User:Kpalion/History of Polish cuisine

The history of Polish cuisine has been shaped by such factors as the country's climate, a mostly agrarian lifestyle with parallel strains of rustic and luxurious culinary tradition, religious dietary requirements of the Catholic Church, external influences coming from various directions, as well as periods of scarcity and culinary monotony, notably during the Second World and Cold Wars.

Due to Poland's location in a moderate temperate climate with frosty winters and a relatively short growing season, storage of food for several colder months, when fresh produce becomes largely unavailable, is a necessity. Before the advent of modern preservation techniques, such pasteurization and refrigeration, Poles relied on such traditional methods as salting-curing, pickling by lactic fermentation or acidification in vinegar, as well as smoking and drying. As a result, salty, sour and smoky flavors are typical of many Polish foods. Traditional Polish cooking is highly seasonal. Add examples of foods availably only during certain seasons.

The official adoption of Western-rite Christianity in the 10th century CE meant that the natural seasonality has been compounded with the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar of alternating festive and fasting periods. Polish people still associate certain foods with specific religious holidays, such as Easter and Christmas. Many Poles fast every Friday, the day of the week associated with the crucifixion of Jesus, by refraining from eating land-animal meat and opting for fish instead.

Throughout most of Poland's history, it was a predominantly agricultural country with a large portion of the population living off the fields and pastures which they tended themselves. An agrarian lifestyle with an emphasis on self-sufficience has played an important role in the shaping of Polish cuisine. Food production has always been supplemented with foraging and hunting in forests, enriching the Polish table with a variety of berries, mushrooms and game. An income gap, which grew in the early modern period between the peasants and petty nobility on the one hand and affluent grain-exporting magnates on the other, led to two separate strains in Polish culinary history – a simple rustic fare dominated by groats and flour-based foods, cabbage and root vegetables, as well as animal fats as a substitute for meat, versus lordly cuisine featuring choice meats, expensive sugar and exotic spices. The latter was played down under the Communist regime, but has been making a comeback in the 21st century and Polish cuisine draws from both currents today.


 * foreign influence: English, French, Italian, German, Czech, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Russian, Tatar, Jewish, Armenian, Turkish, etc.
 * periods of scarcity: importance of culinary creativity

Middle Ages
Information about Polish medieval cuisine is scant. No recipes from that period have been preserved, leaving historians to speculate on the subject of Polish medieval menus from archeological finds and such surviving documents as purchase orders for the royal pantry, compounded with analogies from other nations and more recent ethnographic sources. In the early centuries of Polish statehood, i.e., roughly 10th–13th centuries, there was little differentation in terms of food consumption across social strata, as both poorer and wealthier families produced their own food. Subsistence farming was largely complemented with hunting, fishing, and foraging.

Millet – originally foxtail millet, but later replaced by proso millet, better suited to the Polish climate – was the principal crop, typically consumed in the form of gruel or porridge and possibly flat breads. Polish gardens provided various kinds of cabbage and kale, legumes – such as flat beans and lentils – and root vegetables. Peas and cabbage – fresh or pickled – were consumed all year round by all levels of the society. Root vegetables included parsnips, skirrets, carrots – then larger, whiter and more similar to the former – as well as beets, rutabagas, radishes, and turnips. The wife of Piast the Wheelwright, a legendary peasant progenitor of Poland's first royal dynasty, was called Rzepka, or "Turnip", illustrating the vegetable's importance to early Poles of any station. Some of the vegetables popularly consumed in this period – such as black bindweed, alexanders, goosefoot, buckler sorrel, and nipplewort – gradually disappeared from noble and then from peasant tables in later times. The giant hogweed, known in Polish as barszcz, was used to make a soup to which it lent its name. Additionally, apples, pears, plums, sweet and sour cherries, and hazelnuts were grown in the orchards.

All social groups consumed fairly large amounts of meat, mostly pork. Pigs, resembling small wild boars, were grazed in oak and beech forests. Cattle was raised mostly for draft and milk, so beef was a more expensive treat. Both of these kinds of meat, as well as poultry, were usually spit-roasted, but also stewed, boiled, barbecued or pickled in their own jelly. The immense forests, which then covered most of the country, were a source of game, which served as an important addition to the meat of domestic animals. Poles commonly hunted the small game, such as hares, beavers, badgers, partridges, and black grouse, and occasionally the big game, from roe deer to red deer, elk (moose), wild boars, bears, wisent, to aurochs, the now-extinct ancestor of domestic cattle.


