The Daily Dispatch: July 19, 1862., [Electronic resource]

---

---

A Russian dinner.

--The Russians claim to excel in the art of dining. An Englishman being at Moscow they gave him a specimen. At three P. M. was bathed, rubbed, kneaded, flogged all over with boughs, wrapped in linen, and served with quess and tampopo, which are cooling beverages to allay the heat of the bath and flogging. At five o'clock bread and butter, salt cucumbers, and native brandy and liquors, were served up to whet the appetite. At half-past 5 dinner, to the music of a large unseen organ; first, open pates of small trout; then, soap made of eelpouts and small sturgeon — this is so rich that it looks like melted gold, and costs not quite so much; then, chicken cutlets covered with a creamy paste of sliced apples, gherkins, plums, almonds, then, beef in slices, fat and lean, with an inconceivable and indescribable sauce; then artichokes stuffed with mushrooms which had been melted in butter; then, a dumpling made of all kinds of meat chopped up with eggs, onions, and honey, capers, potatoes, olives, peas, and lemons; then, a soup made of tea leaves, rye flour, and salt cucumbers, and frozen at that — a dish that sets a Russian epicure distracted, and no wonder; then five hundred other things, and all sorts of preserves and rich wines, topped off by yellow tea, worth nine dollars a pound, in a fumbler with no milk, but a slice of citron. Then singing girls and smoking.