Date: 8th October 1958
Venue: Midland Hotel
Sponsor: Prof. R.E. Peierls
Minutes of the Russian Dinner
A Russian dinner was held at the Midland Hotel, Birmingham, on the 8th October, 1958, generously sponsored by Professor R.E. Peierls, Professor of Mathematical Physics in the University of Birmingham who was the Club’s only guest on this occasion.
Professor A.P. Thomson presided. Thus for the first time the Buckland Club ate and drank under the eye of a President of the British Medical Association – and vice versa.
At the reception members laid a soundly Muscovite foundation. They were handed glasses of vodka and urged to gulp, not sip. As an incentive to this correct conduct, they were warned that the Russian wines to be served at the dinner were in short supply. To bed down with the vodka, there were smoked sturgeon, slices of cheese and smoked fillets of herring.
Welcoming Professor Peierls at the start of the dinner, the Chairman spoke of his immense intellectual distinction. The Club’s dinner was being sponsored by one of the great minds of the age.
Introducing the dinner, Professor Peierls explained that it would not be a Russian banquet, in quality or quantity. He had planned a typically middle-class Russian family meal for a somewhat festive occasion. “Middle-class”? Better say middle-income family – a family that could afford to fare well, if not sumptuously. However, he had scaled down the quantity
of food, since Russian appetites were more robust than ours. There was a Russian complaint that a goose was such an awkward bird – too much for one and not enough for two.
Zakuski, an assortment of hors d’oeuvres, were on the table, and more vodka was served with them. They included two caviares – the superior black, or grey, and the inferior red – salt herring steeped in black tea, smoked sturgeon, jellied flakes of sturgeon, sliced cheese and pickled cucumbers. The sponsor regretted that, for reasons of cost, the caviare could not be served, as in Russia, in big bowls.
Next came Ukha, a clear soup made from sturgeon, in which were Pirozhki, little pies rather like ravioli filled with fish. With this course was served the first Russian wine, Tsenandali – first not only in order of service but in Russian ranking. The sponsor explained that, in Communist Russia, wines are known by numbers, the white wines bearing the odd numbers and the red wines the even. All Russian vineyards are in the Caucasus. “No.1”, Tsenandali, resembles a dry – almost sour – vin ordinaire très ordinaire, some members seemed to think. But the Vice-chairman, who had gone to great pains, as a fellow traveller with the sponsor, in arranging the dinner, encouraged members to drink a second glass, since it was in better supply than the red wine to follow.
Mr. Clapham was intervening to describe the devious diplomatic channels through which it had been necessary to work in order to secure any Russian wine at all. Neither the Russian
Embassy in London, nor the British Embassy in Moscow, nor the Russian Trade Delegation having been able to organise the importation and the Club’s funds not permitting an appeal to the United Nations, it had been necessary to buy a limited supply, bottle by bottle, at the Russian Pavilion restaurant in the Brussels World Fair and fly it over here, a bottle at a time.
The main course and its accompaniments are named in Russian on the menu card, where they can be spelt out by the curious and pronounced by the audacious. They turned out to be cutlets formed of minced hare, not without garlic, served in a sauce of sour cream, with match-stick potatoes and a sweet cranberry-like jam.
The red wine, No.4, otherwise Mukuzani, was drunk with this course. Professor Peierls told of a Russian physicist at Geneva who, on being given Beaujolais for the first time, said it was like Mukuzani, but not so good. Sipping their scanty glass of No.4, members concluded that it is a wine that does not travel well or loses its character on straying this side of the Iron Curtain.
The sweet course was Kissel, which the sponsor described as a jelly that wasn’t quite one. This specimen was an unjellied jelly of raspberry and red currant.
The K-O-F-E turned out to be simply coffee, though the sponsor said some Russians take it with a slice of lemon, as in tea.
47 members attended.
A copy of the menu appears below:
Menu
Vodka
Zakuski
-o0o-
Tsenandali
Ukha
Pirozhki
Mukuzani
-o0o-
Kotletki iz Zaitsa
Kartoshka Solomka
Brusnika
-o0o-
Kissel
-o0o-
Kofe
A.P. Thomson
4.2.59