Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Contents
1History
o 1.1Côtelette de volaille
o 1.2Pozharsky cutlet
o 1.3Individual attributions
o 1.4Novo-Mikhailovsky cutlet
o 1.5Modern chicken Kyiv
2Variants
3Convenience food
4Similar dishes
5Cultural references
6See also
7References and notes
8Sources
History
The history of this dish is not well documented, and various sources make controversial claims
about its origin. Since the 18th century Russian chefs have adopted many techniques of
French haute cuisine and combined them with the local culinary tradition. The adoption was
furthered by the French chefs, such as Marie-Antoine Carême and Urbain Dubois, who were
hired by Russian gentry. In particular the use of quality meat cuts, such as various cutlets,
steaks, escalopes and suprêmes became widespread in the 19th century, and a number of
original dishes involving such components were developed in Russia at that time.[11][12]
Côtelette de volaille
The French term de volaille means literally "of poultry" and denotes almost exclusively chicken
dishes in French cookbooks.[13] The name côtelette de volaille means thus simply "chicken cutlet".
Despite the original French name, the Russian recipe is unknown in French cuisine, where the
term côtelette de volaille refers to chicken breasts in general[14] and is used nearly synonymously
with chicken filet or suprême.[6] The French term also denotes a minced chicken cutlet-
shaped patty.[15][16][17] The general Russian term for chicken cutlets, kurinaya kotleta (куриная
котлета), refers predominantly to such minced cutlets, whereas kotleta de-
voliay (Russian: котлета де-воляй) is applied exclusively to the stuffed chicken breast dish. The
latter name appears in the pre- and post-revolutionary Russian literature (in cookbooks as well
as in fiction) since the beginning of the 20th century and is usually mentioned as a common
restaurant dish.[3][18][19][20][21][22]
The recipe in the classical Russian cookery textbook The Practical Fundamentals of the Cookery
Art by Pelageya Alexandrova-Ignatieva (which had eleven editions between 1899 and 1916)
includes a complex stuffing similar to quenelle (a mixture of minced meat, in this case the rest of
the meat of the chicken, and cream) but with butter added. It also points out that "the cutlets de
volaille are made from whole chicken fillets, like the game cutlets à la Maréchale".[23] The recipe is
preceded by a similar one for "hazel grouse cutlets à la Maréchale" with a quenelle
and truffle stuffing.[24] Another Russian cookbook published at the same time gives basically
identical recipes for côtelette de volaille and côtelette à la Maréchale and notes that the only
difference between them is that the former are made of chicken while the latter are made of
game, such as hazel grouse, blackcock, etc.[25]
The term à la Maréchale ("marshal-style") denotes in French cookery tender pieces of meat,
such as cutlets, escalopes, sweetbreads, or chicken breasts, which are treated à
l'anglaise ("English-style"), i.e. coated with egg and breadcrumbs, and sautéed.[26][27] Numerous
recipes of such dishes, some of them with stuffings, are described in both Western and Russian
cookbooks of the 19th century. Among the stuffed versions, one finds a recipe for a "fowl fillet à
la Maréchale" stuffed with truffles and herbs in The Art of French Cuisine of the 19th
Century (1847) by Marie-Antoine Carême,[29] and a similar filet de poulets à la Maréchale with
herbs and forcemeat in La cuisine classique (1868) by Urbain Dubois.[30] Elena Molokhovets' A
Gift to Young Housewives, the most successful Russian cookbook of the 19th century, has
included since its first edition in 1861 an elaborate recipe for "hazel grouse à la Maréchale"
stuffed with Madeira sauce, portobello mushrooms and truffles.[31]
Pozharsky cutlet
The main difference between the old time côtelette de volaille and the modern chicken cutlet
Kyiv-style is that the elaborate stuffings of the former are replaced by butter.[32] The use of butter
for chicken cutlets has been known in Russian cuisine at least since the invention of
the Pozharsky cutlet in the first half of the 19th century. The Pozharsky cutlets are breaded
ground chicken patties for which butter is added to minced meat. This results in an especially
juicy and tender consistency. The dish was a widely appraised invention of 19th-century Russian
cuisine, which was also adopted by French haute cuisine and subsequently by the international
cuisine.[33][34][35][36]
While the roots of chicken Kyiv can thus be traced back to French haute cuisine and Russian
cookery of the 19th century, the origin of the particular recipe known today as chicken Kyiv
remains disputed.
