The fig might seem to be an exotic fruit, but it has been a culinary treat in Russia for ages. Hundreds of years ago it was brought by Asian merchants to Muscovy. Most commonly called a wine berry, this fruit was written about in many ancient books.
Figs are an amazing fruit. They are harvested twice a season, once as early as August and the second time in September. The fig holds the record for mentions in the Bible and may well be considered one of the oldest known products to have appeared in the diet of mankind.
Despite the fact that the habitat of the Old Testament plant — the Ficus genus of the mulberry family —was the Middle East, it is difficult to call it exotic in Russia. Figs have been firmly a part of Russian cuisine for a long time. The Russian word for fig — инжир ( ) — is Turkic.
The Ipatiev Chronicle which describes the campaign of Russian princes against the Polovtsians in 1183, mentions a “fig fording place” across the Dnieper. Whether merchants carried these sweet fruits across the ford or whether something about the the fording place reminded them of figs is impossible to know today. But the word for figs seems to have been familiar at the time.
But then it was displaced by home-grown Russian fruit for many centuries. Wine berry, смоква (smokva), smokva berry, Smyrna berry (apparently in honor of the Greek trading city of Smyrna, today's Turkish Izmir) — these are just some of the names of figs that can be found in ancient books. L.