Next: 8 to 14 Mar 2027
Maslenitsa, Butter Week
The last week of dairy before Great Lent, when blini are filled with tvorog and syrniki are fried by the plateful.
Cheeses for Maslenitsa, Butter Week
Maslenitsa is the week before Great Lent in the Orthodox calendar. Meat has already been set aside, but butter, eggs and dairy are still allowed, and the week is a farewell to them. Blini are cooked every day and eaten with butter, sour cream and tvorog, the fresh curd cheese of Russia and Ukraine, which also goes into syrniki, thick fried cheese pancakes, and baked tvorog casseroles. The week ends on Forgiveness Sunday, the Sunday of Cheesefare, when a straw figure of winter is burned. On the next day, Clean Monday, Lent begins and dairy leaves the table until Easter.
The cheeses
Written by the EveryCheese desk with AI assistance. Background: "Maslenitsa" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. 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.
- Tvorog: Loyna, CC BY-SA 2.5, source
- Quark: SKopp, CC BY-SA 4.0, source