Individual attributions
The Russian Tea Room Cookbook notes that chicken Kyiv was "most likely … a creation of the
great French chef Carême at the Court of Alexander I."[37] Marie-Antoine Carême spent just
several months of the year 1818 in St. Petersburg,[38] but made a profound impact on Russian
cuisine in this short time.[12] The reforms carried out by his followers introduced in particular
various meat cuts into Russian cookery.[12] The recipe of the Russian côtelette de volaille is not
present in Carême's major work mentioned above, but his "fowl fillet à la Maréchale" could have
served as the starting point for the further development of such dishes.
Some Russian sources attribute the creation of this dish (or of its precursor) to Nicolas Appert,
French confectioner and chef, best known as the inventor of airtight food preservation. In
contrast, common biographic sources for Appert do not mention this dish, and the origin of these
claims is unclear.[39][40]
Novo-Mikhailovsky cutlet
Russian food historian William Pokhlyobkin claimed that chicken Kyiv was invented in 1912
as Novo-Mikhailovskaya kotleta in а St. Petersburg Merchants' Club located near
the Mikhailovsky palace, and was renamed kotleta po-kiyevski in 1947 by a Soviet restaurant.
[41]
However, these claims collide with primary sources. The cookbook by Alexandrova-Ignatieva
(including editions before and after 1912) describes indeed Novo-Mikhailovsky cutlets and
mentions that they were invented in the club near the Mikhailovsky palace. However, in the
provided recipe these cutlets are made from minced meat similarly to the Pozharsky cutlet, with
the only difference being the meat pounded by a tenderizer until it gets minced. This allows one
to remove tendons from the meat and results in a more tender consistency of the ground meat
than after the use of a grinder. The author also remarks that not only breasts but also other parts
of chicken can be prepared this way and added to the mixture of meat and butter.[42]
The second claim of Pokhlyobkin's version is invalidated, as the references of chicken Kyiv
appeared in published sources much earlier, since the 1910s.[43][44][45][46][47]
Oral tradition in Kyiv attributes the invention of the "cutlet de volaille Kyiv-style" (kotleta de-volyay
po-kievski) to the restaurant of the Continental hotel in Kyiv in the beginning of the 20th century.
[48]
A luxury hotel built in 1897 in the center of Kyiv, it was run until the Nazi German invasion of
the Soviet Union in 1941. The building was then mined by the retreating Red Army and exploded
when the German Army occupied Kyiv in September 1941.[49] After the war, the building was
rebuilt and has since then been used by the Kyiv Conservatory. According to the memoirs of
contemporaries, Chicken Kyiv was the signature dish of the hotel's restaurant.[48]
Recipe of "Kiev cutlets from chicken or veal". Cookery Digest, 1915
An early reference of "Kiev cutlets from chicken or veal" is found in the Cookery Digest (1915), a
collection of recipes which were published in the Moscow Journal for Housewives in 1913–1914.
These were minced meat cutlets similar to the Pozharsky cutlets, but shaped like a croquette
with a bar of cold butter placed in the middle. Like modern chicken Kyiv, the croquettes were
covered with egg and breadcrumbs and fried.[43]
Later, "chicken cutlets Kiev-style" were listed in Apportionments for dinners, separate dishes and
other products of public catering (1928) which served as a standard reference for Soviet catering
establishments. The book also included other items for chicken cutlets, such as "cutlet de
volaille" and "cutlet à la Maréchale". The book demanded renaming of many traditional
restaurant dishes to replace the (mostly French-style) "bourgeois" names with simple
"proletarian" forms. In particular, the "cutlet Kyiv-style" had to be renamed into "chicken cutlet
stuffed with butter".[50] This program was not realised immediately (at least not completely), and
its successor, The Directory of Apportionments for Catering (1940), published by the Soviet
Ministry of Food Industry, still included the traditional names.[51] In post-World War II publications
of this directory and in other Soviet cookery books, such as Cookery (1955), the "Kyiv-style"
name was retained, but the terms de volaille and à la Maréchale were indeed dropped in favour
of simple names such as "chicken cutlet stuffed with milk sauce", "chicken cutlet stuffed with
liver" and "chicken cutlet stuffed with chicken quenelle and mushrooms".[52][53][54] As a result of this
policy, the names de volaille and à la Maréchale disappeared from menus of Soviet restaurants.
