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I once wrote here about [[Old Polish Cookery for Beginners|old Polish recipës]] that were both extremely easy to cook and surprisingly modern, which made them perfect for people who were only starting to try their hand at historical culinary reënactment. We could see how a recipë's  recipë’s simplicity could also mean its durability; scrambled eggs, for example, are still prepared in much the same way as they were two hundred, four hundred or one thousand years ago.

I took the recipës from ''Compendium Ferculorum'' (''A Collection of Dishes'') by Stanisław Czerniecki{{czyt|Stanisław Czerniecki}}, first published in 1682. I wrote then that it was the oldest cookbook ever printed in Polish. Well, that's that’s no longer true. Polish and Ukrainian historians have recently confirmed that an even older Polish-language cookery book was published a  century and a  half before ''Compendium Ferculorum''. Not a  single volume of that older book has survived to our times, but now we know for sure it was there. Some clues about its possible existence in the past had been know earlier, but as the surviving fragments could be suspected of being some 19th-century hoaxes, there was no certainty. Until now. So let's let’s follow the fascinating history of this new oldest Polish printed cookbook and how it was rediscoveed. And then, let's let’s pick and try out a  recipë from it – one for beginners, of course.

}}</ref> And even these were most likely copied from even older tablets, now lost to time. Because the thing with recipës is that they're they’re much more likely to be copied than written from scratch. You can even see it in the Polish word for ``recipë", ''``przepis"''{{czyt|przepis}}, which literally means ``something that is rewritten". Oftentimes, the copyist would add something to the recipë, or perhaps makes some abridgements, redactions or modifications – thus allowing the recipë to evolve. In pre-Internet times, culinary recipës were probably some of the best examples of memes, or units of cultural evolution.<ref>Many people think of memes as nothing but silly pictures shared on the Internet, but they are, in fact, as old as human culture itself. The Internet is only a new medium for memes to spread in, faster than ever before. The notion of memes, as cultural equivalents of genes, was coined by the famous biologist Prof. Richard Dawkins in 1976 (when the Interent was still in its infancy), who wanted to show that you can also study evolution outside of biology ({{Cyt

For this reason, when it comes to old cookbooks, it's it’s difficult to even speak of authorship in any meaningful way. Even if you can see somebody's somebody’s name on the title page, you can't can’t be really sure whether it's it’s the name of the original author or perhaps of a &nbsp;translator, editor, copyist or publisher. Or maybe of someone who was a &nbsp;little bit of all the above. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to such a &nbsp;person as ``the author", but keep in mind the they need not necessarily be the actual content creator as understood by modern copyright laws. Besides, even the idea of copyright didn't didn’t exist before the 19th century. Before that, people would just go and rewrite or reprint books (culinary or any other) without asking anyone for permission. They would sometimes indicate the original author's author’s name in the copy, but sometimes not. The very idea of authenticity didn't didn’t exist either, so a &nbsp;copy wasn't wasn’t seen as something inferior, but rather as a &nbsp;new, maybe even better version of the original thing. According to Galen of Pergamon (of whom [[Good Humour, Good Health#Whose Idea Is It?|I wrote before]]), the famous Library of Alexandria was so big thanks to a &nbsp;policy of sending royal customs officers to each ship which called at the local port, in order to gather any scroll of papyrus or parchment they could find and take it for scribes to make copies of. Then, they would give the shining new copies to the ship's ship’s captain, while the library would contend itself with the timeworn originals.<ref>{{Cyt

Naturally, copying books by hand was labour-intensive and, therefore, costly (even despite relatively low labour costs in the past). Besides, few people could read anyway, so cookbooks (just like any books for that matter) were a &nbsp;rare luxury. This began to change once Johannes Gutenberg{{czyt|Johannes Gutenberg}} invented the movable-type printing press. He used his invention to publish the first printed book (a &nbsp;Bible, obviously) in 1455. It was only 15 years later in Rome that the first ever cookbook was published in print. It was ''De honesta voluptate et valetudine'' (''Of Honest Pleasure and Good Health'') by Bartolomeo Sacchi{{czyt|Bartolomeo Sacchi}} (1421–1481), better known as Platina, who served as a &nbsp;papal secretary and librarian, although he actually copied most of the recipës from Martin do Como's Como’s handwritten ''Libro de arte coquinaria'' (''Book of Culinary Arts''). It took another 15 years for the first cookbook printed in a &nbsp;vernacular language to come out, namely the German ''Küchenmeisterei''{{czyt|Küchenmeisterei}} published by Peter Wagner{{czyt|Peter Wagner}}. The 15th century also saw the first printed cookbooks in French, Italian and English, and the first half of the 16th century, in Dutch, Catalan, Spanish and Czech. The latter book, entitled ''Kuchařstvi''{{czyt|Kuchařstvi}} and published by Pavel Severýn{{czyt|Pavel Severýn}} in 1535, in Prague, was a &nbsp;translation of the aforementioned German text. Both titles can be translated as ''Cooking Mastery''.

