There is an ancient Cossack dish called nardek

There is an ancient Cossack dish called nardek. It is a most delicious dessert made from watermelons. Since the watermelon season is upon us, I suggest we recall how the Cossacks' favourite sweet is prepared.

Nardek is a Don dessert, prepared exclusively on the Don, in the stanitsas, by Cossack women. Nardek is made in autumn, when the watermelons ripen, and it is prepared from them in the following manner: from ripe watermelons, preferably small ones, the pulp is scooped out with spoons and then pressed through a sieve. The sweet reddish liquid (syrup) thus obtained is poured into a cast-iron cauldron, which is boiled in a forge in the open air until a syrup results, the consistency of which depends upon the length of the boiling.

The usual thickness of nardek resembles the consistency of the thickest cream or of honey. Nardek is used chiefly as a dessert and as a foodstuff at breakfast and at midday, when it is eaten with bread, and it is especially loved by the Don Cossack women, who eat it with pyshki. The use of nardek, without being accustomed to it or in large quantity, produces in some persons the symptoms of acute gastritis, expressed in a burning sensation in the pit of the stomach, nausea, and sometimes vomiting. But the Don Cossacks, men and women, who are accustomed to it, eat nardek in great quantity without any harm to their health.

A.S. Shcherbakov. The magazine "Nasha pishcha" [Our Food], 1891.