The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food: A Culinary Soviet Fairytale

"A kitchen bible so cherished, people lugged it with them even as they fled the state that published it" (von Bremzen, 2013, pp.114-115).

The cookbook The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food was first published in 1939 in Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. The book was published by the Institute of Nutrition at the Soviet Academy of Medical Science. Since then, it has been edited and re-published multiple times, most recently in 2025 as The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food: Soviet Recipes. The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food is a form of Soviet propaganda which relates to the propaganda metaphor Friendship of the People.

The different republics of the Soviet Union are represented in the book through national recipes and photographs. What makes these books so interesting is that the Soviet-era publications not only include recipes but also articles about nutrition, hygiene, how to clean a kitchen, how to set a table, and how to set up a menu. The cookbooks contain visual images, including photographs of factories and shops, working women, food abundance, kitchens and dining tables, as well as advertisements for manufactured food items.

Drawing on my wider doctoral project on Soviet propaganda, here I focus on multiple editions of The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food published in 1939, 1952, 1965 and 1984 and show how the message and the meaning of this 'kitchen bible' changed during this period. Because of strong censorship during the Soviet era, these cookbooks can be analysed as state propaganda. These large cookbooks have an average of 300-700 recipes and 400 pages each. Recipes include national dishes such as Ukrainian Borsh and Uzbek Plov, and other food products such as the Georgian Churchkhela, Jewish sweets, as well as Azerbaijani and Georgian tea.

In terms of propaganda, the editions have different areas of focus. The very first edition of 1939 focuses on the success of the Bolshevik Party in the food industry. This is supported by comparisons with Western capitalist countries, as well as with Tsarist Russia. The goal here seems to be a consolidation of Stalin's rule and a justification of the Great Purge, also called the Great Terror (1936-1938), during which millions were send sent to prison camps, under suspicion of being "enemies of the people". In addition, the book contains photographs of working women which emphasise their favourable working conditions under Bolshevik rule. Before every chapter of recipes, there are quotes which praise either the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin (in office 1922-1953), or the Bolshevik Party more generally. Most are taken from speeches and reports made by Anastas Mikoyan, the People's Commissar of the Food Industry, during Party meetings. In contrast to subsequent editions, the 1939 version has twenty-four extra advertisements at the end of the book.

After the Second World War there were various re-publications during the 1950s. The 1952, 1953 and 1954 editions each sold five hundred thousand copies. National representations through food and recipes had undergone some changes by this point. For example, Jewish sweets and instructions on how to prepare Kalmyk tea had disappeared. The authorities' attitudes changed towards many Soviet minorities, as some were labelled "enemies of the peoples", mostly due to accusations of collaboration with Nazi Germany. Some of those Kalmyks, who fled communism after the October Revolution and lived in Germany, fought for Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Thus, those Kalmyks who still lived in the Soviet Union were treated with distrust, accused of collaboration and deported to Siberia and Central Asia. Soviet Jews were targeted with accusations of disloyalty and treated with prejudice. Some of it developed out of the prejudice that many Soviet Jews were fleeing from the Western Soviet republics to the East instead of fighting in the Red Army during the Second World War. These political prejudices and sometimes even discrimination against some Soviet ethnic minorities are reflected in parts of Soviet propaganda and can be explored through the changes in these cookbooks.

The quotes from Anastas Mikoyan were also deleted, leaving only one quote by Stalin at the very beginning of the book: "The uniqueness of our revolution is that she gave to the nation not only freedom, but also materialistic benefits and the opportunity of a prosperous and cultural life." This fits the imagery of the book very well, which emphasizes abundance and materialism.

