Tsarskoye Selo | Nicholas II

Nicholas II’s menu: culinary preferences of Russia’s last Tsar

NOTE: the dishes highlighted in red below feature a link to a dozen recipes, and while they may not be the exact recipe enjoyed by the Tsar, it will give you an idea of his favourite dishes. If you know of a more authentic traditional Russian recipe for any of the dishes noted below, please email me at royalrussia@yahoo.com – PG

The kitchens for the Alexander Palace were located in a separate building, situated a few hundred feet away from the palace, on Dvortsovaya [Palace] Street. Meals were prepared in this building, and taken to the palace through an underground tunnel, built in 1902 – see original plan.

The kitchen building itself was a two-story, U-shaped structure with distinct architectural features on each floor. This building contained numerous rooms, including kitchens, linen room, a copper pantry, and a rooms for the cooks.

The purpose of having the kitchens in a separate building was likely due to fire safety and sanitation concerns, as was common practice for Russian palaces.

PHOTO: The former Kitchen Building of the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, as it looks today

Meals were brought to the palace via a tunnel and served in one of the rooms, usually the Semi-Circular Hall. When Nicholas and Alexandra dined alone, they dined in a more intimate setting, such as the Pallisander [aka Rosewood] Drawing Room [see photo below] or in the Empress’s Corner Reception Room.

The Palisander Drawing Room, was a cozy space with rosewood paneling and a fireplace. It was the room where Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna spent time with their children and enjoyed family dinners.

The Imperial family often invited close family members, trusted courtiers, and sometimes foreign dignitaries to dine with them. The Imperial children usually dined separately from their parents in their own dining room, situated on the second floor of the eastern wing of the palace.

For larger gatherings, the Semi-Circular Hall was the preferred space. It was in this interior, that a long table in the shape of a squared off U was used on more formal occasions. It was described as a room with a glittering chandelier, where guests could dine at round tables while listening to music.

While the Alexander Palace did not have a dedicated dining room, these two spaces served as the primary locations for meals, both casual and more formal.

PHOTO: Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, taking tea in the Pallisander [aka the Rosewood] Drawing Room, in the Alexander Palace

***

Royalty is often associated with luxurious living and dining. Throughout history the early Russian tsars, tsarinas, emperors and empresses dined lavishly. One has only to visit the elegant Baroque Style Hermitage Pavilion at Tsarskoye Selo for evidence of the grand scale in which the Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine the Great dined and entertained their guests.

Despite the opulent surroundings of the Russian Imperial Court, Emperor Nicholas II was known for his love of simple, traditional Russian food, and unlike his ancestors and some of Europe’s royal family’s, avoided excessive luxury in food. He preferred a straightforward approach to dining, even when elaborate menus were prepared. Evidence of Nicholas II’s culinary preferences are indeed, often found in the surviving menus of that time.

Nicholas II started the day with rye bread with butter, boiled eggs and some sort of sliced meat, such as ham or bacon.

Among his favorite breakfast dishes was Dragomirovskaya porridge – named after the Russian military general Mikhail Ivanovich Dragomirov (1830-1905). Historian of Russian cuisine Pavel Syutkin explains that “Dragomirov porridge is… Buckwheat with mushrooms! However, there are a few secrets in the recipe. First, cook porridge by adding cream. Secondly, it is served in layers, like a pie. And thirdly, an indispensable addition to porridge is wild mushroom sauce.”

Lunch was the main meal of the day, and began with soup, such as solyanka [a thick and sour soup], ukha [fish soup] or shchi [cabbage soup]. Nicholas also had a fondness for cold Russian soups, like Botvinya, made with kvass, spinach, sorrel, and beetroot leaves. Soup was served with small vol-au-vents [small round pastry shells filled with a creamy mixture of meat or fish], rasstegai [small pies with fish or meat] or small croutons with cheese.

Nicholas also enjoyed pelmeni [meat dumplings] and vareniki [types of dumplings]. On the Imperial Yacht Shtandart, he often ate pan-fried dumplings.

Then came fish [pike perch or trout], roast [wild game or chicken], vegetables, Other favorites were Yalta-style Roasted Suckling Pig served with buckwheat stuffing and horseradish on the side, Mikhailovsky cutlets [later known as chicken Kiev] or Skobelev meatballs [Swedish meatballs], served with white sauce.

It is known that Nicholas II loved potatoes. Once in Crimea, he saw one of the officials carrying a sack of new potatoes from the market, and asked to sell him his purchase. In his youth, Nicholas II baked potatoes with his brothers and sisters in the Anichkov Palace park in St. Petersburg, and later with his son Tsesarevich Alexei in the Alexander Park.

