Next: 8 to 14 Mar 2027
Maslenitsa
Butter week: a week of blini with sour cream, caviar and jam before Orthodox Lent.
What is eaten for Maslenitsa
Maslenitsa is the last week before Orthodox Great Lent. Meat is already set aside, but butter, eggs, milk and fish are still allowed, so the week is given over to blini. The thin round pancakes are golden and warm like the sun that is coming back. They are eaten with melted butter, sour cream, caviar, smoked fish, honey or jam. Each day of the week has its own custom, from visiting in-laws to sledging. It ends on Forgiveness Sunday, when a straw figure of winter is burned.
The dishes
Written by the Thali desk with AI assistance. Background: "Maslenitsa" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from family to family and place to place. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Syrniki: Tatyana Morozyuk, color processing by Off-shell, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Smetana: Dobromila, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Blini: The original uploader was Hugo.arg at Lithuanian Wikipedia ., Public domain, source
- Sbiten: Schekinov Alexey Victorovich, CC BY-SA 3.0, source