The book is a translation and adaptation of Mykola Markevych’s 1860 book and is the first English translation of 19th-century Ukrainian recipes.
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My name is Roman, and I am from Kyiv. I am a translator with a Master’s degree in English. I worked as a journalist for the First National TV Channel, as a press secretary for an automotive company, and as a translator. Ten years ago, I moved from Ukraine to Vietnam, where I taught at schools and at a university in Ho Chi Minh City. I currently work in South America. The book is a translation and adaptation of Mykola Markevych’s 1860 book and is the first English translation of 19th-century Ukrainian recipes. It contains 104 dishes and beverages. The first edition of the book will be published in mid-October, followed by two more editions over the next two months. There will be three editions in total, each devoted to a different category of dishes.
Why I Decided to Create This Book
I love cooking. And sometimes I run out of ideas.
I have always been interested in preparing a dish with a name, a history, and a character — not simply potatoes with a cutlet, but saltimbocca alla romana.
Not just fried chicken, but avgolemono youvarlakia.
And one day I thought: Does Ukrainian cuisine exist beyond borscht and varenyky?
I started Googling, and this led me to the work of Mykola Markevych. I was surprised to discover that the book was freely available — anyone could download it. It was titled Customs, Beliefs, Cuisine and Beverages of the Little Russians, and the recipes were only a small section of the book — twenty-six pages out of 183.
That day was strange and fascinating at the same time. It felt extraordinary to hold the only surviving old edition of such an important book in my hands. I turned the pages, and it seemed to me that some kind of light was coming from them.
But the recipes… In the modern sense, you could hardly even call them recipes. They were more like a brief answer to the question, “So, how did you cook it?” — take a chicken, coat it in breadcrumbs, and so on. No measurements, no cooking times. If you weren't an experienced cook who had watched your grandmother prepare the dish, your chances of getting it right were close to zero.
And then there was the language. The book was written in the language of the empire that, then as now, suppressed everything Ukrainian. As a result, the Ukrainian ethnographer of Cossack descent, Mykola Markevych, was forced to write in Russian and to call his own people “Little Russians” — otherwise, the book might never have been published at all.
And Chubynsky, the author of the Ukrainian national anthem and the source of many of the historical details in this book, was exiled to Arkhangelsk for his “harmful” activities and lived only forty-four years.
That is why this book was such an extraordinary discovery. Both for me and for the Ukrainians who joined me in preparing these dishes, the challenge was to turn it into a diamond — a guide to the ancient Ukrainian cuisine. But at the time, I didn't yet know that this was what I was doing.
At first, as a translator by training, I began translating the culinary section of the book into Ukrainian so that the material would be easier to work with. Then I consulted my mother, friends, acquaintances, and professional cooks — as well as artificial intelligence. We calculated cooking times and measurements and considered what these dishes might look like today, in a modern kitchen.
But even after translating and adapting the recipes, I couldn't be sure that everything would actually work as intended.
I didn't want to reduce the number of recipes — there were more than a hundred — although cooking them all myself would have taken at least a year.
I asked my parents, who still live in Kyiv, for help. They kept putting it off and eventually admitted honestly: when *Shahed* drones are buzzing overhead and air-raid sirens are sounding, there is neither the mood nor the inspiration for something like this — only grayness and apathy.
So I organized the material into sections myself and reached out to people who hold on to everything Ukrainian despite being thousands of miles from home.
And I think it was only then — after receiving the first warm responses and seeing the enthusiasm with which people joined the project — that I understood how important this work was.
I began researching the cuisine of that era more deeply: the ingredients, dishes, and cooking methods, using historical sources. Even now, I am warmed by the thought that so many families were able to try to recreate nineteenth-century Ukrainian cuisine — the village and the traditional oven — in their own modern urban kitchens.
So I am really only the conductor here. The true performers of this culinary composition are the families who cooked these dishes and told me what worked and what didn't.
Today we have an incomparably greater choice of ingredients and cooking methods, and almost every cook suggested changing or improving something in a recipe.
And this is where the dilemma arose.
Of course, I wanted to make the dishes tastier, to add new layers of flavor. But then they would no longer be nineteenth-century dishes.
