Ukrainian cuisine through time
Chronology & Eras
A cuisine is a people’s longest memory: the pot outlives the state. Seven ages from Trypillian querns to the new Ukrainian cuisine — what was eaten, what it was eaten from, and which objects survive in museums.
- Ages
- 7
- Years covered
- 7,526
- Photographed
- 7
Trypillia
5500 BCE – 2750 BCE2,750 years37% of the whole chronology
What was eaten
Emmer wheat, barley, peas, lentils; grain ground on querns and baked into flatbread; milk and meat from domestic animals.
What it was eaten from
Painted ceramics — bowls, jugs, grain pithoi; stone querns; wooden utensils.
Scythian–Sarmatian
700 BCE – 4001,100 years15% of the whole chronology
What was eaten
Per Herodotus, meat was boiled in cauldrons; fermented mare's milk and cheese. The Black-Sea Greek colonies brought wine, olive oil and wheat.
What it was eaten from
Bronze cooking cauldrons, horn and wooden vessels, drinking rhytons; Greek amphorae and black-glaze ware.
Kyivan Rus
882 – 1240358 years5% of the whole chronology
What was eaten
Rye bread, porridges (buckwheat, millet), honey, honey-mead, kvass, river fish, turnip, cabbage, mushrooms.
What it was eaten from
Clay pots, jugs, korchaha vessels, wooden bowls and spoons, birch-bark utensils; querns; clay ovens.
Cossack age
1401 – 1800399 years5% of the whole chronology
What was eaten
Kulish, salamakha, teteria, tovchanyky, dried fish, salo; cooked communally in a cauldron over open fire.
What it was eaten from
Field cauldron, wooden spoons (each Cossack his own), makitra and makohin, barrels, shallow bowls, drinking horn.
Hetmanate Baroque
1601 – 1800199 years3% of the whole chronology
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (48.113.22), CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
What was eaten
Borsch, varenyky, halushky, home sausages, uzvar, honey cakes; officers' feasts.
What it was eaten from
Glazed dishware, painted tiles, pewter and copper vessels among the wealthy, silver at feasts, jugs for uzvar.
National revival
1801 – 1920119 years2% of the whole chronology
What was eaten
Potato, sunflower (oil), tomato take root; borsch, deruny, holubtsi, varenyky become emblems; ethnographers document the cuisine.
What it was eaten from
Folk painted ceramics (Opishnia, Kosiv), painted bowls, wooden spoons, makitras; the rushnyk as part of the table.
Modern
1901 – present125 years2% of the whole chronology
What was eaten
A new Ukrainian cuisine: fermentation, local produce, world-class restaurants; borsch inscribed as Ukraine's intangible heritage by UNESCO (2022).
What it was eaten from
Hand-made artisan ceramics, revival of traditional dishware, modern restaurant plating.
