Footnote

BH has now started to take a look at the book noticed at reference 1, and this morning drew my attention to the bit about a pie made with the spinal cord of a sturgeon. Which sounds a bit grim to the English ear, carrying a quite different emotional load than the Russian words would to a Russian.

A quick Bing reveals that this pie is indeed a traditional Russian pie, using the slightly softer phrase 'spinal marrow' instead of 'spinal cord'. More popular in the past, or at least more often made, than it is now. See, for example, reference 2.

A case, I suppose, of where a translator can't win. If he translates literally, as perhaps Fineburg has done, the result is rather off-putting to the soft Western ear, no longer accustomed to eating offal and innards. Although, that said, FIL used to talk of chicken giblet pie as being a (Portsmouth back street) delicacy of his childhood of the 1920's. And some of the Chinese restaurants in central London serve some interesting dishes of the same sort.

If the translator tries to capture the spirit of the thing rather than the gritty details, he might introduce a phrase somehow capturing all of delicacy, rich, traditional, motherhood & apple pie. But you can't have both. The literal meaning of the phrase and its emotional baggage cannot coexist in English.

PS 1: the snap above is of a modern version of the pie, made with salmon. Sturgeon might be a protected species...

PS 2: I am reminded that 'motherhood & apple pie' used, in my days in the world of work, to be a phrase of abuse used by management consultants when reviewing other peoples' work. A phrase of abuse meaning trite, obvious, adding no value. Waste of space.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-great-patriotic-war.html.

Reference 2: https://www.rbth.com/russian-kitchen/328385-fish-kulebyaka-luxurious-russian-pie.

Reference 3: https://milkandbun.com/. The source of the picture. 'My name is Mila and I’m founder of [the] milkandbun blog. I love cooking and especially baking, as well as food styling and photography. When I cook I try to come up with simple and easy, tasty and healthy recipes. Though I make some complicated dishes time to time, like [the] famous Russian pie – koulebyaka. I’m Russian, but currently live in Dubai. Many of my recipes I blog about are from traditional Russian cuisine, which for some people seems exotic but for me is pretty normal, and it’s not only borsch and blini'.