and how they would cross the line worried them.
A colonel rode up to the front, angrily answered something to the questions of the officers, and, like a man desperately insisting on his own, gave some kind of order. No one said anything definitive, but rumors of an attack swept through the squadron. There was a command to build, then sabers screeched out of their scabbards. But still no one moved. The troops of the left flank, both the infantry and the hussars, felt that the authorities themselves did not know what to do, and the indecision of the commanders was communicated to the troops.
“Hurry, hurry,” thought Rostov, feeling that at last the time had come to taste the pleasure of the attack, about which he had heard so much from his comrades hussars.
- With God, g "fuck," Denisov's voice sounded, - g "ysyo, magician" sh!
In the front row, the croups of horses swayed. Grachik pulled the reins and set off on his own.
On the right, Rostov saw the first ranks of his hussars, and even further ahead he could see a dark stripe, which he could not see, but considered the enemy. Shots were heard, but in the distance.
- Add lynx! - a command was heard, and Rostov felt how he was giving in backwards, interrupting his Grachik at a gallop.
He guessed his movements ahead, and he became more and more cheerful. He noticed a lone tree ahead. This tree was at first in front, in the middle of that line that seemed so terrible. And so they crossed this line, and not only was there nothing terrible, but it became more and more cheerful and lively. "Oh, how I will cut him," thought Rostov, clutching the hilt of the saber in his hand.
– Oh oh oh ah ah!! - voices boomed. "Well, now whoever gets caught," thought Rostov, pressing Grachik's spurs, and, overtaking the others, let him go all over the quarry. The enemy was already visible ahead. Suddenly, like a wide broom, something lashed the squadron. Rostov raised his saber, preparing to cut, but at that time the soldier Nikitenko, galloping ahead, separated from him, and Rostov felt, as in a dream, that he continued to rush forward with unnatural speed and at the same time remained in place. Behind him, the familiar hussar Bandarchuk galloped up at him and looked angrily. Bandarchuk's horse shied away, and he galloped past.
"What is this? am I not moving? “I fell, I was killed ...” Rostov asked and answered in an instant. He was already alone in the middle of the field. Instead of moving horses and hussar backs, he saw around him motionless earth and stubble. Warm blood was under him. "No, I am wounded and the horse is killed." Rook got up on his front legs, but fell, crushing his rider's leg. Blood was flowing from the horse's head. The horse struggled and could not get up. Rostov wanted to get up and fell too: the cart caught on the saddle. Where were ours, where were the French - he did not know. Nobody was around.
He freed his leg and stood up. “Where, on what side was now that line that so sharply separated the two troops?” he asked himself and could not answer. “Has something bad happened to me? Are there such cases, and what should be done in such cases? he asked himself, getting up; and at that time he felt that something superfluous was hanging on his left numb hand. Her brush was like someone else's. He looked at his hand, searching in vain for blood. “Well, here are the people,” he thought happily, seeing several people running towards him. “They will help me!” Ahead of these people ran one in a strange shako and in a blue overcoat, black, tanned, with a hooked nose. Two more and many more fled behind. One of them said something strange, non-Russian. Between the rear of the same people, in the same shakos, stood one Russian hussar. He was held by the hands; his horse was kept behind him.
“That's right, our prisoner ... Yes. Will they take me too? What kind of people are these? Rostov kept thinking, not believing his eyes. "Are they French?" He looked at the approaching French, and despite the fact that in a second he galloped only to overtake these Frenchmen and cut them down, their proximity now seemed to him so terrible that he could not believe his eyes. "Who are they? Why are they running? Really to me? Are they running towards me? And for what? Kill me? Me, whom everyone loves so much? - He remembered the love for him of his mother, family, friends, and the intention of the enemies to kill him seemed impossible. "Or maybe - and kill!" He stood for more than ten seconds, not moving from his place and not understanding his position. The hump-nosed Frenchman in front ran so close that you could already see the expression on his face. And the heated, alien physiognomy of this man, who, with a bayonet in excess, holding his breath, easily ran up to him, frightened Rostov. He grabbed a pistol and, instead of firing it, threw it at the Frenchman and ran towards the bushes with all his might. Not with that feeling of doubt and struggle with which he went to the Ensky bridge, he fled, but with the feeling of a hare running away from dogs. One inseparable feeling of fear for his young, happy life dominated his entire being. Quickly jumping over the fences, with the swiftness with which he ran, playing burners, he flew across the field, occasionally turning his pale, kind, young face, and a chill of horror ran down his back. "No, it's better not to look," he thought, but, running up to the bushes, he looked back again. The French lagged behind, and even at the moment he looked back, the one in front had just changed his trot to a step and, turning around, was shouting something loudly to his rear comrade. Rostov stopped. "Something's wrong," he thought, "it can't be that they want to kill me." Meanwhile, his left hand was so heavy, as if a two-pound weight was hung from it. He couldn't run any further. The Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov closed his eyes and bent down. One, another bullet flew, buzzing, past him. He gathered the last of his strength, took his left hand into his right and ran to the bushes. There were Russian arrows in the bushes.

Ukrainian people cooking has long been known boiled pies With different stuffing, which are named as vareniki. According to old legends, this is a primordially Slavic dish, but in fact, the recipe for these fabulous boiled pies was borrowed from the Turks, who called them “dush-var”.

This Turkish dish is more like our dumplings, but the Ukrainians liked them so much that, having slightly altered the recipe for the dish, they became one of the main “guests” on our tables. Especially often they were prepared for holidays or on Sundays, and even prepared as a gift for a pregnant woman, and for a wedding.

As for the “dush-var”, they are made from dough, and the main filling is meat. But the Ukrainian people are so versatile that several dozens came out of one dish. After all, you and I can list endlessly what happens to vareniki.

About the name "vareniki"

Origin of the name "vareniki" comes from the word "cook". But this dish also had another name - “dumplings with sand”, which means hearty dumplings. They never have sweet stuffing, but only fried lard with flour. Such dumplings are popular in Chernihiv and Poltava regions.

"Sweet dumplings" also got its name from hearty stuffing: cabbage, crushed peas, beans. They have their popularity in Kharkov.

IN regions of western Ukraine, dumplings are called "pies". They were boiled in boiling water, then they were taken out with a ladle, put in a makitra and poured with vegetable or vegetable fry. butter, as well as from lard with onions. They let it brew for ten minutes and served it on the table.

There are also "dumplings with a surprise", often they are prepared for the New Year and Christmas holidays, when one could guess.

All unmarried girls, as well as those who did not have a family life, cooked dumplings on the holy evening, together with a married woman, and while they were talking about the upcoming fortune-telling, this woman added hot pepper to one of the dumplings, and which of the girls I came across such a dumpling, this year, according to the prediction, she should get married.

Varenyky entered the Slavic culture to such an extent that a monument to dumplings. The author is the honored sculptor and artist of Ukraine Ivan Fizer.