At the Russo-Ukrainian table of the 1940s, the meal was not ordered as starter-main-dessert but in four parts: zakuski (small savory bites like salo or herring), pervoe (the "first," a foundation soup such as borscht or shchi), vtoroe (the "second," a hearty dish of kasha, meat, or vareniki), and tret'e (the "third": a drink like kvass or kompot, sometimes sweet). At the front, this pattern was reduced to a single mess tin from the field kitchen, but the spirit remained: hot, nourishing, and black bread everywhere.

Dense, nearly black, slightly sour and scented with coriander in its Borodinsky version, rye bread is the common thread of the entire Soviet table: it is broken with salo, dipped in borscht, and fermented it becomes kvass. On the front at Odessa and Sevastopol, a crust of this bread was worth its weight in gold.