Candies in the USSR were one of the main treats that Soviet children could afford. They were given for the holidays, they were treated to birthdays, on weekends parents spoiled their kids with delicious sweets that were not always easy to get. Of course, the variety of sweets was not as large as it is now, but the most famous and successful brands have survived to this day and are still popular. Let's talk about some of them.
How did chocolate appear in the USSR?
Chocolates were considered the main value in the USSR. Interestingly, the first chocolate bar in the world appeared only in 1899 in Switzerland, and chocolate began to be imported to Russia only in the middle of the 19th century. A German from Wurtenberg opened a workshop on the Arbat, which also produced chocolates.
In 1867, von Einem and a partner opened a factory that was one of the first in the country to start a steam engine, which allowed the company to become one of the largest confectionery producers in the country.
After the October Revolution, all factories passed into the hands of the state, and in 1918 a decree was issued on the nationalization of the entire confectionery industry. So, the factory of the Abrikosovs received the name of the worker Babaev, the firm "Einem" became known as "Red October", and the factory of the Lenov merchants "Rot Front". But under the new government, problems arose with the production of chocolate, cocoa beans were needed for its manufacture, and serious difficulties arose with this.
The so-called "sugar" regions of the country for a long time still remained under the control of the "whites", and gold and the currency for which raw materials could be purchased abroad went to purchase more daily bread. It was only in the mid-20s that confectionery production was restored, the entrepreneurial spirit of the Nepmen played a role in this, but with the launch of the planned economy, the production of sweets in the USSR became strictly regulated. Each factory was transferred to a separate type of product. For example, chocolate was produced at Krasny Oktyabr, and caramel at the Babaev factory. What sweets were in the USSR, you will learn from this article.
The work of confectionery factories did not stop during the Great Patriotic War, because it was a strategically important product, the "emergency reserve" set necessarily included a bar of chocolate, which saved more than one pilot or sailor from death.
After the war, the USSR turned out to have a lot of equipment taken from German confectionery enterprises. At the factory named after Babaev increasedthe production of chocolate at times, if in 1946 they processed 500 tons of cocoa beans per year, then by the end of the 60s already 9,000 tons. This was favored by the foreign policy of the USSR. The Soviet Union supported the leaders of many African powers, from where this raw material was supplied in large quantities.
At that time, the production of sweets in the USSR was established steadily and there was no shortage, at least in large cities, the only exceptions were pre-holiday days. Before each New Year, sweet sets were distributed to all children, due to which most of the candies disappeared from the shelves.
Squirrel
Belochka sweets were very popular and loved among Soviet kids and their parents. Their main distinguishing feature was finely crushed hazelnuts, which were contained in the filling. The candy was easily recognizable by the label, it depicted a squirrel with a nut in its paws, which referred us to Pushkin's famous work "The Tale of Tsar S altan".
For the first time, Belochka sweets began to be produced in the early 1940s at the Nadezhda Krupskaya confectionery factory. She at that time was part of the Leningrad Production Association of the confectionery industry. In Soviet times, these sweets deservedly became one of the most popular in the country, several thousand tons were produced annually.
Kara-Kum
In the USSR, Kara-Kum sweets were originally produced at a confectionery factory in Taganrog. They conqueredsweet tooth with walnut praline filling with crushed wafers and cocoa.
Over time, they began to be produced at other enterprises, in particular, at Krasny Oktyabr, in the United Confectioners confectionery group.
The candy owes its name to the desert on the territory of modern Kazakhstan, which in those years was part of the Soviet Union. So the producers of sweets cared not only about the pleasure of their consumers, but also to increase their knowledge of geography.
Glière's ballet
Candies were named in the Soviet Union not only in honor of geographical objects, but also … ballets. At least according to the most common version, the Red Poppy sweets owe their name to Gliere's ballet of the same name, which was first staged at the Bolshoi Theater in 1926.
The story of this premiere is amazing. Initially, they were supposed to put on a new ballet called "The Daughter of the Port", but the theater officials considered the libretto not very interesting and dynamic. Then the plot was revived, and the musical arrangement was remade, so the ballet "Red Poppy" appeared, which gave the name to the popular Soviet sweets.
The storyline of the new work really turned out to be rich and exciting. Here are the insidious head of the port of Hips, and the young Chinese woman Tao Hoa, who is in love with the captain of a Soviet ship, and brave sailors. A conflict unfolds between the bourgeois and the Bolsheviks, they try to poison the captain of the ship, and in the finale the brave Chinese woman dies. Waking upbefore her death, Tao gives others a poppy flower, which was once given to her by a Soviet captain. This beautiful romantic story was immortalized in the art of confectionery so that the candies are still popular.
The delicacy was distinguished by a praline filling, in which vanilla flavors, candy crumbs and hazelnuts were added. The candies themselves were glazed with chocolate.
Montpensier
Not only chocolates were valued in the USSR. Everyone who remembers the shelves of Soviet stores can tell you about the candies in the Monpasier iron can. In the USSR, these were the most popular lollipops.
They were shaped like small pills and had different fruit flavors. These were real lollipops made from caramelized sugar. They had a large number of flavors and colors, some, for example, purposefully bought only orange, lemon or berry sweets. But the most popular was the classic platter, when you could taste candies of all varieties and tastes at a time.
Bear in the North
These candies were originally produced at the Krupskaya factory. They had a nutty filling that came in a waffle shell.
Confectioners launched their production shortly before the start of World War II, in 1939. "Bear in the North" was so fond of the inhabitants of Leningrad that even during the blockade, despite all the difficulties and difficulties of wartime, the factorycontinued to release this delicacy. For example, in 1943, 4.4 tons of these sweets were produced. For many besieged Leningraders, they became one of the symbols of the inviolability of their spirit, an important element that helped to hold out and survive when it seemed that everything was lost, the city was doomed, and all its inhabitants were threatened with starvation.
