Month: April 2020

Russian Докторская колбаса (Doctor’s sausage) had it’s origins in the United States.

The Bolsheviks mismanaged food production resulting in a widespread famine, so in 1936 Josef Stalin sent his food industry administrator to find out what the Americans were doing. Anastas Mikoyan found a lot of bologna.

Here is the exact recipe of Doktorskaya kolbasa that was used as industry standard from 1936 till 1974:

Quantities of ingredients to produce 100 kg of Doktorskaya kolbasa:

• • 25 kg of beef meat
  • 70 kg of semi-lean pork meat
  • 3 liters of milk
  • 2 liters of eggs
  • 2 kg of salt and 200 gr of sugar
  • 30 gr of cardamom
  • 50 gr of ascorbic acid (color stabilizer)

Manufacturing technology included dicing and mixing all ingredients in a homogenous paste, filling the tubes and later drying and boiling the sausage. Final product was incredibly tasty and quite healthy.

At least it was tasty and healthy enough for those who hadn’t starved to death during the famine, or slaughtered during Большой террор.

[Image found in here, story here.]