Me: settles in for breakfast, decides to read Soviet cookbook from which I learned how to cook grains so that they're one of my favorite foods.

Also me: goddamnit, even the cookbook has to refer to the social (not just private!) use of learning to cook, and also to how cooking is perceived by materialist philosophy! Like... "Jacob Moleschott's view 'you are what you eat' has been vulgarly interpreted by his Idealist opponents".

Are you kidding me. At least there's no Lenin quotes.

But Pohlyobkin is honestly amazing. It is written in that characteristic Soviet popular science style--as in very romantic, with mentions of far-off expeditions and the army... And centers cooking. The text itself is engrossing and absorbing, and he does find a way to make food interesting in a way no other cookbook has for me.

Still, there are things I can't unsee anymore after writing a thesis on popular science in the Soviet Union. Like this gem:

"As the culinary profession is a particular kind of production, it necessitates the kind of serious attention that other forms of production have been given, but in an even higher, even more rational, even more assiduous and even more individualized manner, as this form is linked directly with the health of human beings. This means that especially today, during the scientific technical revolution, we need a new, scientific, approach to cooking food. [...]

This is why culinary knowledge must be as well-known among youth as literacy."

William Pohlyobkin, "Secrets of Good Cooking", p.15.

Just look at this. It's got a reference to forms of production. It lists Soviet values - ever higher, ever more rational, ever more careful and even individualized (oh, there's one heck of a weird interplay there). There's science as a rhetoric. There's a link to the mass education programs. And a mention of the NTR, the scientific-technical revolution.

And this. Is. A cookbook. It's not even science fiction (perceived by the Soviet Union as a way of enticing kids to become scientists). It's amazing.

Also, what a biography! Admittedly, this is just the wiki, but!

"In 1968 he was labeled a dissident because his book on tea was popular in dissident circles. He was barred from publication, thus was unable to finish his doctoral dissertation, and had to concentrate on his culinary hobby. [...]