Ilf & Petrov on American Food

[osprey_archer]

I had the impression, picked up from I know not where, that the great standardization of American food set in sometime during the 1950s, but if Ilf and Petrov are to be believed, the rot had already set in by 1935. They complain:

“During the month and a half that we had lived in the States we had become so sick of American cooking that we were agreeable to any other kinds of edibles - Italian, Chinese, Jewish - anything but Breakfast No. 2 or Dinner No. 1, anything but this numbered, standardized, and centralized food. In fact, if it is possible to speak of bad taste in food, then Anglo-American cooking undoubtedly is the expression of a bad, silly, and eccentric taste that has brought forth such hybrids as sweet and sour pickles, bacon fried to the consistency of plywood, or blindingly white and utterly tasteless (no, having the taste of cotton!) bread.”

Directly following this tirade, they decide to have dinner at a Mexican restaurant, at which time they discover the Russian palate is not equal to the heat of Mexican cooking: “the very first spoon knocked everything out of our heads except the desire to seize a fire extinguisher and to put out the bonfire that broke out in the mouth. As for the enchilada, they proved to be long, appetizing blintzes filled with red pepper and gunpowder, thinly cut, and covered with nitroglycerin. It is simply impossible to sit down to such a dinner without wearing a fireman’s helmet. We ran out of the Original Mexican Restaurant, hungry, angry, dying of thirst. Five minutes later we sat in a drugstore, the most ordinary American drugstore, and ate (oh, humiliation!) centralized, standardized, and numbered food, which he had cursed only half an hour before, drinking beforehand ten bottles of Coca-Cola apiece to quiet our disturbed nervous system.”

Speaking of Coca-Cola, one of the things they find most fascinating about America (and which I, in turn, find most fascinating about the Soviet perspective on America) is the absolute ubiquity of advertising. Coca-Cola in particular advertised absolutely everywhere, but it’s hardly the only brand that is impossible to escape.

“Here [in Chicago], as in New York, electricity was trained. It extolled the same gods: Coca-Cola, Johnnie Walker Whisky, Camel Cigarettes. Here, too, were the infants that had annoyed us all through the week: the thin infant who did not drink orange juice, and his prospering antipode - the fat, good infant who, appreciating the efforts of the juice manufacturer, consumed it in horse-sized doses.”

I also enjoyed their description of that exotic snack, popcorn: “a roasted corn which bursts open in the form of white boutonnieres. On the counter glowed a gasoline flare with three bright wicks. We tried to guess what popcorn was made of.”

The seller - a Russian expat, surprisingly enough! - enlightens them: it’s just corn heated to the bursting point.

And one last description, of a New York automat: “The walls of the automats are occupied throughout with little glass closets. Near each one of them is a slit for dropping a ‘nickel’ (a five-cent coin). Behind the glass stands a dour sandwich or a glass of juice or a piece of pie. Despite the shining glass and metal, the sausages and cutlets deprived of liberty somehow produce a strange impression. One pities them, like cats in a show.”

Might come in handy for a Captain America or an Agent Carter fic.

Comments

[isis]

This sounds delightful!

[osprey_archer]

It's pretty glorious.

[sartorias]

Great snippets!

[osprey_archer]

Thank you!

[skygiants]

the thin infant who did not drink orange juice, and his prospering antipode - the fat, good infant who, appreciating the efforts of the juice manufacturer, consumed it in horse-sized doses

This reminds me very much of Murder Must Advertise ...

[osprey_archer]

I briefly tried to imagine Lord Peter in Soviet Moscow and then my entire brain just sort of imploded, because he does not fit At All. He might actually go into a state of cardiac arrest when he sees the way that the old Russian nobility's wine cellars have been treated.

[genarti]

This is DELIGHTFUL. I especially adore their description of enchiladas, omg.

[osprey_archer]

BLINTZES! Because of course they compare them to blintzes.

[brigdh]

AMAZING! I love thinking of enchiladas as spicy blintzes.

[osprey_archer]

Right? Of course that would be the natural point of comparison for them.

[taelle]

They might have despised the American food, but approximately at the same time the Soviet People's Comissar for Food Industry Anastas Mikoyan was _also_ touring USA, loving everything and making plans to set the food industry in USSR in the same way. He had especial plans for the hamburger... politics and history interfered and they lost the buns somewhere, but the industry-produced cutlet (basically the meat patty from hamburger) was a great favorite until the end of USSR.

[kore]

And they never ran into each other! Now that would make a fun fic.

[kore]

As for the enchilada, they proved to be long, appetizing blintzes filled with red pepper and gunpowder, thinly cut, and covered with nitroglycerin. It is simply impossible to sit down to such a dinner without wearing a fireman’s helmet. We ran out of the Original Mexican Restaurant, hungry, angry, dying of thirst. Five minutes later we sat in a drugstore, the most ordinary American drugstore, and ate (oh, humiliation!) centralized, standardized, and numbered food, which he had cursed only half an hour before, drinking beforehand ten bottles of Coca-Cola apiece to quiet our disturbed nervous system.

This DEFINITELY needs to be a buddy road trip movie.

[osprey_archer]

It would be so amazing and I want it to exist so much.

...I have actually considered putting an Ilf & Petrov cameo into a future book, where the heroines are hitchiking across the United States during the Depression, because why NOT have them hitch a ride for a leg of the weird Soviet road trip, am I right? Everyone will love it! All two readers who have heard of Ilf and Petrov!

[kore]

There's at least six of us!

[ancientreader]

I tried to read the Mexican restaurant rant aloud to Spouse but I was wheezing with laughter so hard I could barely get through it. Appetizing blintzes!!!! filled with red pepper and gunpowder!

Also, isn't it interesting to consider that Italian, Chinese, and Jewish food weren't "American"?

I do love their language -- "prospering antipode" just to take one example nearly as splendid as that description of appetizing but treacherous Mexican blintzes -- but they must've had a terrific translator, too. Is that person credited?

ETA: Now I'm dying to know what the staff in the Mexican restaurant thought of them. God, if only I knew Spanish and had a credible acquaintance with Mexican culinary history, I would write that fanfic.

[osprey_archer]

Their translator was Charles Malamuth, who got in trouble with the Soviet establishment a few years later (in 1941) when he translated Trotsky and thus got branded a Trotskyite. However, by that time Ilf had died of TB, and Petrov died less than a year later in the course of his work as a war correspondent, so they managed to escape guilt-by-association for having been translated by a Trotskyite.

I imagine the staff at the Mexican restaurant took some pleasure in watching gringos eat the food and flee. Ilf & Petrov can't have been the first.

[asakiyume]

Came back to catch your earlier entries on Ilf and Petrov's perspectives. The description of popcorn made me laugh out loud!

[osprey_archer]

I have such a weakness for descriptions of something that seems perfectly normal from my perspective, but is clearly totally alien to the person describing it.