User:Kpalion/Old Polish cuisine

Old Polish cuisine (Polish: kuchnia staropolska) is the cooking style typical for Polish culture in the early modern period, that is, approximately in the 16th–18th centuries.

Standards of living

Affordability level	Social groups	Meat and animal fats	Fish	Cereals and bread	Fruits and vegetables	Dairy	Spices and other	Beverages
Poor	Landless peasants, petty nobility, town plebs	Pork, once or twice a year	Herrings, occasionally	Dominant food group; bran, groats, unleavend flatbread; couch grass and mannagrass sometimes used as cereals	Sorrel, goosefoot, nettle, forest berries, hazelnuts, acorns	None	Salt, sparingly	Water, sometimes beer
Basic	Largest share of the population: middle-income peasants, manor servants, low-income townfolk, lower nobility	Pork, beef, poultry	Herrings	Dominant food group; groats and farinaceous dishes	Cabbage, carrots, peas, flat beans, rutabagas, turnips, beets	Milk, butter, cheese, eggs	Salt	Beer, vodka
Medium	Affluent peasants, lower clergy, court servants, middle-income townsfolk and nobility	Pork, beef, poultry; fairly large amounts of lard and suet	Herrings	Groats, bread, and farinaceous dishes	Same as above, in larger quantities	Same as above, in larger quantities	Various spices	Beer, vodka
Lordly	Affluent nobility, higher clergy, town patriciate	Plentiful and varied, three times the meat intake of an average modern Pole	Herrings, crawfish	Wheat bread and rolls, cakes, tortes	Plentiful and varied, but mostly domestic	Large amounts of butter and cream	Pepper, saffron, almonds, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, truffles and king boletes	Wine, sometimes mead
Luxurious	Royal familiy and court, magnates, bishops	Game, pheasants, grouses, fieldfares, oysters, escargots, frogs, turtles, etc.	Carp, salmon, trout, sturgeon	Same as above	Exotic fruits, e.g., lemons, oranges, dates, figs, pineapples	Same as above	Same as above; also, cane sugar	Expensive wines and mead

Eating habits

Feasting and fasting

Prince Sapieha's Easter banquet given during the reign of Vladislaus IV:

• Four roasted wild boars stuffed with suckling pigs, ham, and sausages
• Twelve roasted stags with gilded antlers, stuffed with hares, grouses, bustards, and ptarmigans
• 52 large cakes and pies, including mazurkas, all richly decorated with dried fruits and nuts
• 365 yeast cakes (babki)
• Old Hungarian, Cypriot, Spanish, and Italian wines
• 8,700 quarts of mead for the servants

King Michael Korybut Wiśniowiecki's wedding with Eleonor Maria Josefa Habsburg in 1670:

• 7,000 guests
• 8 days
• 500 elks
• 100 stags
• several dozens of wild boars
• 400 oxen
• 6,000 calfs
• 4,000 rams
• 4,000 lambs
• 2,000 hares
• 300 pheasants
• 10,000 partridges
• 12,000 turkeys
• fruits and fruit preserves, jellies, marzipan, and other confectionery

Jerzy Ossoliński's purely Polish banquet:

Foreign ingredient	Domestic substitute
Wine (for sauces)	Cherry juice
Almonds	Hazelnuts
Raisins	Candied cherries and other fruits
Lemons	Sour apples
Pepper and ginger	Horseradish and mustard
Olives and capers	Mushrooms
Wine vinegar	Honey vinegar
Imported wines	Beer, mead, Polish wines

Food and drink

Fruits and vegetables

(including nuts and mushrooms)

Soups, sauces and condiments

Gąszcz

thick sauce of vegetables or fruits that are boiled and then sieved

Jucha

any sauce or gravy for meat or fish dishes; later narrowed down to sauce or soup made from blood

Polewka

light, runny sauce or soup prepared without meat stock

Salsa, salsza

(from Italian salsa) sour sauce seasoned with vinegar and pepper

Sapor

(from Latin sapor, "flavor") thick aromatic sauce

Barszcz

any sour soup, typically based on fermented hogweed

Kontuza

boiled and sieved meat mixed with its stock

Menestra

(from Italian minestra, cf. minestrone) thick vegetable soup

Potaź

(from French potage) meat or vegetable broth served over vegatables and pieces of bread, considered a typically French dish

Rosół

soup made by boiling salted meat

Sources

• Bockenheim, Krystyna (1999). Przy polskim stole [At the Polish Table] (in Polish). Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie. ISBN 83-7023-661-8.
• Chwalba, Andrzej, ed. (2008). Obyczaje w Polsce: Od średniowiecza do czasów współczesnych [Customs of Poland: From the Middle Ages to Modern Times] (in Polish). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. ISBN 978-83-01-14253-7.
• Dembińska, Maria (1999). Weaver, William Woys (ed.). Food and Drink in Medieval Poland: Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-3224-0.
• Flandrin, Jean-Louis (2002). L'ordre des mets [Arranging the meal] (in French). Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob. ISBN 2-7381-1052-5.
• Gołębiowski, Łukasz (1830). Domy i dwory [Houses and manors] (in Polish). Warszawa: N. Glücksberg.
• Lemnis, Maria; Vitry, Henryk (1979). W staropolskiej kuchni i przy polskim stole [Old Polish Traditions in the Kitchen and at the Table] (in Polish). Warszawa: Interpress.
• Łozińska, Maja; Łoziński, Jan (2013). Historia polskiego smaku: kuchnia, stół, obyczaje [History of the Polish Taste: Kitchen, Table, Customs] (in Polish). Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. ISBN 978-83-7705-269-3.
• Meyzie, Philippe (2010). L'alimentation en Europe à l'époque moderne [Food in Europe of the early modern period] (in French). Paris: Armand Colin. ISBN 978-2-200-25979-2.
• Pasikowski, Jerzy (2010). "Wpływy kuchni innych narodów na kształt kuchni polskiej" [Influence of other nations' cuisines on the shape of Polish cuisine]. NewsGastro. Jerzy Pasikowski radzi (in Polish). AA Catering Maria Wieczorek. Retrieved 2015-04-10.