The open dinners of Count Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov were the stuff of legend: his table was prized not only by colleagues and kinsmen but by members of the imperial family and by distinguished foreign guests, such as the painter Vigée Le Brun

The open dinners of Count Alexander Sergeyevich Stroganov were the stuff of legend: his table was prized not only by colleagues and kinsmen but by members of the imperial family and by distinguished foreign guests, such as the painter Vigée Le Brun. At times this influential and wealthy gentleman found at his table people with whom he was not even acquainted. By Russian tradition, noble families usually threw open their doors to all who came to dine, and more than fifty people would often sit down together; but since a formal introduction demanded a particular ritual, this formality was sometimes dispensed with, and the hosts had no notion whom they were feeding.

It is known that for almost 30 years a man whose name he never knew dined every day at Count Stroganov's house. And one day, not seeing the regular in his usual place, Stroganov enquired whether his faithful fellow diner was still alive. It transpired that only death had indeed prevented him from attending the count's open table: on his way to dine with Stroganov, the man had been knocked down.

“First came the zakuska, which consisted of dishes that stimulate the appetite: caviar, radishes, even fruit such as plums and pomegranates formed part of it; the most prized of the zakuska dishes were herring cheeks, and more than a thousand herrings went into a single plate of this dish.

The second course likewise consisted of piquant dishes: elk lips, boiled bear's paws, roast lynx. Incidentally, this is the most ancient of Russian dishes, now quite forgotten, which was served at the court of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich; lynx was not then considered inedible: the flesh of this beast is distinguished by its whiteness.

Then came cuckoos roasted in honey and butter, burbot milt and fresh halibut liver; the third course was oysters, and game stuffed with nuts and fresh figs.
For salads there were served pickled peaches, pineapples (very rare at the time) in vinegar, and so on,” writes the historian Pylyaev of Stroganov's dinners.