The Latlight Svyatki Calendar

The salad is named after Lucien Olivier, a chef of French or Belgian origin who ran the Hermitage restaurant in Moscow in the 1860s. His version was a luxury dish of hazel grouse, crayfish tails, capers, truffles and a secret Provençal dressing, and he took the exact recipe to his grave.

In Soviet times the salad was rebuilt from what a shop could sell: boiled sausage (or beef), potatoes, pickles, tinned peas and mayonnaise. A big bowl of it became as much a part of 31 December as the Kremlin chimes, and in many homes the New Year's Eve cooking starts with peeling the vegetables for Olivier.

Selyodka pod shuboy layers salted herring under potato, carrot, egg and beetroot, and the purple beetroot on top is the “fur coat”. It became a fixture of the Soviet New Year table in the 1960s and 70s, next to Olivier.

A popular story says a Moscow tavern owner invented it in 1918 and named it with an acronym of revolutionary slogans. It is a good tale, but there is no record of it. Salted herring with potatoes and beetroot, though, was everyday food all around the Baltic for centuries.

Kholodets (also called studen) is broth from pork knuckles and beef that sets into a jelly by itself, with no gelatine: the collagen in the bones and skin does the work. It was made in winter, after the animals were slaughtered, and left to set in the cold store or simply in the porch.

It belongs on the New Year and Christmas table in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, always served cold with sharp horseradish or mustard. The long, quiet simmer is the secret: a broth that boils hard turns cloudy.

Pelmeni come from the Urals and Siberia, and the name is usually traced to the Komi and Udmurt word pelnyan, “bread ear”, for the shape. Families made them by the hundred before winter, froze them outside and stored them in sacks, ready to cook in minutes on the road or in the cold months.

Making pelmeni together on the days before New Year is still a family job in many homes, and some cooks hide one with a peppercorn or a coin inside for luck.

Sbiten is honey brewed in hot water with spices and herbs. It was written about as early as the 12th century and was the everyday hot drink of Russian towns long before tea arrived from China in the 17th century.

Street sellers, the sbitenshchiki, carried it in copper urns wrapped in cloth to keep it hot and poured it for passers-by at fairs and markets, especially during the winter holidays. The samovar is said to have grown out of the sbiten urn.

Uzvar (Russian vzvar, “the brewed”) is a drink of dried fruit, best of all smoked pears and apples dried over the stove, which give it a deep, smoky taste. It is brewed a day ahead for Christmas Eve and stands on the table next to the kutia.

In Ukraine kutia and uzvar are called the “pair” of the Holy Supper. In some villages a cup of uzvar and a spoon of kutia were left out overnight for the souls of the family's ancestors.

On 6 January, Orthodox Christmas Eve, families fast all day until the first star appears in the sky, in memory of the Star of Bethlehem. The first dish of the evening is kutia: whole wheat, poppy seed and honey. The name of the evening, Sochelnik, comes from sochivo, the old word for this dish.

Wheat stands for life and rebirth, poppy for plenty and honey for a sweet year. Kutia is eaten three times in the season: on Christmas Eve, the rich kutia on Vasilyev Eve (13 January) and the “hungry” kutia before Epiphany.

Orthodox Christmas on 7 January ends the 40-day Nativity fast, so after the meatless Christmas Eve the Christmas table turns rich. A goose stuffed with sour Antonovka apples and roasted slowly in the Russian stove was the centrepiece in well-off homes.

The apples soak up the fat and keep the goose from tasting heavy. Antonovka is an old Russian winter apple, very sharp and aromatic; any sour cooking apple works.

Kulebyaka is a long closed pie in which several fillings are stacked in layers and kept apart by thin bliny. It was the pride of the 19th-century Russian table, served on holidays and name days.

In Gogol's Dead Souls (1842) the landowner Petukh orders a kulebyaka with a different filling in each corner: sturgeon cheeks and gristle in one, buckwheat, mushrooms and onion in another, milt and brains in a third. Fish kulebyaka was also the festive pie of the fast days before Christmas.

