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[SEACRUISE IN USSR] Nekotorie retsepty inostrannoi kukhni [i.e. Some recipes for foreign cuisine]

Dubner, G.Ya., Gezha, A.A.

Item #2492

Moscow: Advertising Bureau of the Ministry of the Navy, 1969. 235 pp. 1 of 7100 copies. 19×13 cm.

First and only edition. Blue cloth binding. Very good condition.
This collection is intended for restaurant workers on passenger ships on cruise voyages with foreign tourists. The most popular foreign culinary manuals were used as primary sources. The
collection was compiled following consultations with master chef E. I. Sorochinsky. Guests of the USSR had their own parallel life, inaccessible to either the average person or the cultural elite. Here every cook and sailor knew how to “from mai hart” to please the minister, what “risotto”, “Chablis” and “malyboro” are, what a good chartreuse smells like, why 30 types of sauces are needed and how to prepare a martini – things that fellow citizens of sailors God forbid, they found out in the late 1990s, but certainly not in the 1960s.
Sailing abroad was a prestigious place of work: sailors not only carried forbidden things and currency, bypassing all the rules and prohibitions, but could also try all this splendor themselves: for sure, it was rare for guests to eat the entire dish for 10–15 people. Merchant, military, civil fleet, fishing fleet – few had the right to choose where to go, there were rotations. Sailors
abroad were under the close attention of the KGB: interviews, reporting, control. There are known cases when reading Pasternak could be deprived of the right to sail abroad, but this was the cherished dream of many men, ordinary sailors, without connections in high offices.

However, many of them agreed to do much more responsible work in exchange for the opportunity to eat food and travel freely. Foreign ships, especially those from tourist routes, were full of secret police officers and KGB personnel. We will never know which of the sailors, how many and what “orders” they carried out – who and how they scouted, knocked, leaked, prepared for recruitment and what intelligence they traded. But now we can at least find out what kind of food these quiet conversations were going on.

Worldcat doesn’t track this edition.

Price: $450.00