There are fewer photos of factories and working women, and more of fresh food in abundance, and of manufactured food items. While there were fewer shortages in the 1950s than in the 1940s, one could not say that Soviet citizens experienced abundance. Certain food items were only to be found in the republic's capitals, and food items like meat or chocolate were a luxury, hard to find and unaffordable for many citizens, as Anya von Bremzen noted, "The wrenching discrepancy between the abundance on the pages and its absence in shops made [book's] myth of plenty especially poignant" (von Bremzen 2013, p. 168) Thus, the 1950s Book of Tasty and Healthy Food seems very unrealistic and unattainable for an ordinary Soviet citizen and more like a fairytale, a book for children and adults to flip through to prompt fantasies about fancy dinner tables. However, for some people it was actually possible to achieve such a fairytale table, even if it was thirty-five years later. Anya von Bremzen, who immigrated to the USA in the 1970s, visited her grandmother Liza in Moscow in 1987, and wrote in her memoir:

I could still kick myself for not making a photo documentation of Babushka Liza's table. It was straight out of the 1952 Book of Tasty and Healthy Food. There were the vile, prestige cod liver conserves under gratings of hard-boiled eggs, the buttery smoked sturgeon balik, the Party-favored tongue, the inescapable tinned saira fish in tomato sauce - all arrayed on Stalinist baroque cut-crystalware my grandparents had scored as fiftieth wedding anniversary gifts. (2013, p. 291)

You can read more about the author and her memoir in an interview.

The renewed 1965 version sold 700,000 copies. This edition is very similar to the 1950s editions in many ways. However, in keeping with the de-Stalinization started by the First Secretary of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev (in office 1953 to 1964) in 1956, Stalin's quote has disappeared now. The 1960s edition also showcases new Soviet innovations of kitchen devices to lessen the burdens of the Soviet housewife. While some kitchen devices could be helpful, in general, a Soviet woman lived with the double burden of being simultaneously a working woman and a housewife. The book also advertises canteens, cafeterias, and restaurants for the whole family to go to, in order to "free the housewife from the kitchen, at least on festive days". While it was common for workers to eat lunch at their workplace canteens, it was rare for ordinary people to go to a restaurant. Restaurants were only in big cities and were expensive. Thus, people would typically cook festive meals at home. The theme of abundance is represented strongly through the photos, which are in some cases the same as those in 1952. It is notable that promoting healthy food and the health of Soviet citizens played a prominent role across all the editions.

While the 1984 edition is similar in content to the previous versions, the imagery and thus the atmosphere of the book is quite different. The book still praises the Communist Party, and its chapters still educate on food and health, analysing the impact of food on the human body. However, there are no photos of factories or working women anymore. According to Jukka Gronow and Sergey Zhuravlev, a reason for the lack of representation of working women is that the authorities realised that "[u]npaid domestic labor of millions of Soviet women was essentially the cheapest means of feeding the population" (2011, p. 37). At the same time there was an idealisation of "the family in the construction of socialism" (Gronow and Zhuravlev, 2001, p. 37). The photos depicting food in abundance are now smaller. A big change is also the appearance of Russian culture, presented through tableware and the Samovar. Before this edition, there was no direct representation of the Russian Republic, and while some Russian recipes were included, such as Ukha (fish soup) and Blini (pancakes), these were not labelled as Russian. During Brezhnev's rule (1964-1982) there was an interest in Slavic peasant lifestyle, which could be one reason for the depiction of Russian peasant tableware in this 1984 edition of The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food.

All these changes in The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food from the 1930s to the 1980s can be interpreted in the context of political changes, the authorities' attitude to ethnic minorities, to consumerism, materialism and health. Yet, people bought these cookbooks for themselves or as presents, and children would flip through them. Even when leaving the Soviet Union, or a post-Soviet country in the 1990s, people would take an edition of these cookbooks with them since it became "a kitchen bible so cherished, people lugged it with them even as they fled the State that published it" (von Bremzen, 2013, pp.114-115). Soviet books and movies, even with their propaganda, or maybe because of it, were a means for Soviet citizens to escape their everyday lives, which were often filled with struggles and (not always) greyness. Soviet books and movies were a means to dream the Soviet dream of socialist abundance. Among them, The Book of Healthy and Tasty Food acted as a Soviet culinary fairytale for ordinary citizens.