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Text replacement - "recipe" to "recipë"
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I've already promised a separate post about coffee and I haven't forgotten about it, but, for now, let's take a look at the other dish. Beer soup, known in Polish as ''gramatka'' or ''biermuszka'' (although neither name is used in ''Pan Tadeusz''), now treated mostly as a historical curiosity, was once a popular breakfast dish, especially with women and children. According to some recipesrecipës, it should be served over diced dried ''twaróg'', or farmer cheese. In Soplicowo there even was a special structure built for the purpose of drying it.
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| <poem>For men there’s a choice of smoked meats on a platter:
There is tongue, savouries, sausage, and half-geese well fattened,
All first-rate, all by secret house recipe recipë cured,
Long in juniper smoke in the chimney matured</poem>
| źródło = ''ibid.'', Book II, verses 518–521
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The Polish names of these cold cuts, such as ''półgęski'' and ''kumpia'', may sound obscure to the modern Polish ear, but the charcuterie itself would certainly satisfy today's most discerning meatarians. ''Półgęski'', translated as "half-geese" in the passage above, are actually smoked goose breasts. Extremely popular in the past, they are now coming back into vogue. The Polish Ministry of Agriculture has declared them a [https://www.gov.pl/rolnictwo/polgesek-znany-tez-jako-polgasek-albo-piersnik traditional product] of Cuyavia-Pomerania. The half-geese of Soplicowo, devoured entirely by the Dobrzyńskis during the foray, may have been cured according to the following late-18th-century reciperecipë:
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''Kumpia'', on the other hand, is simply a regional Polish term for smoked ham. Interestingly, it is the only pork dish found on Judge Soplica's table. As I've mentioned in [[What Has the Battle of Vienna Given Us?|my previous post]], nobility was disgusted by all that grows or lives in dirt – and this includes pigs, which wallow and root in mud. Boars and piglets are mentioned in ''Pan Tadeusz'' much less often than cattle, sheep, rabbits or geese. Except for the best parts of the pig, carefully cured in smoke, pork was considered fit for consumption by peasants and Germans only. The contemptuous association between pork and Prussians may be also found in ''Pan Tadeusz'', in Bartek Dobrzyński's account of the Greater Poland Uprising of 1794: "pound the landrat's neck, cut the hofrat's loin".<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book VII, verse 50, own translation</ref>
The following recipe recipë for smoked ham comes from ''Kucharz doskonały'' (''The Perfect Cook'') by Wojciech Wielądko, the second oldest cookbook printed in Polish. Its title even makes an appearance in ''Pan Tadeusz'', although the poet clearly confused this book with Stanisław Czerniecki's ''Compendium Ferculorum'', a cookbook older by a century!
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The above recipe recipë comes from the first Polish cookbook devoted entirely to game dishes. Let's see what the author wrote about the sauce.
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== Recipe ==
If anyone wishes to prepare a breakfast according to the recipes recipës above, then good luck and enjoy! As for me, I don't eat meat, so I've decided to try an old recipe recipë for the beer soup. Out of many available recipesrecipës, I've picked one from a how-to book by Mickiewicz's friend, Karolina Nakwaska née Potocka. It's close in time to when ''Pan Tadeusz'' was written and the ingredients (cream, cheese) all check out.
Ingredients:
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Okay, but what kind of beer? That which was used to prepare a breakfast soup in the first half of the 19th century surely did not resemble today's lagers. The first golden-coloured lower-fermentation beer, similar to what you can now find on supermarket shelves all around the world, was only brewed in 1842, by Josef Groll in the Bohemian town of Pilsen. The hot beer served in Soplicowo was likely dark, cloudy and low in alcohol. It was probably seasoned with hops (which happened to be grown in Soplicowo), but less bitter than typical beers of today. Notwithstanding the variety of beer-soup recipesrecipës, one thing is certain: the dish was rather on the sweet side.
In my take on Nakwaska's reciperecipë, I've decided to mix two different styles of beer: Baltic porter and wheat beer (in a ratio of 2:1). I also modified some of the proportions; for 1.5 litre of beer, I used only four yolks, about 150 g of sour cream and one tablespoon of sugar. Zest grated from a whole orange turned out to be overkill; a fourth of that would have probably sufficed. To this I added 250 g of half-fat ''twaróg'', or farmer cheese (you may use skimmed, if you want), and four thin slices of fresh rye bread (but next time I would make it into croutons). I had no vanilla at home, so I used vanilla oil instead. It served easily at least four.
What was it like? Better than I had expected. The soup had a mellow, sweetish taste, with a flavour reminiscent of roasted-grain coffee substitute. The sweetness was broken with the mild bitterness of beer and orange zest, and tartness of the cheese, which also enhanced the soup's velvety mouthfeel. Leftovers were even better when reheated on the next day. I didn't measure the calorific value, but this is definitely a dish that will boost your energy at the start of the day.
