Borschtich, Blini, Tschi, Piroggi, Vodka (1799)(A GEM!!)

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VIEW OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE,
DURING THE REIGN OF CATHARINE THE SECOND,
AND TO THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
by William Tooke
in three volumes
Third Edition
Dublin: P. Wogan
1801

   OED cites from this book many, many times, and dates it as 1799 (first edition?).
   How can I antedate the OED on so many important food terms in a book that a reader _already went through_?  Were these food cites thrown away?
   Were they never recorded at all????


Pg. 34:
   The preparation for their victuals is so simple, that foreigners do not easily bring themselves to relish it, but adhere to the customary way of dressing their food in their own countries.  Fresh meats with watery sauce, or baked pasties(f) of common crust, with mince-meat, or whole fish, fish with water and salt, without other sauce, cabbage and roots chopped together, (g) cabbage-soup, which is never omitted, meagre fish and flesh soups, cool drinks (h), quas, with eggs, minced-meat, and leeks, pancakes (i), soup of ground hemp, and linseed, millet-soup and grits, turned milk (j) with meal and sour milk, &c. almost all seasoned with onions, leeks, garlic, and sometimes pimento, are their ordinary dishes.  Where Tartars dwell, they use likewise a few wild roots, especially dog-tooth (k), lily-roots (l), and others.  For the evening repast are served up nuts, orchard-fruits, and the several wild fruits produced by the country round; blackberries, strawberries, sloes, &c.  At an entertainment of their friends and acquaintance they provide a surprising variety of these kinds of dishes. The (Pg. 35--ed.)
f Piroggi.
g Tschi.
h Badvina.
i Blini.
j Kissel.
k Kandik; erythron dens canis LINN AE I.
l Sarana; lilion martagon LINN.

Pg. 35:
   lower sort feed very poorly at all times, but particularly in the fasts.  In large towns, the table in good houses is becoming more luxurious and fashionable from day to day.
   The most common domestic drink is quas, a liquor prepared from pollard, meal, and bread, or from meal and malt, by an acid fermentation.  It is cooling and well-tasted.  Corn-spirits* and rectified corn-spirits**, supply the place of wine.  In good houses, fruit-wines, rasberry-wine***, cherry-wine****, bilberry-wine*****, &c. from the juices of those fruits, mead and brandy made by fermentation, which are pleasant enough to the palate.  Brown beer and metheglin are more in use than braga or white cloudy beer brewed from malted millet or wheat, with hops, and busa or white unhopped wheat beer.  Tea is in very general use.  The true russian tea is a decoction of honey, water, and spanish pepper, and drank warm.  It tastes well and cheers the stomach.  Many even of the common people drink chinese tea, sweetened with honey or sugar.  Persons of distinction keep their tables supplied with meats and drinks entirely in the foreign taste, hire french cooks, &c. as in other countries.  Tobacco is but little used.
* Vina.
** Vodka.
*** Malinoska.
**** Vishnoska.
***** Tshernoska.

Pg. 41:
   ...piroggees, cabbage-soup, cucumbers, bread, and quas....

Pg. 60:
   Happily the diet of the polish boors, on the whole, is the most harmless, because the most simple that can be conceived.  Every kind of animal food, if not totally unknown to them, is at least very seldom put upon their homely board.  Various sort of grits, pulse, and potatoes, are their common nourishment.  Sour cabbage, sour turneps, sour crout, and other antiseptics, they eat in incredible quantities.  One species of national food deserves particular notice, which is called "Barszez."  This is a soup, in which barley or grits is boiled with red turneps or cabbage made sour, and which affords a ounce well-tasted and wholesome food.  It is above all things to this mess that the Pole is indebted for being less liable to the scurvy, from the foul air that he breathes in his narrow strongly heated room than he otherwise would be.  And still less would he feel it if intemperance in drinking were not so much greater among the vulgar than in any other country.*

* The account which de la Fontaine gives in these lines of the way of living and diet of the Poles, is likewise literally adapted to the russian nation; potatoes only excepted, which in Russia are little cultivated and eaten.  The "Borschtsch," as it is called in russ, is, properly speaking, peculiar to the Ukraine; but is also seen in all parts of Russia, and even on the tables of the foreigners in St. Petersburg, being deemed a wholesome, well-tasted soup.