Page "Kissel" Paragraph 2

Its name is derived from a Slavic word meaning " sour " ( cf.

Russian кислый kisly ), as sour fruits are preferred.

In the Russian Primary Chronicle there is a story of how kissel saved a 10th-century city, besieged by nomadic Pechenegs in 997 ( the first mention of this type of dessert ).

When the food in the city became scarce and a hunger started, the people of the city followed an advice of one old man, who told them to make kissel from the remnants of grain, and a sweet drink from the last mead they could find.

Then they filled a wooden container with the kissel, and another one with the mead drink, put those containers into the holes in the ground and made up two fake wells over them.

When the Pechenegian ambassadors came into the city, they saw how the Russians took the food from those " wells ", and the Pechenegs even were allowed to taste the sweet kissel dessert and mead beverage.

Impressed by that show and degustation, Pechenegs decided to lift the siege and to go away, having concluded that the Russians were mysteriously fed from the earth itself.