Śledź pod szubą, or what you only see at the table

Some dishes are for eating. Others, though they too vanish from the platters, first manage to tell the history of a nation and lay bare its fears, its sense of humour and the way it handles memory. Śledź pod szubą, herring under a fur coat, belongs to the second category. According to legend, it was born in Moscow in 1918, when a tavern keeper had had quite enough of politics conducted with fists, chairs and broken glass. His guests, excited by revolution and alcohol, would begin the evening with talk of social justice and end it by testing the durability of the furniture. The tavern keeper did not undertake to fix Russia. He dealt with what was within his reach. He ordered a dish that was filling, fatty and heavy, so that anger would slow down before it had time to turn into fisticuffs. The herring was covered with potatoes, carrots, beetroot and mayonnaise. The revolution got a featherbed. It was the first social reform carried out with a grater. History ascribes to the name "szuba" the sense of a political acronym. Later the ideology aired out of the kitchen, and what remained was the fur, because the Russian word "shuba" means a fur coat. And so the fish, a creature rather cold in manner, was dressed for winter better than many a citizen. Culinary historians point out that layered herring salads appeared earlier in Northern Europe. Cooking rarely respects borders, because a recipe is the perfect emigrant. It crosses cordons without papers, assimilates in a flash and, after a single generation, announces that it has been here forever. Eating together reveals more than the origin of the ingredients. At the table you can see who shares the last portion, who grabs the best piece, who talks, who listens, and who is only waiting for the moment to correct someone else's historical memory. The table is a small state. It has its borders, hierarchies, conflicts and acts of grace. Sometimes it unites people more effectively than a constitution; sometimes it reveals that civil war begins with the question of who ate the last egg. What is troubling is the ease with which political judgement turns into contempt for an entire culture. One can, and should, condemn Russian imperialism, violence and war. But there is no need to pretend that the Kremlin's decisions have annulled the literature, music, language, family customs and cuisine of millions of people. Russian culture endures. Not because we agree with Russian politics, but because culture is older than the current orders and more human than state propaganda. It lives in songs, jokes, memories and the dishes set on the table at holidays. Śledź pod szubą reminds us that history is made of layers. Beneath ideology there is often hunger. Beneath patriotic fervour, fear. Beneath national pride, a borrowing. Beneath the mayonnaise there is still a herring. Before we start removing cultures from the European menu, it is worth first sitting down together at the table. A person stops being an abstract enemy the moment he asks you to pass the platter of delicacies. Hunger breeds aggression. ## A legend without an official stamp The story of the 1918 tavern keeper is too beautiful to be well documented. It sounds like an anecdote told at the table after the third toast, not like an entry in an archive. There is nothing wrong with that. Cooking has always preferred legends to records, because a legend feeds the imagination, while a record merely tidies it. Something else is certain. Salads in which herring meets beetroot and potato were known in Scandinavia and around the Baltic. The Russian version turned this into architecture. It did not mix the ingredients but laid them in layers, one on top of another, and finally covered everything with the purple of grated beetroot. So the fur coat was made, visible from the far end of the table. ## A fur coat for every winter Śledź pod szubą became an obligatory dish of the New Year table in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. It outlived changes of regime, flag and anthem. There is a regularity here that political historians often overlook. Governments change, and the New Year's Eve platter stays the same. People abandon doctrines more easily than grandma's recipes. In Poland the same salad is sometimes called śledź pod pierzynką, herring under a featherbed. The fur coat was swapped for a duvet, as if the Polish table preferred to cover the fish with something homely rather than something for show. Changing a single word is enough for a dish to change its citizenship. The recipe, that perfect emigrant, has done its work again. ## The architecture of layers Śledź pod szubą is a salad you build, not mix. At the bottom, herring cut into cubes, often with onion. On top of it potatoes, then carrots, in many homes egg, and on the very top beetroot. Between every layer, mayonnaise, which serves as mortar. All the vegetables are boiled and grated. It is the grater, not the knife, that is the instrument of reform here. Finally the salad must stand in the cold for a few hours. The layers then soak into one another, the beetroot dyes the mayonnaise pink, and flavours that a moment ago lay separately begin to speak with one voice. Whoever cuts the szuba at once gets a heap of vegetables. Whoever waits gets a dish. ## The table as a small state Anyone who has ever served themselves szuba from a platter knows it cannot be done elegantly. The spoon goes through all the layers at once, and it is immediately clear who takes from the edge and who reaches for the middle, where the herring is thickest. This is what politics looks like at the scale of a table. Hierarchies reveal themselves in gestures, not declarations. That is why this salad is a good argument in the dispute about culture. One can condemn an empire and at the same time not pretend that its subjects have no holidays, songs and platters. Whoever separates a person from his state does not absolve the state. He simply does not lose sight of the person. Beneath the layer of propaganda, as beneath the layer of beetroot, there is still someone who wants you to pass him the platter. ## Recipe **Ingredients:** - herring fillets (salted or in brine) - onion - potatoes - carrots - beetroot - eggs (optional) - mayonnaise **Method:** 1. Boil the potatoes, carrots and beetroot in their skins until tender, and hard-boil the eggs. Cool everything and peel. 2. Dice the herring and chop the onion finely. 3. On a platter or in a mould, lay a layer of herring and onion and spread thinly with mayonnaise. 4. Grate the potatoes and lay them as the second layer, spread with mayonnaise. Do the same with the grated carrots and then, if using, the grated eggs. 5. Grate the beetroot over the top, level it and cover with a final layer of mayonnaise. 6. Refrigerate for a few hours so the layers can meld. Cut only just before serving.