Mud and Stars by Sara Wheeler

Author:Sara Wheeler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

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Besides smells, Gogol was interested in tastes, undercooked macaroni notwithstanding. According to one academic there are eighty-six kinds of food in Dead Souls. Chichikov, after all, was progressing across the countryside from dinner to dinner. Pastries overspill the plate they are served on; a turkey, bigger than a calf, is stuffed with eggs, rice, and liver; Chichikov eats a fig nestled at the bottom of a glass of milk. As I have said, Gogol burned the manuscript of the second volume. But not all of it. Some pages survived—the author must have left them on his desk or on the floor while he carried the bulk of the material to the ground-floor fireplace. The surviving pages of Dead Souls volume two include an ode to kulebyaka, the fish pie I had made at home. “ ‘Make a four-cornered kulebyaka,’ ” says the character Petukh, a glutton.

“In one corner put the cheeks and dried spine of a sturgeon, in another put some buckwheat, and some mushrooms and onion, and some soft fish roe, and brains, and something else as well…As for the underneath…see that it’s baked so that it’s quite, well not done to the point of crumbling but so that it will melt in the mouth like snow and not make any crunching sound.”

Petukh smacked his lips as he spoke.

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