It is interesting to note, that unlike many Russians, Nicholas did not like caviar. The officers of the Imperial Yacht Shtandart noted that “the Tsar was very fond of appetizers, except for caviar, salmon and salted fish.” There was a simple explanation for this – once while returning from the East in 1891, Nicholas was traveling along the Siberian route. At the stations, he was greeted with the traditional bread and salt, salted fish and caviar. The excessive summer heat coupled with all the salt, made him all the more thirsty. Needless to say, he developed a dislike for salted fish and caviar.

Dessert consisted of fruits, sweets, ice cream, jam, honey, as well as dishes such as pears in sherry or pie with rice porridge and lingonberries could be served. Lunch as a rule ended with delicious coffee.

PHOTO: сладости из империи / Sweets from the Empire

Nicholas II’s love of ice cream deserves special note in this article. Ice cream was especially popular at table of the last Emperor and his family. The recipe for “Romanov ice cream”, which was invented specifically for Nicholas II, has been preserved to this day. It included sugar, 10 egg yolks, heavy cream, whipping cream and vanilla. “I remember ice cream, the like of which I have never eaten anywhere else,” wrote the daughter of Grigorii Rasputin, Maria (1898-1977).

As far as alcohol, Nicholas was known as a teetotaler, despite the false allegations that he was a drunkard. As for wines, he only drank port at table. At first, the Emperor had his port brought from Portugal, but after he tried Crimean port wine, he switched. He rarely drank vodka and champagne.

At the same time, wines were served at the ceremonial dinners hosted in the palace, including Madeira, sherry, Bordeaux and Chablis wines, as well as Crimean wines, all from the well stocked cellars of the Alexander Palace.

FURTHER READING:

Imperial Dining – History of Court Dining: Dining with the Tsars

An Imperial Lunch in the Crimea

***

Paul Gilbert’s Romanov Bookshop on AMAZON

Please CLICK on the BANNER or LINK above to review my current selection of titles in hardcover, paperback and ebook editions. Listings provide a full description for each title, pricing and a Look inside feature.

Pensioner’s Stable Pavilion and Horse Cemetery at Tsarskoye Selo to open end of 2025

Posted on May 24 by Paul Gilbert

Photo: Press Service of the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Reserve

The Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Reserve have announced plans to complete the restoration of the Pensioner’s Stable Pavilion and Imperial Horse Cemetery, situated in the Alexander Park. The opening is scheduled for the end of 2025.

“This is a unique place where you can study the history of horses that served the Russian emperors and empresses. We managed to research the names of the horses, and we will recreate nameplates for each of the graves. For the first time, the current generation will see this place as it looked during Tsarist times,” said the director of the museum Olga Taratynova.

The idea for an equine graveyard was conceived by Emperor Nicholas I (1796-1855) when he commissioned the Scottish-born architect and landscape designer Adam Menelaws (1753-1831), to build a retirement home for his favourite horses in 1826.

Between 1827-1830, Menelas constructed a red-brick gothic fantasy in an English style quite out of keeping with the baroque and Russian-style buildings found throughout the Alexander and Catherine Parks. The Pavilion included a single tower with rooms for the stable boys, and low, arched windows in the stables, through which the elderly horses could peer. There was room for eight horses to live out their pension years in peace. The old horses were allowed to walk about in the meadow during summer.

It was upon the death of his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s (1798-1860) beloved horse “Beauty”, which belonged to her for 24 years, that Emperor Nicholas I issued an imperial edict stating that the horse should be buried there. The cemetery became the final resting place for the horses of Emperors Alexander I, Nicholas I, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, Alexander III and Nicholas II.

PHOTOS: 19th century drawings of the layout of the Pensioner’s Stable Pavilion and Imperial Horse Cemetery. The bottom drawing shows the graves (filled in red, with a number), the list on the lower right, gives the name of the horse buried in each grave.

Marble slabs mark the final resting places of the favorite horses of the Russian emperors and empresses. Here lies “L’Ami”, the horse on which Emperor Alexander I rode triumphantly into Paris at the end of the Napoleonic wars; “Flora”, the horse that carried the Emperor Nicholas I during the Siege of Varna in 1828; and “Cob” the horse, which the Emperor Alexander III used to ride, when he reviewed his troops.

In 1901, Emperor Nicholas II’s favourite horse “Bluebell”, from 1875, died at the age of 30. After her death, Nicholas II issued an edict for “Bluebell” to be buried in the Imperial Horse Cemetery.

In total, there are more than 110 graves in the cemetery. Each slightly larger than a human grave, the plots were originally decorated with gold leaf lettering. But the gilt paste has long since washed away as the headstones disintegrated over the years, due the harsh elements and from neglect.

PHOTOS: For decades, the gravestones were barely visible beyond heaps
of crumpled junk metal, through a haze of long grass and spring flowers.

Following the 1917 Revolution, the Bolsheviks used the Imperial Horse Cemetery for propaganda purposes, citing the exaggerated nonsense – which the Bolsheviks were famous for – that the Romanovs treated their horses better than they did the peasants.