In 1891, Zygmunt Wolski{{czyt|Zygmunt Wolski}} (1862–1931), an apprentice librarian at the Krasiński Library in Warsaw, visited Cezary Wilanowski'sWilanowski’s{{czyt|Cezary Wilanowski}} (1846–1893) second-hand bookshop, where he found a &nbsp;folder containing four loose sheets of paper that had been removed from an old book cover. The cover bore no title, but it did bear the year of publication: 1538. The four sheets which were reused to strengthen the cover came from three different printed books. Two of the sheets were covered with culinary recipës -- – all for different kinds of vinegar, as it happened. Wolski carefully examined the watermarks on the paper, the typeface and the language used in the recipës, and concluded that they must have been printed in the first half of the 16th century.<ref> {{Cyt

Wolski found the sheets only a &nbsp;year after Artur Benis{{czyt|Artur Benis}} (1865–1932), a &nbsp;historian at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow who was busy researching the history of book printing in Poland, had published his work on inventories of Cracow's Cracow’s mid-16th-century print shops. Such inventories were typically made for the purposes of inheritance proceedings and contained lists of books which a &nbsp;print shop owner had printed, but died before he could sell them. And so, in an inventory made in 1555, after the death of Helena Unglerowa{{czyt|Helena Unglerowa}}, the widow of Florian Ungler{{czyt|Florian Ungler}} (d.&nbsp;1536), who had been the first person to print books entirely in Polish, there was a &nbsp;mention of 100 unbound copies of a &nbsp;book whose rather unpronounceable title (to anyone who isn't isn’t Polish) was ''Kuchmistrzosthwo''{{czyt|Kuchmistrzostwo}} (''Cooking Mastery'').<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> Wolski connected the dots and concluded that the two sheets with torn edges and printed with vinegar recipës may have come from an otherwise lost coobook with such a &nbsp;previously unkown title.

But that's that’s not all. The same year 1891 saw the publication of two further works which shed more light on these two sheets. Firstly, Benis published the second volume of his ''Inventories'', which contained a &nbsp;mention of a &nbsp;single copy of a &nbsp;cookbook owned by Helena Gałczyna{{czyt|Helena Gałczyna}} (d.&nbsp;1549), the widow of another Cracow printer, Maciej Szarffenberg{{czyt|Maciej Szarffenberg}} (d.&nbsp;1547). Additionally, four copies of the same book were listed in the inventory of a &nbsp;Szymon Tyrlikowski's Tyrlikowski’s book collection. The title indicated in both inventories, however, was written as ''Kucharstvo'' or ''Kucharsthvo''{{czyt|Kucharstwo}} (''Cookery'').<ref>{{Cyt

Secondly, Čeněk Zíbrt{{czyt|Čeněk Zíbrt}} (1864–1932), a &nbsp;historian at Charles University in Prague, published a &nbsp;reprint of the earliest cookbook printed in the Czech language, that is, the aforementioned ''Kuchařství''.<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> This allowed Władysław Wisłocki{{czyt|Władysław Wisłocki}} (1841–1900), custodian of the Jagiellonian University Library, to compare the vinegar recipës discovered by Wolski with recipës found in the Czech book. And he realized that what Wolski found were indeed fragments of the oldest printed Polish cookbook, which happened to be a &nbsp;translation of the Czech ''Kuchařství''. And, according to Wisłocki, the title was rendered into Polish as ''Kucharstwo'', rather than ''Kuchmistrzostwo'' as Wolski had claimed.<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> The question of the book's book’s title has never been fully resolved either way, but somehow, contrary to Wisłocki's Wisłocki’s view, it is now more commonly referred to as ''Kuchmistrzostwo''.

All this is well and good, but what kind of discovery is it when all that we have from the oldest Polish cookbook are recipës for vinegar? Yes, vinegar was formerly an extremely important preservative and a &nbsp;popular condiment, produced in may different ways, from wine or beer, and sometimes flavoured with various additives. You could, for example, make it like this:

For something more, one had to wait almost forty years, but I believe it was worth it. It was then that Kazimierz Piekarski{{czyt|Kazimierz Piekarski}} (1893–1944), head of the Old Prints Department at the Jagiellonian Library, discovered a &nbsp;badly damaged sheet of paper printed with more recipës from ''Kuchmistrzostwo'' (or ''Kucharstwo'', if you wish). He removed the sheet, naturally, from the cover of a &nbsp;different tome, namely the 1549 edition of the Latin-language ''De Tuenda Valetudine Libri Sex'' (''Six Books on the Preservation of Health'') by the aforementioned Galen.

