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[[File:Uczta u&nbsp;Radziwiłłów.jpg|thumb|left|<poem>"<i>It is but a reminder of those famous boards

Once set out in great houses of our ancient lords…</i>"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 195–196</ref>

You don't know any of these specialities? Don't worry, Mickiewicz was actually assuming that the readers in his own time wouldn't know them either; heck, he doesn't seem to have known their exact meanings himself. The excerpt above is just a jumble of random words that don't really add up to any meaningful menu. We're going to decipher them in a moment, but first let's see where the poet took them from.

== Soups ==

In all of ''Pan Tadeusz'' I've counted five distinct kinds of this crucial element of Polish cuisine. We've already discussed two of them, the [[Epic Cooking: Breakfast at Judge Soplica's#Soup|beer soup]] and the [[Epic Cooking: Supper in the Castle#First Course|Lithuanian cold borscht]], in previous posts. Elsewhere in the epic, when Thaddeus's would-be father wanted to propose to a great lord's daughter, he was served "black gruel",<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book II, verse 282; Book X, verse 585</ref> or ''czernina'' (blood soup, which is, incidentally, more of a Greater Poland speciality than a Lithuanian one), as a sign of refusal. Naturally, this soup's symbolism meant that it couldn't be served at a betrothal dinner.

Into which, by a secret old recipe, threw

The Tribune a gold coin and of pearls not a few</i>"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 139–141</ref>

You can see that this was a cure for the well-to-do only. All we're getting out of an entire stag, an ox, a quarter of a ram, four partridges and one capon is one and a half tablespoons of meat juice that we're supposed to let the patient quaff to make him sweat. Sounds rather like some kind of homeopathic scam, doesn't it? It's even more suspicious, if you consider what must have eventually happened with the ducat and the pearls that the chef would have said he'd needed for this elixir. In any case, it doesn't seem these ingredients had any influence on the preparation's medicinal properties, flavour or even colour. If you had thought that, if the borscht hadn't turned out to be the red soup, then perhaps it was this red-ducat broth, then think again. The Polish red ducat wasn't actually red in colour, it was golden; besides, gold doesn't dissolve in water (unless it's royal water, or ''aqua regia'', but that wouldn't be really fit for consumption). It's more likely that, like any other good broth, this one, even if cooked without the gold coin, would have been golden in colour – that is, neither white nor red.

| źródło = A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 148–151}}

Again, this is just an enumeration of fish species taken directly from the "General Memorandum". The full catalogue goes like this:

== Meat Dishes ==

When composing the meaty part of our menu, we'll need to make even more use of our own imagination, because the poet didn't mention any specific meat dishes in the banquet's description. We only know from the section about the meal's preparation that meat was plentiful, both in terms of quality and diversity.

Taken out of the strongroom today for this meal,

The table's centre graced like a huge carriage wheel.</i>"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 25–26, 33–34</ref>

Let's focus instead on the foodstuffs that were displayed on this centrepiece, even if they were there more for decoration than for eating – just like fondant icing on modern-day layer cakes (such as [https://www.facebook.com/pg/pinarosacakes/photos the wonders that my sister makes,] for example). So now brace yourselves for a longer piece of anapestic tetrametre (I believe it is really worth reading, though).