So all the recommendations in the book are merely notes on the side. The original recipes have remained unchanged.
And if you want to improve them, you can always do it yourself — by adding an onion.
As I worked on the book, I realized that this was not simply a collection of recipes. It was a Ukrainian culinary manifesto — one that opens Ukraine to Western readers and introduces them to the distinctiveness of Ukrainian culture through food, something that brings people together all over the world.
And given the enormous interest in our country during these tragic past few years, this is a wonderful — albeit deeply painful — opportunity to do exactly that.
And one day I thought: Does Ukrainian cuisine exist beyond borscht and varenyky?
I started Googling, and this led me to the work of Mykola Markevych. I was surprised to discover that the book was freely available — anyone could download it. It was titled Customs, Beliefs, Cuisine and Beverages of the Little Russians, and the recipes were only a small section of the book — twenty-six pages out of 183.
That day was strange and fascinating at the same time. It felt extraordinary to hold the only surviving old edition of such an important book in my hands. I turned the pages, and it seemed to me that some kind of light was coming from them.
But the recipes… In the modern sense, you could hardly even call them recipes. They were more like a brief answer to the question, “So, how did you cook it?” — take a chicken, coat it in breadcrumbs, and so on. No measurements, no cooking times. If you weren't an experienced cook who had watched your grandmother prepare the dish, your chances of getting it right were close to zero.
And then there was the language. The book was written in the language of the empire that, then as now, suppressed everything Ukrainian. As a result, the Ukrainian ethnographer of Cossack descent, Mykola Markevych, was forced to write in Russian and to call his own people “Little Russians” — otherwise, the book might never have been published at all.
And Chubynsky, the author of the Ukrainian national anthem and the source of many of the historical details in this book, was exiled to Arkhangelsk for his “harmful” activities and lived only forty-four years.
That is why this book was such an extraordinary discovery. Both for me and for the Ukrainians who joined me in preparing these dishes, the challenge was to turn it into a diamond — a guide to the ancient Ukrainian cuisine. But at the time, I didn't yet know that this was what I was doing.
At first, as a translator by training, I began translating the culinary section of the book into Ukrainian so that the material would be easier to work with. Then I consulted my mother, friends, acquaintances, and professional cooks — as well as artificial intelligence. We calculated cooking times and measurements and considered what these dishes might look like today, in a modern kitchen.
But even after translating and adapting the recipes, I couldn't be sure that everything would actually work as intended.
I didn't want to reduce the number of recipes — there were more than a hundred — although cooking them all myself would have taken at least a year.
I asked my parents, who still live in Kyiv, for help. They kept putting it off and eventually admitted honestly: when *Shahed* drones are buzzing overhead and air-raid sirens are sounding, there is neither the mood nor the inspiration for something like this — only grayness and apathy.
So I organized the material into sections myself and reached out to people who hold on to everything Ukrainian despite being thousands of miles from home.
And I think it was only then — after receiving the first warm responses and seeing the enthusiasm with which people joined the project — that I understood how important this work was.
I began researching the cuisine of that era more deeply: the ingredients, dishes, and cooking methods, using historical sources. Even now, I am warmed by the thought that so many families were able to try to recreate nineteenth-century Ukrainian cuisine — the village and the traditional oven — in their own modern urban kitchens.
So I am really only the conductor here. The true performers of this culinary composition are the families who cooked these dishes and told me what worked and what didn't.
Today we have an incomparably greater choice of ingredients and cooking methods, and almost every cook suggested changing or improving something in a recipe.
And this is where the dilemma arose.
Of course, I wanted to make the dishes tastier, to add new layers of flavor. But then they would no longer be nineteenth-century dishes.
So all the recommendations in the book are merely notes on the side. The original recipes have remained unchanged.
And if you want to improve them, you can always do it yourself — by adding an onion.
As I worked on the book, I realized that this was not simply a collection of recipes. It was a Ukrainian culinary manifesto — one that opens Ukraine to Western readers and introduces them to the distinctiveness of Ukrainian culture through food, something that brings people together all over the world.
And given the enormous interest in our country during these tragic past few years, this is a wonderful — albeit deeply painful — opportunity to do exactly that.