Pirog

On such a day it was the custom, some sixty years ago, to bake several immense pirogs of cake dough; one of these pirogs was stuffed with hard-boiled eggs and sometimes also with kasha, while the others had no fillings; it was these latter that were sent to various relatives as a sign of affection.

At the festival one can take chai sweetened with raspberry preserves or honey as they did in the old days and with the chai selected from an assortment of tantalizing delicacies including rum and honey babas, vareneky,^([sic – meaning vareniki]) poppyseed roll, piroshki, blini, apple pirog, hvorost (sometimes called khrustiki), tea cakes, cheese tortes and more, all made by the women and men of the parish.

Pirogs are eaten in Russia with soup and can be filled with meat, ham, fish or cheese, but they are usually stuffed with herbs and are not unlike the herby pastes that were so much in vogue in England in the eighteenth century.