Mystery recipe from an old kitchen

A few weeks ago, we went to my parents’ apartment and tore the kitchen apart. Literally. The old Soviet-era kitchen with ill-fitting cabinets and pipes that often screamed when you turned the water on is finally getting renovated! My parents have been wanting to do it for ages, so they’re thrilled that the project is finally underway. J and I had the task of going there along with the apartment’s old owner and removing all the old kitchen furniture and appliances. Since we weren’t keeping the horrible old cabinets, which had been in place for over 25 years, everything could be broken down. I mostly just helped carry things and left the destructive work to the men. At some point, when most of the cabinets had been removed, I noticed a slip of paper on the ground among the debris. It was an old recipe! Or, more precisely, half a recipe. I think it had been stuck to the back or side of a cabinet, and half of it had been torn off. I was left with a portion of what struck me as a very odd ingredients list:

4 verivorsti
2 kodust hakkliha
jupp vorsti
1 kg maksa
3 südametükki
valmis pannkoogisegu
5 viinerit
2 väikest seapekitükki (?)
ilus Ranvere supikogu
Milli seened
5 lestapead
sealiha valmis lõik
või

Translation:

4 blood sausages
2 mixed ground beef and pork
bit of sausage
1 kg liver
3 heart pieces
pancake mix
5 wieners
2 small pieces pork fat (?)
lovely Ranvere soup mix
Milli mushrooms (or Milli’s mushrooms)
5 plaice heads
prepared piece of pork
butter

Yum, right? I read the first few ingredients aloud, and the apartment’s former owner said, “Hmm, could be for seljanka. My wife’s father [who used to own and live in that same apartment] makes it with all kinds of organs and stuff in it.” Seljanka is a thick, tomato-based Russian soup that contains various types of meat and chopped pickles. It’s quite popular here in Estonia. I remember when I visited with my family in 1998, my brother made it a point to order seljanka everywhere we went so that he could compare different versions.

The little scrap of recipe is still quite cryptic. If it’s a soup recipe, why the pancake mix? Perhaps to act as a thickener? Like in many old Estonian recipes I’ve seen, the list is not very precise. It says “2 mixed ground beef and pork” (a mixture known as kodune hakkliha in Estonia), so does that mean two packages? How big? Perhaps in Soviet times there was only one size. The word ilus before the soup mix makes me smile– was it a part of the brand name, or did he really want to say to use only lovely soup mix for this recipe? And what are Milli’s mushrooms? I wonder when the recipe was written, and whether the author looked all over for the paper after it fell behind a cabinet. Or maybe he’d made the soup so much he didn’t even need the recipe, just made it from memory. Although I’d never make this recipe, even if I did possess the rest of it, I love contemplating this little glimpse into the life of somebody who lived in that apartment long before I did, and who doubtless endured greater hardships than I ever have.

Anyone else have any ideas on what this recipe could be for? Have you ever found any interesting old handwritten recipes?

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