During the Great Patriotic War (1941-45), the stable building was slightly damaged, and over time it fell into disrepair. For decades, the gravestones were barely visible beyond the broken iron fences, heaps of crumpled junk metal, and through a haze of long uncut grass and weeds. There were calls for the pavilion and cemetery’s restoration, but with so many of the city’s more mainstream museums in desperate need of funding, the Pensioner’s Stable Pavilion and horse cemetery was not considered a priority.

In 2001, work began on the excavation of some of the graves. Money had been raised abroad by French writer Jean-Louis Gouraud [b. 1943], who was so intrigued by the cemetery when he first saw it that he dedicated himself to campaigning for its restoration. Nearly $400,000 USD was raised. “It is an incredibly important historical site because it tells us so much about the Imperial Family, who loved their horses,” he said.

Work was temporarily halted, due to lack of funds, however, work resumed in 2019, when a comprehensive restoration project funded by the museum began. The facades of Pensioner’s Stable Pavilion were restored, general construction work was carried out, utilities and joinery elements were recreated.

In 2025, the restoration of the layout of the Imperial Horse Cemetery and tombstones began, as well as the recreation of marble nameplates with inscriptions for each grave will be completed.

After the restoration is completed, a new museum dedicated to the Imperial Horse Stable and Cemetery will open in the Pensioner’s Stable Pavilion. Among the exhibits will be a decorative harness and its festive trimmings for a donkey and cart presented to Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, by the Italian King Victor Emmanuel III (1869-1947) and his wife Queen Elena (1873-1952), during the visit of Nicholas II to Italy in October 1909.

The Tsesarevich’s Mentor. The Story of Charles Sydney Gibbes

Posted on May 23 by Paul Gilbert

On 29th May 2025, the premiere of a new Russian-language documentary-film entitled The Tsesarevich’s Mentor. The Story of Sydney Gibbes, will be shown in the Courtyard of the Sovereign Military Chamber, situated near the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo.

The film tells the story of Englishman Charles Sydney Gibbes (1876-1963), a Cambridge graduate who arrived in Russia in 1901. Gibbes lived and worked in St. Petersburg, and from 1908 he served as an English teacher for the children of Emperor Nicholas II – first for the Grand Duchesses, and later for Tsesarevich Alexei.

In August 1917, Gibbes voluntarily followed the Imperial Family into exile to Tobolsk. And after their tragic death in July 1918, he left Russia and returned to England, where he converted to Orthodoxy several years later. Gibbes was later ordained a priest, becoming Father Nikolai, and founded an Orthodox parish in Oxford, which still exists today.

PHOTO: Charles Sydney Gibbes and Tsesarevich Alexei Nikolaevich (circa 1914-16)

The documentary-film The Tsesarevich’s Mentor. The Story of Charles Sydney Gibbes was filmed by Studio First A with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. Director-producer Anna Chernakova, animation director Alexander Brunkovsky, script by Alexander Adabashyan and Yuri Bryers, composer Yuri Bryers.

The film uses documentary materials from Russian and British archival sources, with additional film segments filmed in the UK.

On a personal note, a documentary about Charles Sydney Gibbes is long overdue, and while I commend and support this Russian-language documentary about his life and service to the Imperial Family, it also begs the question . . . WHY has there never been a British-made documentary about Gibbes? – PG

18th century Chandeliers returned to the Alexander Palace State Halls

Posted on March 6 by Paul Gilbert

PHOTO © Tsarskoye Selo State Museum-Reserve

The restoration of the interiors of the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo continues . . . On 5th March 2025, three 18th century chandeliers were restored and returned to the palace’s beautiful ceremonial halls.

Recall that in 2012, “cosmetic repairs” were carried out in the Portrait Hall, the Semi-Circular Hall and the Marble (Billiard) Room. In June 2010, the State Halls, which are situated in the central part of the palace – between the east and west wings – were solemnly opened to visitors, as part of events marking the 300th anniversary of Tsarskoye Selo. However, despite the best efforts of curators, limited restoration funds, and dispersed collections, meant that the presentations were somewhat sparse and of varying quality. The State Halls were closed again in the Autumn of 2015 for additional restoration work, and reopened in 2021.

The three restored chandeliers were created according to a drawing by the famous Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi (1744-1817), who constructed the Alexander Palace between 1792–96. The chandeliers were made of made of bronze, glass and crystal, and designed to hold 100 candles each. They are the largest and heaviest chandeliers in the museum’s collection and designed for such a large number of candles. Each chandelier stands 3.5 meters [11.5 ft.] high, and weighs more than 240 kilograms [530 lbs.]. The restoration work was carried out by specialists from the Yuzhakova Studio workshop in St. Petersburg.