Cucumaria and water in a jar: the strangest canned food from the time of the USSR

Perhaps the contents of some of these jars we would be happy to try ourselves! Too bad they don’t make them anymore. So here’s what we lost!

Cucumaria is a genus of echinoderms in the class Holothurians, which has about 50 different species. But we often hear another name – sea cucumber. In the USSR, canned foods containing cucumaria were sorted with lightning speed: the tender pulp of sea cucumber was not spoiled even by a brutal tomato filling.

Whale meat was on store shelves until 1987, when whaling was abolished in the USSR. Before that, such preserves could be easily bought in the Far East: the product looked a bit like a stew, but was much softer.

It would seem, why conserve water? But the inscription on the bank explains everything. The instructions say, “Save canned water.” Collect and drink rainwater, fill all the containers at your disposal.

Already from these words it becomes clear: the water is for those who survived the sinking and found themselves in a lifeboat or on a raft. Before preservation, the water was boiled and a little ascorbic acid was added to it.

If you have the old Soviet “Book of Tasty and Healthy Foods”, you probably saw pasta rolled up in a glass jar on its page. This canned food was another “liberator” from kitchen slavery: after all, it was believed that the Soviet people should not waste time cooking, and even Khrushchev’s houses were built in the hope that all their inhabitants would eat in canteens.

This dish served the same purpose: canned borscht was supposed to liberate Soviet women from standing in front of the stove. It was prepared according to all the classic rules: on a rich meat broth, with roasted vegetables and potatoes. All that remained was to open it and heat it.