Saint Petersburg Curiosities

Fact №1: Peter the Great first brought potatoes to Russia. The emperor cultivated potatoes in the suburbs of Saint Petersburg, thinking to use them for medicinal purposes. 

If vinaigrette is a sauce made from vinegar, vegetable oil, salt, and black pepper everywhere in the world, in Russia, that term is used for a vegetable salad made up of baked or boiled beets, potatoes, carrots, onions, sauerkraut, and pickles. 

This curious naming issue is thanks to the famous French chef Antoine Carême, who came to Saint Petersburg in the early 19th century on the invitation of Tsar Alexander I. 

When he saw how the court cooks were pouring vinegar onto a salad, Carême asked, “Vinaigre?” The cooks decided that that was just the right name for the dish.

A popular addition to this vegetable salad in Saint Petersburg is Baltic sprats – small salted fish caught in the Baltic Sea.

The largest and most expensive tea service belonging to the Russian imperial family can be seen at the Hermitage.

Catherine the Great commissioned it from the English firm Wedgwood and Sons for her summer palace, built in a place called Kekerekeksinen, after the Finnish for “frog swamp.”