In medieval Slavic households, meals were not divided into starter-main-dessert: everything revolved around the large clay stove, the pech, heart of the izba. Kasha (grain porridge), the daily staple, slowly cooked there; rye bread and salt sat at the center as symbols of hospitality; kvass quenched thirst; and during ancestral vigils, honey-sweetened dishes connected the living to the dead. A portion of each dish was left by the hearth—for the Domovoi.

Toasted buckwheat groats, slowly steamed in the dying heat of the clay stove, are the soul of medieval Slavic cooking. Its nutty, earthy flavor embodies the hearth itself—it is the preferred offering left for the house spirit.