Raspberry Yumminess

When I was growing up in the Northern Caucasus mountains, in the twilight years of the Soviet Union, the stores were mostly empty. And so, if you wanted pastries or desserts, you baked and made them yourself.

Food was seasonal, and many berries and fruit were picked in the wild or at collective farms, not purchased. Come July, the wild raspberry shrubs along the road that led to the telescope where my parents worked were dotted with red, and we would walk up and down, picking the berries. At home, we used raspberries to make a wonderful souffle that only required some egg whites and sugar. We called it “raspberry yumminess,” and yes, I know that’s cheesy, but the word “souffle” wasn’t really a part of our vocabulary back then. I might’ve heard it, but I had no idea what it actually stood for.

Back then, we only had a mechanical mixer that had to be cranked by hand to keep the beaters working. Beating the raspberries, egg whites and sugar into submission to create the airy souffle therefore required some serious muscle and persistence – and the task was thus usually given to me. My elbow still has phantom pains when I remember how the red, sticky mass would slowly grow in volume, becoming pinker and lighter in the process. If all that cranking of the hand mixer wasn’t enough, there were leftover egg yolks that also had to be beaten with sugar to create a very simple kogel-mogel, which is similar to eggnog.

Incidentally, kogel-mogel is mentioned in Korney Chukovsky’s famous Doctor Aybolit as a medicine given, along with chocolate, to the numerous suffering African animals that the doctor saves in the book. The choice of these two as treatment always seemed odd to me, but also fitting, as this was a children’s book, and what child doesn’t love chocolate.

Fast-forward a few dozen years, and I am talking with my childhood family doctor about my little daughter’s sore throat when he tells me:

“Or, you could give her a piece of chocolate, it’s good to soothe her irritated throat.”

“What, like in Doctor Aybolit?”

“Precisely,” he says. “Did you know that, in the 1920s, there was a whooping cough epidemic in St. Petersburg, and physicians accidentally discovered that giving children chocolate helped stop their bouts of coughing?”

So, it turns out Chukovsky got it right: chocolate is a medicine!

Kogel-mogel still seemed iffy, even though I remembered that, when I used to sing in a school choir, we would drink raw eggs straight from the shell before the performance, in order to give ourselves clearer voices. Well, it turns out that, while cold- or room-temperature kogel-mogel is a dessert, heated up it’s considered a home remedy for sore throats.

Anyway, when it was time to serve the dessert, the raspberry souffle was piled on small dishes and dotted on top with a bit of kogel-mogel, its bright yellow standing out against the no-less bright pink of the souffle. It was delicious and fragrant, light and simultaneously filling.

At the tender age of 15, I left home to study abroad and then live in Moscow, and did not make the raspberry souffle again until last summer, when, thanks to the lockdown, I found myself back in my hometown in the mountains.

Come July, the raspberry shrubs along the road to the telescope were once again dotted with red, and I took my daughter out in her stroller to pick the berries. She ate half of them as we went, but some made it home, and sometimes there were even enough to make the souffle. Which we did. And it was still as good as in the old days.

Childhood memories are a fickle thing, but the ones tethered on smell and taste seem to have more truth to them. And now that I have an electric mixer, making this “raspberry yumminess” is fast and easy.

Raspberry Soufflé

1 cup fresh raspberries

⅓ cup white sugar

1 egg white

Put all of your ingredients into a large bowl and beat with mixer until a light, airy, pink souffle is formed.

Beat 1 egg yolk with a couple tablespoons of sugar, until the sugar dissolves.

To serve, put the raspberry souffle in ramekins and add a couple teaspoons of kogel-mogel on top.

Serves 4 to 6, depending on portions, and it’s best eaten fresh.

For those concerned about salmonella when eating uncooked eggs, place the filled ramekins in a 350º F oven for 20 minutes.

Or you can try making meringues by placing dollops of the mixture onto parchment lined cookie sheets can cooking at 200º F for 1-2 hours, until they form a hard, dry shell.

Whatever the case, don’t make this recipe if you don’t feel safe. Just step out into the sunshine and eat a cup of fresh raspberries.