In Ukraine and Poland the Christmas Eve supper has twelve meatless dishes, one for each apostle, and it often begins with clear red borscht. It is a lenten soup with no meat or dairy: just beetroot, dried mushrooms and a sharp sweet-sour taste.

The tiny mushroom dumplings floating in it are called ushki, “little ears” (in Polish uszka). They take time to make, which is why families shape them together in the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

Kozuli are the Christmas gingerbread of the Pomors, the Russians of the White Sea coast around Arkhangelsk. They are made from rye and wheat flour with a dark burnt-sugar syrup and shaped as deer, goats, cows and birds, then painted with white icing.

The name comes from koza, “goat”, an old symbol of a rich harvest in the north. Kozuli were baked for Christmas, hung by the window and given to the carolers who went from house to house during Svyatki. Kept in a dry place, they last for months.

Oat kisel is the oldest Russian dessert: oats left to sour in water, then cooked until the liquid thickens and sets. The Primary Chronicle tells that in 997 the town of Belgorod, besieged by the Pechenegs and starving, was saved by a trick: the townspeople filled one well with kisel and another with honey and showed them to the enemy, who believed the earth itself fed the town and left.

On Christmas Eve, the head of the family would call Frost to come and eat kisel, so that he would leave the spring crops alone.

Holubtsi, “little doves”, are cabbage rolls. On Christmas Eve they are made without meat, with buckwheat or millet and dried forest mushrooms, because the Holy Supper is the last meal of the Nativity fast.

Ukrainian families aim for twelve dishes that evening, and holubtsi, varenyky, borscht, fish, beans, kutia and uzvar are usually among them. Small rolls, the size of a finger, are counted a sign of a skilled cook.

The evening of 13 January, the eve of the Old New Year, is Vasilyev vecher, the eve of Saint Basil. In folk belief Saint Basil looked after pigs, so on this generous evening a roast piglet stood at the centre of the table. An old saying goes: “A pig and a hog for Vasily's evening”.

It was also called the generous evening, Shchedry vecher: carolers went from house to house singing shchedrovki and were paid with pies and pork. A smaller cut, such as a pork shoulder, can be roasted the same way.

On the night of Old New Year, 13–14 January, families in Ukraine and Russia hide surprises in a few vareniki. A coin means money, a ring a wedding, salt tears, a peppercorn a fiery year, thread a long road, and a varenyk stuffed with only dough means an empty, easy year.

Svyatki was the time for fortune-telling, and the night before Vasily's day was thought to be one of the strongest. Warn your guests and bite slowly: a coin is lucky, a broken tooth is not.

Sochni (also sochniki) are open half-moon pastries of soft sour-cream dough folded over sweet curd cheese. They were baked for Svyatki, when groups of young people went from house to house singing kolyadki.

The old songs ask the house for treats outright: “Give us a sochen, give us a pie, or we'll take the cow by the horns!” Hosts who gave generously were promised a good year; mean ones were teased in the next verse.

Shchi, cabbage soup, is the oldest Russian soup, and sutochnye shchi, “day-old shchi”, is its winter best: sauerkraut soup that sat in the cooling Russian stove for a whole day until it became thick and deep. The saying goes: Shchi da kasha – pishcha nasha, “Shchi and kasha are our food”.

In winter peasants froze shchi in blocks and took it on the road, chopping off a piece to reheat. Many cooks say it tastes best on the third day.

Yeasted buckwheat bliny are older than the wheat kind and were once the everyday Russian pancake, grey, lacy and slightly sour. They were part of every big winter feast, from Christmas to Maslenitsa.

On Svyatki evenings girls told fortunes with bliny: a girl would take the first blin out to the street and give it to the first man she met, asking his name. That would be the name of her future husband.

18 January is Kreshchensky Sochelnik, Epiphany Eve, the last day of Svyatki. It is a strict fast day, and the evening meal is the third and last kutia of the season, called “hungry” or “lean” kutia because it has no butter, milk or eggs.

That evening the churches bless water, and the next day, at Epiphany, the bravest jump into a cross-shaped hole cut in the ice. With hungry kutia the winter holidays end, and the fortune-telling stops for another year.