 * Seasonality, pickled vegetables, salted meat, rosół
 * Fasting and abstinence in the Roman Catholic Church. Polish rivers abounded in fish, including carp, ide, roach, asp, barbel, tench, bream, vimba, wels catfish, zander, perch, pike, trout, lavaret, grayling and sturgeon. Salted or dried marine fish, like herring and cod were also available.
 * Wheat and rye replacing millet
 * Banquet at Wierzynek's
 * Late medieval royal cuisine
 * Table etiquette, Słota's Bread Table

Vegetables were always cooked. Only fruits were consumed raw as desserts for the rich.

Medieval poems
Fish, salty and fetid our fathers ate, Fresh and wriggling we catch in the sea today. ... They used to chase wild boars and pursue deer, but we Hunt ocean monsters and the riches of the sea.
 * Latin: 
 * Pisces salsos et foetentes apportabant alii,
 * Palpitantes et recentes nunc apportant filii. ...
 * Agitabant patres nostri cervos, apros, capreas,
 * Hii vanantur monstra maris et opes aequoreas. 

Many a man at the table's found Who like a dumb ox sits around, Like a pole stuck in the ground. He doesn't have his own plate, Nor will he cut for his mate. He feels it's sweet to grab before Other people from the bowl. Let his mouth become all sore! Among ladies fair he sits, But with dirty hands he eats. Praise will not come from their lips.
 * Polish: 
 * A mnogi idzie za stoł,
 * Siędzie za nim jako woł,
 * Jakoby w ziemię wetknął koł.
 * Nie ma talerza karmieniu swemu,
 * Eżby i ukroił drugiemu.
 * A grabi się w misę przod,
 * Iż mu miedźwno jako miod.
 * Bogdaj mu zaległ usta wrzod!
 * A je z mnogą twarzą cudną,
 * A będzie mieć rękę brudną.
 * Ona też ma k niemu rzecz obłudną.

And what a welcome they did get! How they were honoured, served and dined On bread and victuals, and on wine, All kinds of birds and fish, and beef, As well as plenty other meat...
 * French: 
 * Comment il furent receü,
 * Honnouré, servi et peü
 * De pain, de vin et de vitaille,
 * De toute volille et d’aumaille,
 * De poissons et d’autre vïande...

Old Polish cuisine

 * Italian influence: Bona Sforza
 * New veggies
 * Income levels in the Polish society
 * Basic and medium diets
 * Mikołaj Rej, honest man's cuisine
 * Beer
 * Poor man's diet
 * Lordly and luxurious diets, Baroque cuisine
 * Feasts: Sapieha, Wiśniowiecki, Ossoliński
 * Compendium ferculorum
 * Forks: first appeared on royal tables in early 16th century, commonplace since the 17th cent.
 * Columbian exchange: turkey, pumpkin, potatoes
 * Coffee
 * Vodka
 * Saxon times

Development of modern Polish cuisine

 * Stanislaus Augustus and Paul Tremo
 * Wojciech Wielądko, The Perfect Cook
 * French influcence
 * English influence
 * "English" kitchen stoves replacing hearths
 * Potatoes and beet sugar
 * Vodka and propination laws
 * Partitions: end of lavish feasts; thrift and reverence for food even in noble cuisine
 * Pan Tadeusz
 * Notion of national cuisine (= noble cuisine) and national dishes
 * Development of Christmas traditions
 * Regional differences due to partitions
 * Russian influence
 * German influence
 * Austrian influence
 * Ćwierczakiewiczowa and other 19th-cent. cookbooks
 * Peasant cuisine
 * City cuisine
 * Eating out

Lean years

 * German occupation
 * Post-war resettlement: recipes from the Eastern Borderlands moving west
 * Communist standardization
 * Meat products
 * Bread
 * Changing ways of life: urbanized countryside, rusticalized towns
 * Health consciousness
 * Inventiveness
 * Paprykarz szczeciński
 * Blandness
 * Citrus fruits only available on Christmas
 * Milk bars
 * Food shortages

Third Republic

 * Supermarkets, fast food, ethnic restaurants
 * "Small gastronomy" and roadside inns
 * Renewed interest in old Polish cuisine
 * Molecular cuisine in Poland: Amaro