The original design of the wrapper, by which today everyone can easily recognize these sweets, was developed by artist Tatyana Lukyanova. Album sketches, which she made at the Leningrad Zoo, formed the basis for the creation of this image.
It is interesting that now this brand belongs to the Norwegian confectionery concern, which bought the Krupskaya factory. In modern Russia, until 2008, sweets under this name were produced at various enterprises, but after the amendments to the law on trademarks came into force, most factories were forced to abandon the production of sweets under the original name and design. Therefore, today on the shelves of stores you can find analogues that differ somewhat in the pattern on the label or the name, but at the same time they are still easy to recognize.
Creamy toffee
In the USSR, "Creamy toffee" sweets were produced at the "Red October" factory. Their release has been established since 1925, along with other sweets, which are still considered the Golden Fund of the factory. First of all, these are cocoa and chocolate "Golden Label", "Mishka clumsy" (not to be confused with "Mishka in the North"), toffee"Kiss-kiss".
"Creamy toffee" referred to milk candy. Those who remember it from Soviet times say that it was a very tasty candy, small in size and yellowish-white in a greenish-yellow wrapper with splashes of pink. But its release has long been discontinued for an unknown reason.
Meteorite
Meteorite sweets were also very popular in the USSR. They were produced only in the second half of the 20th century, now they, like the "Creamy Toffee", cannot be found. In taste, they are closest to modern Grillage sweets.
They were produced at several factories at once - Krasny Oktyabr, Amta in Ulan-Ude, Bucuria in Chisinau.
At the same time, Meteorite, in fact, was very different from "Roasting", as it was lighter and more tender. It was surrounded by a thin shell of chocolate that literally melted in your mouth, underneath it was a nut-caramel-honey filling that tasted like shortbread and honey. The sweets were very satisfying, and the filling itself was bitten off very easily, and this was their main difference from "Roasting".
In their appearance, the Soviet "Meteorite" sweets resembled small chocolate balls. When they were cut with a knife, a complex filling of seeds or nuts with honey caramel was exposed. The sweets were wrapped in a characteristic blue wrapper the color of the night sky. They were usually sold in small cardboard boxes, but you canwas to meet these sweets and by weight.
Iris
One of the most popular non-chocolate sweets in the USSR is "Iris". In fact, this is a fondant mass, which was formed by boiling condensed milk with molasses, sugar and fat, and both vegetable or butter and margarine were used. In the crushed form in the Soviet Union, it was sold in the form of sweets, which were in great demand.
The sweets owe their name to a French confectioner by the name of either Morna or Mornas, it is now impossible to establish for certain, who worked at a factory in St. Petersburg at the very beginning of the 20th century. It was he who first noticed that their relief is very similar to the petals of an iris flower.
In the USSR, several varieties of this candy were produced: they were often covered with icing, sometimes they added a filling. According to the method of production, they distinguished replicated and cast iris, and they were distinguished by consistency and structure:
- soft;
- semi-solid;
- reprinted;
- cast semi-solid (a classic example is the "Golden Key");
- viscous ("Tuzik", "Kiss-kiss").
In the USSR, the most popular were the so-called toffees - small sweets that were sold in a wrapper. The process of their production consisted in the successive addition and heating of the ingredients in the digester to the final temperature, when the mixture was still liquid. It was cooled on a special table with a water jacket. When the mixture becomes viscous and thick, itwere placed in a special apparatus, from which a toffee mass of a specific thickness came out. Such a tourniquet was sent directly to the toffee wrapping machine, in which it was cut into small sweets and wrapped in a label.
Already after that, the finished products were cooled in specially designed tunnels, dried (crystallization took place at this time), due to this they achieved the required consistency. In its shape, the iris could be square, in the form of bricks or molded.
Bird's milk
Candy "Bird's milk" in the USSR enjoyed special love and popularity. Interestingly, these sweets come from Poland, where they appeared in 1936. Their recipe remains unchanged to this day. Traditional sweets "Bird's milk" are made in dessert chocolate with vanilla filling.
In 1967 Vasily Zotov, the minister of the Soviet food industry in Czechoslovakia, was captivated by these delicious sweets. Returning to the Soviet Union, he gathered representatives of all confectionery factories, instructing them to make the same sweets without a prescription, but using only a sample.
In the same year, a confectionery factory in Vladivostok began to produce these sweets. The recipe, which was developed in Vladivostok, was eventually recognized as the best in the USSR; today these sweets are sold under the Primorsky brand. Their feature was the use of agar-agar.
In 1968, experimental batches of these sweets appeared at the Rot Front factory, but the prescription documentation was neverapproved. Only over time, production was able to establish throughout the country. At that time, the shelf life of real Ptichye Moloko sweets, prepared according to the classic recipe, was only 15 days. Only in the 90s they began to increase it, and at the same time reduce the cost of ingredients, making sweets more affordable. Massively used preservatives, which increased their shelf life to two months.
A cake called "Bird's Milk", which was invented and invented in the Soviet Union, became a special pride of domestic culinary specialists. It happened in 1978 in the confectionery shop of the Prague restaurant in the capital. Pastry chef Vladimir Guralnik supervised the process, and according to other sources, he created the cake personally.
It was made from cake dough, for the layer they used a cream based on butter, sugar-agar syrup, condensed milk and egg whites, which were pre-whipped. In 1982, the "Bird's Milk" cake became the first cake in the USSR for which a patent was issued. For its production, a workshop was specially equipped, which produced two thousand cakes a day, but it still remained in short supply.