Piekarski examined the typefaces used both on the sheet he had found and on the pages with vinegar recipës discovered by Wolski, and then compared them with the typefaces known to be used by different Cracow printers in the first half of the 16th century. And he came to the conclusion that the two fragments came from two different editions of the same cookbook. The sheet found at the Jagiellonian Library was printed with types used at Maciej Szarffenberg's Szarffenberg’s print shop, while the two sheets discovered in Warsaw must have been printed with types employed by Hieronim Wietor{{czyt|Hieronim Wietor}} (ca. 1480–1547) – rather than by Florian Ungler as Wolski had assumed. But if a &nbsp;hundred unsold copies were found in Mrs. Unlger's Unlger’s inventory, then Ungler must have also printed his own edition of the same cookbook, although not a &nbsp;single copy of that edition has survived to our times.<ref>{{Cyt

But, perhaps more importantly, on this newly discovered sheet, we finally had recipës not for vinegar, but for decent meat dishes. Even game meat, to boot! In the title of the first recipë we can also see a &nbsp;small, but interesting modification made by the 16th-century Polish translator. The original Czech version speaks of ``buffalo, bison or other uncommon game, not found in our lands", whereas the Polish translation has ``buffalo, bison or other game, uncommon in ''Polish'' lands". On the one hand, I understand the translator's translator’s urge to localize the text a &nbsp;little, but on the other, it seems to me that he did it somewhat half-heartedly. It's It’s true that, by the 16th century, bison had already been extinct in Bohemia, or what is now the Czech Republic, but it still roamed the vasts forests of Poland, so it wasn't wasn’t that exotic to Polish cuisine.

And then, there remains the question of how to date this oldest Polish cookbook. Its first edition couldn't couldn’t be published earlier than 1535, which was when ''Kuchařství'' came out in Prague. After all, the translation can't can’t be older that the original. The latest possible date, on the other hand, is 1547, wich is when the cookbook was noted in Szarffenberg's Szarffenberg’s inventory. It was only in the 21st century that it was possible to significantly narrow this 12-year gap, thanks to a &nbsp;catalogue of the library which belonged to Austrian book collector Hieronymus Beck von Leopoldsdorf{{czyt|Hieronymus Beck von Leopoldsdorf}} (1525–1596). One of the items listed in his catalogue is ``''Kuchmistrzstwo'' [sic] Prossowol 1536”. It's It’s unclear what ``Prossowol" could mean; it may have refered to some printer who hailed from the village of Proszowice{{czyt|Proszowice}} near Cracow. In any case, if that printer published an edition of ''Kuchmistrzostwo'' as early 1536, then it would mean that the Polish translation came out only a &nbsp;year after the Czech original.<ref>{{Cyt

Some historians had their doubts, though. If the cookbook was so popular that it had three or even four editions within fifteen years, then how come not a &nbsp;single more or less complete copy has survived to our times? Why is it that the only proofs for the book's book’s existence in the past are just three frayed sheets and a &nbsp;few mentions in inventories, which don't don’t even agree about its title? Even worse, the two sheets with vinegar recipës got somehow misplaced, so for a &nbsp;time, all historians had at their disposal was a &nbsp;facsimilë which Wolski had made and whose authenticity could be questioned.

You could explain these doubt away by saying that the more popular a &nbsp;book is, the more likely it is to be worn down to nothing. It's It’s even more true for a &nbsp;cookery book, which was particularly vulnerable due to its utilitarian character. As for the question of its exact title, one can imagine a &nbsp;scenario in which different printers published the same book under different titles, which wasn't wasn’t that rare a &nbsp;case at all. Be it as it may, some question marks remained.

}}</ref> But hold on, you may say, why the Manuscript Institute? We're We’re talking about a &nbsp;printed book, aren't aren’t we? Well, yes, but keep in mind what we said about culinary recipës being constantly copied and rewritten. Back when nobody kept a &nbsp;smartphone equipped with a &nbsp;camera and an OCR function in the pocket -- – back when even photocopiers didn't didn’t exist -- – people commonly copied recipës they found in printed sources by hand. Sometimes they would even create entire manuscript cookbooks that were compilations of recipës taken from diverse sources, both printed and handwritten. It was one such manuscript, entitles ''Zbiór dla kuchmistrza, tak potraw jako ciast robienia''{{czyt|Zbiór dla kuchmistrza, tak potraw jako ciast robienia}} (''A Collection for the Master Chef, of Recipës for Dishes, as Well as Cakes'') cookbook that caught Dr. Bulatova's Bulatova’s attention and led her to get in touch with the foremost specialist on the history of Polish cuisine, Prof. Jarosław Dumanowski{{czyt|Jarosław Dumanowski}} at Copernicus University in Toruń.

