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With these words begins the last chapter, or Book XII , of ''Pan Tadeusz''. Its creation must have been overseen by at least three muses: Calliope (who presides over epic poetry), Thalia (responsible for the comical elementscomic relief) and Gastronomia (not listed among the classic nine). As [[Epic Cooking: In the Tribune's Kitchen|we've seen in the previous post]], Adam Mickiewicz, the epic poem's author, took inspiration from two old Polish cookbooks. From one (''The Perfect Cook'' by Wojciech Wielądko) he took the title, from the other (''Compendium Ferculorum'' by Stanisław Czerniecki), everything else.
Book XII is almost all about a fictional banquet, said to be the last truly Old Polish feast. It is held by Judge Soplica in an abandoned castle about a mile away from his own manor called Soplicowo. Tribune Hreczecha, ever the Renaissance man, who served as the master chef in Book XI, now replaces his flyswatter with a ceremonial staff indicating that he is now the master of ceremonies. It is him who, in the Judge's name, welcomes and seats the guests, and decides what dishes, in what order and on what tableware are to be served.
== What Did They Eat? ==
When describing the banquet that was going to be "the last Old Polish feast", Mickiewicz hoped to share with his readers the feeling of nostalgia for foodways that had already been gone by his time. What he wanted to convey was, this Old Polish cuisine no longer exists, no one knows these dishes anymore, no one remembers their tastes, even their names now sound unfamiliar. How did he achieve this effect? That's simple: all you need to do is to take a hundred-odd-years-old cookery book and list the quaintest-sounding dish names.
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The main body of ''Compendium Ferculorum'' (''A Collection of Dishes'') by Stanisław Czerniecki (pronounced ''stah-{{small|NEE}}-swahf churn-{{small|YET}}-skee''), the cookbook that Mickiewicz loved to read while pining for Polish grub, follows a well-thought-out structure. It is divided into three chapters, each containing one hundred recipes (more or less; the author did cheat with the numbering a little), respectively, for meat dishes, fish dishes, and dairy and other dishes. At the end of each chapter, Czerniecki added ten bonus recipes, as well as one "master chef's secret".
These three "secrets" were recipes that required the highest level of culinary expertise, attainable only by the most skilled of chefs. Czerniecki divulges them as a sort of present for his readers. The first of these secrets is a recipe for a capon in a bottle. The trick was to carefully skin the capon (a well-fattened castrated rooster), put the skin inside a bottle, fill it with a mixture of milk and eggs, and sew it up, then plug the bottle and plunge into boiling water. As the mixture expanded in heat, it made the skin swell and stiffen, producing an illusion of a whole capon fit inside a bottle. The bird's flesh could have been cooked and served separately, but it wasn't about the meat. It was all about the deception, the surprise and making sure that the guests would "not be without great astonishment".<ref>S. Czerniecki, ''op. cit.'', s. 44</ref> Mickiewicz made no use of this particular idea in his poem, but we will come back to the two other secrets later on.
When searching for ideas for his description of the big festive meal, Mickiewicz took something from each of the three chapters, but it was in the third where he found the weirdest-sounding ones. Czerniecki introduces the chapter with the following words:
| strony = 270
}}</ref> – used for dyeing food], '''musk''' {{...}}
| oryg = {{...}} Szafran, cukier faryna, pieprz, imbir, cynamon, goździki, kwiat muszkatowy, gałki muszkatowe, kmin, migdały, ryż, rożenki wielkie, '''cybety''', rożenki drobne, pistacje, '''pinole''', dachtele, '''bronelle''', figi, kasztany, kapary, {{...}} amidam, '''dragant''', tornosol, '''piżmo''' {{...}}
| źródło = S. Czerniecki, ''op. cit.'', [https://polona.pl/item/compendium-fercvlorvm-albo-zebranie-potraw,MzQ5MDIzMw/15 s. 4], own translation
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