Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/375

Rh "What is pilmania?"

"The best thing imaginable for this kind of travelling. It consists of a piece of cooked meat—beef or mutton—about the size of a grape, seasoned and wrapped in a thin covering of dough, and then rolled in flour. We had at starting nearly a bushel of these dough-covered meat-balls frozen solid and carried in a bag. When we reached a station where we wished to dine, sup, or breakfast, we ordered the samovar, and said we had pilmania, before getting out of the sleigh. A pot of water was immediately

put on the fire and heated to the boiling-point; then a double handful of our pilmania was dropped into the pot, the water was brought to the boil again and kept simmering for a few minutes. The result was a rich meat-soup which Delmonico could not surpass.

"The bag containing the frozen pilmania seemed to be filled with walnuts. Our cabbage-soup was in cakes like small bricks, and our roast-beef resembled red granite. We carved the beef with a hatchet, and