Thousands of books have been written on Russian epicureanism. No famous writer, whether French, German, or English, who visited Russia ever failed to describe Russian meals—meals that lasted for hours on end and took on the form of pompous and tradition-filled messes. All that has been wiped out by the Revolution. But even representatives of the new regime often astound diplomats and politicians of Paris, London and even Berlin with lavish receptions in which caviar from the sturgeon of the White Sea and champagne from Crimea play a liberal part. When the famous French writer Alexandre Dumas first tasted sturgeon with horse-radish while staying with the Narishkins in Russia, he found it so much to his liking that he immediately got himself a Russian chef and took him back to France. For all that, however, he evinced no admiration for the famous Russian cabbage soup "chi", held that the word "chi" was really Chinese and wrote home to his friends informing that "this soup made out of cabbage is in need of sweeping reforms, which I am thinking of undertaking myself." Unfortunately his death prevented him from reforming this soup, and Russians today continue to take delight in it, both in Russia and abroad.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.