How a cockroach accidentally brought a new… baked good to Moscow!

Filippov's bakery in 19th-century Moscow was a magnet for a wide range of people. Everyone, from students to senior officials, from fashionable ladies to workers, would crowd around street vendors’ hot iron boxes filled with freshly baked pies. For a pittance, one could have a hearty breakfast – the pies, filled with meat, eggs, rice, mushrooms, cottage cheese, raisins and jam, were renowned for their size and quality.

High-ranking customers also appreciated Filippov's bread recipes – the bakery's founder, Ivan Filippov, became famous far beyond Moscow for his kalachi, saiki and excellent black bread. They were shipped daily to the royal court in St. Petersburg and transported frozen to Irkutsk and Barnaul. Filippov also supplied baked goods to the Moscow Governor-General Zakrevsky. Legend has it that he once discovered something suspiciously resembling a cockroach in a loaf of bread.

The enraged official demanded that the baker be called immediately. However, Filippov didn't lose his cool in front of the Governor-General. He declared it wasn't an insect, but a raisin and ate the "proof" in front of his high-ranking client. Returning to the bakery, he immediately poured a sieve of raisins into the dough. An hour later, Filippov was treating that same Zakrevsky to raisin-studded rolls and, the next day, there was a flood of customers for the new product. Thus, failure turned into success and a new culinary trend was born that took the city by storm.

Journalist and writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky recounted this incident in his book ‘Moscow and Muscovites’. You can learn more stories about Moscow at the turn of the 20th century in the ‘Our Man. Vladimir Gilyarovsky’, exhibition, which is on display at the Museum of Russian Impressionism until January 25, 2026.