Changes

Of desserts that were served at Judge Soplica's we know nothing. Most of the meals described in the poem were interrupted in some way before the staff waiters even had the chance to bring in the sweets. The only sweet treat mentioned in ''Pan Tadeusz'' is ''kisiel'' and even only in a proverb at that.

In other words, "tenth water on kisiel" refers to a very distant relation. The saying is still used in modern Polish, just as ''kisiel'' is still a popular dessert. It's also a very ancient one, although originally it wasn't sweet at all. The very word ''kisiel'' comes from the verb "''kisić''", "to become make sour". The ancient Slavic ''kisiel'' was a mouth-puckering white jelly made from a fermented mixture of water and oat or rye meal. A similar concoction is still used in Poland as the basis for ''żurek'', or white borscht, one of the most popular Polish soups. It was made just as Mickiewicz described it: by pouring water on oatmeal and leaving the starchy solution to ferment until it becomes sour and gelatinous enough to be cut with a knife. Fir ancient Slavs, this was one of the principal staples. In Russian fairy tales, the A mythical land of plenty is described in Russian fairy tales as rivers of milk between banks of ''kisiel'' (which is probably how ''kisiel'' was originally served). ''The Tale of Bygone Years'', a 12th-century chronicle of Kievan Rus, even tells a story of how ''kisiel'' saved the city of Belgorod from an invasion by the nomadic Pechenegs. During the siege, a respected old Belgorodian man advised his compatriots to dig a deep well, fill it with water and oat starch, and wait until it goes went sour. Then, they invited Pecheneg envoys into the city to show them the well, let them try the ''kisiel'' and convince them that they were getting their food straight from the ground, so any further siege made no sense and it would be best for the Pechenegs to go back to the steppe and leave Belgorod alone.<ref>{{Cyt

| Peel and cut the apples, boil them in water until soft and press through a sieve. Season with cinnamon and sugar, add as much water as to get six glasses of the mixture and combine part some of it with a glass of potato starch. Bring the rest to boil, add the potato-starch mixture and stir for a few minutes while cooking. Wash the mould with water, sprinkle with sugar, fill with the kisiel and leave in a cold place.

And finally, just to make the dessert a tad more diverse and make use of some other autumn fruits, let 's add one more recipe from the same source, this one for pear compote. In modern Polish, "''kompot''" refers to a popular watery drink made from fruits boiled with sugar. In the 19th century, though, the meaning was closer to the French original, that is, a thick and very sweet fruit syrup. In fact, you could simply buy a tin of pears in syrup, pour them into bowls, add some spices and the effect would be almost the same.