Kotliarevskyi's Eneida as a Culinary Anthology — Lecture Series
The Poltava Museum launches six lectures on Kotliarevskyi's Eneida (1769-1838) as the first large-scale culinary register of Ukrainian cuisine in literary text.
In February 2026 the Poltava Folk Gastronomy Museum opens a new lecture cycle 'Kotliarevskyi's Eneida as a Culinary Anthology'. Six lectures, held every Wednesday, illuminate the fact that the burlesque poem by Ivan Kotliarevskyi (1769-1838), published in parts during 1798-1842, contains a detailed register of Ukrainian cuisine of the turn of the 18th-19th centuries. The poem mentions over eighty dishes — from halushky and varenyky to various types of varenukha, teterya, lemishka, putrya, orlyanochka, shulyky.
Cycle lecturers — philologists of the Korolenko Poltava National Pedagogical University, literary scholars of the Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the NAS of Ukraine, culinary historians. A separate lecture is devoted to Kotliarevskyi's 'Natalka Poltavka' (1819) — the first Ukrainian opera, where the everyday culinary culture of the Poltava village is also recorded. Each lecture is accompanied by a tasting of one dish from Eneida, recreated according to a reconstruction recipe. An exposition of original 19th-century editions of Eneida from rare libraries is in the main hall.
