Kutia opens Sviata Vecheria, the Holy Supper eaten on Christmas Eve in Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Polish and other Slavic Orthodox and Greek Catholic households, where it is traditionally the first of twelve meatless dishes served that night, one for each of the twelve apostles. The base grain, most often whole wheat berries or barley, is boiled slowly until soft and then mixed with honey, ground poppy seed, and chopped walnuts or other nuts, sometimes with raisins or other dried fruit added as well; the dish is served cold or at room temperature rather than hot.
Folklorists working on Slavic peasant custom have long argued that a dish built from grain, honey and poppy seed, eaten at both the year's great midwinter feast and at funeral and memorial meals, carries traces of a pre-Christian agricultural and ancestor rite that the arrival of Christianity did not erase so much as fold into its own calendar; other scholars read the same evidence more cautiously, noting that grain porridges are a natural ceremonial food in any grain growing culture and that the specific pre-Christian rite kutia is supposed to descend from is not itself directly attested in surviving sources. The atlas records the question as genuinely debated rather than resolving it in either direction, since the case for an older ancestor is suggestive rather than proven.