17 Bizarre Foods Every Russian Grew Up With

Cruel prank idea: Tell your American friend it's whipped cream and jam and watch them experience the most intense sensory bafflement of their lives. Recipe here.

Imagine a cake layered with salted herring, cooked vegetables, and a coat of grated beets and mayo. It sounds gross but it'll grow on you, just like an actual fuchsia fur coat might. Recipe here.

It's the spongy lovechild of bologna and sausage, and every Russian-American kid who brings this in a sandwich for lunch is gonna get asked a lot of questions.

It'll probably freak non-Russians out a little, but really, it's just potato salad if it was jacked up on more veggies, mayo, and the aforementioned bologna. Looks foul, tastes incredible. Recipe here.

It's raw pig fat, and the more of it you have, the better!

This rye-honey-berry concoction comes in the most badass bottles. And it's slightly alcoholic! ;)

Basically, all the ingredients that complement vodka, plus mayo because WHY NOT. (Also popular in the Netherlands, sans the hard liquor component.)

It's cold kefir with cucumbers, bologna, and dill — it's like all the ingredients rejected from soup in the past got together and decided to puzzle us all. Recipe here.

Every type of meat + every type of sour thing = soup? We'll roll with it. Recipe here.

"Fruit soup" made from fruit juice and starch and commonly served as a dessert. In case you weren't sure yet, soup is kind of a big deal. Recipe here.

Chicken skin/an intestine stuffed with more meat and covered in gravy. In Russia, no meat is left uneaten. Recipe here.

This one's basically Eastern Europe's version of fruit punch, except that it's made by boiling fruits in water, which just seems like a more complicated way of going about the whole thing, but is totally worth it. Recipe here.

(Not to be confused with salad dressing.) Beets, potatoes, pickles, and pickled cabbage are the vegetables used most frequently in Russian cuisine, so it's no real surprise that they have a super healthy dish of their own. Recipe here.

You can fill them with anything, but fruit is common. Fruit dumpling! Recipe here.

Canned Atlantic herring is a staple of Russian cuisine and is not supposed to look like this. Ever.