The "old-style" name "cutlet de volaille Kyiv-style" was occasionally mentioned in some post-
World War II Soviet fiction books.[21][55] In particular, in a short story This Is Not Written In A
Cookbook (1947) by Yevgeny Vorobyov, a Soviet soldier and a former chef in a Moscow noble
hotel explains to his comrade in arms, that "cutlets de volaille are made for two tastes. There are
cutlets de volaille Kiev-style and cutlets de volaille jardiniere."[21]
The name kotlet de volaille is used to this day for chicken Kyiv in Poland.[56] The name is
oftentimes polonised as dewolaj (dewolaje for plural).[57]
Mentions of chicken Kyiv are also found in US newspapers starting from 1937. The reports
describe the Russian-style restaurant Yar in Chicago serving this dish.[45][46][58][47][59] The restaurant
existed until 1951 and was run by Vladimir Yaschenko, a former colonel of the imperial Russian
army. It was styled after the famous eponymous Moscow restaurant and was frequented by
celebrities of that time.[60][61] After World War II, US newspapers mentioned chicken Kyiv served in
New York restaurants.[62][63] Recipes for a "chicken cutlet à la Kiev" were published in The New
York Times in 1946[62][63] and in Gourmet magazine in 1948.[64]
Since the end of the 1940s or beginning of the 1950s, chicken Kyiv became a standard fare in
Soviet high class restaurants, in particular in the Intourist hotel chain serving foreign tourists.
Tourist booklets warned the diners of the danger it presented to their clothing.[41][65] At the same
time the popularity of this dish grew in the US. According to Darra Goldstein chicken Kyiv
became "a symbol of Russian haute cuisine".[66]
Variants
Chicken Kyiv is made from a boned and skinned breast which is cut lengthwise, pounded and
stuffed with butter. Western recipes usually call for garlic butter, while in Russian ones regular
butter is used. Herbs (parsley and dill) can be added to the butter.[1][67] In some American recipes
butter is replaced by blue cheese.[68]
In the classical preparation of French côtelettes de volaille, the humerus bone of the wing is left
attached.[6] This also holds for their Russian versions[3] and in particular for chicken Kyiv.[1][65][67] For
serving, the bone is usually covered with a frilled paper napkin.[65] However, industrially produced
pure fillets are often used nowadays, and the cutlets are served without the bone. This is the
usual way of serving chicken Kyiv in the US.[1] A spherically shaped version was developed by
English chef Jesse Dunford Wood.[69]
Boneless version
Convenience food
Pre-prepared chicken Kyiv
In the middle of the 20th century, semi-processed ground meat cutlets were introduced in the
USSR. Colloquially known as Mikoyan cutlets (named after Soviet politician Anastas Mikoyan),
these were cheap pork or beef cutlet-shaped patties which resembled industrially produced
American beef burgers.[70] Some varieties bore names of well known Russian restaurant dishes
but they had little in common with the original dishes. In particular, a variety of a pork patty was
called "Kiev cutlet".[71] Since the late Soviet times, "real" chicken Kyiv cutlets have been offered in
Russia as convenience food.[41]
Introduced in Britain during 1979, chicken Kyiv was Marks & Spencer company's first ready-
made meal.[72][73][69][10] It remains popular in the UK, being readily available in supermarkets and
served in some restaurant chains. Due to its popularity, it is included in the UK inflation basket
which is composed by the Office for National Statistics for calculations of the consumer price
inflation indices.[74] The wide popularity of chicken Kyiv as a pre-packaged meal led to the
term Kyiv being applied to various stuffed chicken dishes, such as "leek-and-bacon Kiev" or
"cheese-and-ham Kiev" (the latter term replacing chicken cordon bleu).[75] Vegetarian Kyivs were
introduced in the UK in the 1990s,[citation needed] and are popular vegetarian convenience foods.
Similar dishes
Among other dishes similar to chicken Kyiv, the aforementioned chicken cordon bleu with a
cheese and ham filling instead of butter is particularly popular in the West. The recipe
of Karađorđeva šnicla, a Serbian breaded veal or pork cutlet, was inspired by chicken Kyiv.[76]
Cultural references
Wikiquote has quotations
related to: Chicken Kiev
Chicken Kiev is the name used by William Safire for a speech made in Kyiv during August 1991
by then-U.S. President George H. W. Bush cautioning Ukrainians against "suicidal nationalism".
[77][78]
In 2018 a bronze miniature sculpture of chicken Kyiv was placed on Horodecki street in Kyiv,
near the restaurant "Chicken Kyiv". The sculpture became the first of a set of such mini-
sculptures depicting famous symbols of Kyiv placed throughout the city as part of an art project.[79]
See also
Breaded cutlet
List of Russian dishes
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