She taught Russian women how to cook & plan their households
Elena Molokhovets's book ‘A Gift to Young Housewives’ is, without exaggeration, the culinary bible of pre-revolutionary Russia.
Published in 1861, it helped hundreds of thousands of women reduce the stress of entering adulthood. It not only taught them how to create daily menus and buy the right ingredients without overpaying, but also streamlined other aspects of everyday life, including ergonomic home planning.
Unfortunately, the fate of Tsarist Russia's most respected housewife proved tragic. Orphaned early, she graduated with honors from the Smolny Institute, married an architect and, moving to Kursk, published her book. The publication was a resounding success, but Molokhovets's personal life was difficult: of her 10 children, only two survived her; her husband also died, while her youngest son ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Over time, she became increasingly immersed in religious and mystical pursuits and the writing of political journalism, which was unpopular.
Molokhovets was also forced to constantly battle plagiarists, who published books under very similar titles and names. She died in Petrograd in 1918, presumably in poverty and obscurity and not a single newspaper noted her passing. After 1918, ‘A Gift to Young Housewives’ disappeared from Soviet life for a long time, returning only in the 1990s.