The manuscript contains a &nbsp;total of about a &nbsp;thousand recipës, as well as medical, veterinary and gardening tips -- – all written by the same hand. The sources these recipës and tips were gleaned from are not always indicated in the text, but you can see from the different styles and grammars that they must have originated in various historical periods -- – mostly within the 16th and 17th centuries. And yet, the copyist who made the manuscript clearly indicated on the title page that he finished his work on 25 July 1757 (such dating is further borne out by water marks found on the paper). Which means by the time the manuscript was created, the recipës which were copied into had already been quite old. The copyist himself didn't didn’t sign his work, but the book's book’s first owner left her signatures on three different pages. It was Rozalia Pociejowa ''née'' Zahorowska{{czyt|Rozalia Pociejowa Zahorowska}} (ca.&nbsp;1690–1762), a &nbsp;prominent noblewoman from the region of Volynia in what is now western Ukraine. What led her to commission such a &nbsp;compilation of recipës from previous centuries? Did she wish to study culinary history? Or maybe these old recipës still seemed relevant to her own times and she saw the collection in purely practical terms? We don't don’t really know.

What we do know is where a &nbsp;bloc of 224 recipës which stand out from the rest as being written in a &nbsp;particularly archaic language come from. They are all old Polish translations of recipës from the Czech ''Kuchařství''. It's It’s clear from the style and the grammar of these recipës that they were all writtin in early-16th-century Polish, which means that the translation couldn't couldn’t have been made at the same time as the manuscript was written. The copyist must have used an existing 200-year-old translation, which was either still preserved in its printed form at the time or had already been copied by hand from a &nbsp;printed book before.

There are other clues, too, which confirm that the author of the manuscript had access to the same printed cookbook of which only the three sheets survive today. One is that the manuscript contains the modified title of one of the recipës that we already saw on the sheet found at the Jagiellonian Library: ``buffalo, bison or other game which is uncommon in Polish lands, but only in foreign countries". Another is a &nbsp;word incorrectly written the letter ``t" where one would expect the letter ``k". It looks like the 18th-century copyist had trouble reading the 16th-century typeface, in which the k's k’s and the t's t’s do indeed look quite similar. See for yourselves: can your make out the word written in pricture below?<ref>The correct answer is: ''``kotła"''{{czyt|kotła}}.</ref> So if the copyist misspelled a &nbsp;word because he misread a &nbsp;printed letter, then he must have been copying a &nbsp;printed text -- – and this means the printed text must have existed in the first place!

To sum up: not a &nbsp;single printed copy of the first cookbook printed in the Polish language has survived, but thanks to old print shop inventories, three surviving sheets and one complete manuscript copy, we do know that it existed. We also know that it was first published around 1536 in Cracow, that its title was either ''Kuchmistrzostwo'' (''Cooking Mastery'') or ''Kucharstwo'' (''Cookery'') and that it was a &nbsp;translation of the Czech ''Kuchařství'', which had been published a &nbsp;year earlier and which was itself a &nbsp;translation of the German ''Küchenmeisterei''.

And this, in turn, means the ''Compendium Ferculorum'' is not the earliest cookbook to be printed in Polish. But it's it’s correct to say that it's it’s the oldest ''surviving'' printed Polish cookbook. It's It’s also the first printed cookbook that was written ''originally'' in Polish.

Okay, so what interesting recipës can you find in that oldest Polish cookbook? The recipës are divided into three chapters, or actually even four, except that the fourth chapter isn't isn’t visibly separated from the third.

The first chapter contains recipës for meat dishes. Many of these are for chicken and other birds (e.g., ``birds seasoned with onions and encased in dough"), but there are also several recipës for beef (``roast beef in the Hungarian style"), pork, hare (``hare with or without onions"), as well as various kinds of game, including: partridges, roe deer and red deer venison, wild boar, ``buffalo or bison", and even... even… squirrels. This is how you can cook the latter:

Both recipës for squirrels -- – in their Czech-language version -- – were tried out by a &nbsp;group of Czechs: food writer Roman Vaněk{{czyt|Roman Vaněk}} and chef Pavel Mencl{{czyt|Pavel Mencl}}, with the help of historian Martin Franc{{czyt|Martin Franc}}, in an episode of the Czech-language TV show ''Zmlsané dějiny''{{czyt|Zmlsané dějiny}} (''Hungry for History''). Obtaining the principal raw material proved to be difficult as red squirrels, which are native to Europe, are protected by law. They ended up importing some grey squirrels from Britain, where they are trapped and killed as an invasive species. The culinary reënactors were quite satisfied with the end result, except that the colours weren't weren’t as bright as they had expected: rather than yellow and black, the sauces came out in different shades of brown. But this only shows that colours were perceived differently by people back when no aritificial food colouring was available.

Oh, but we wanted a &nbsp;recipë for beginners, so let's let’s keep on looking.

The next chapter is devoted to fish dishes, that is, something to eat during Catholic fasting days, such as Fridays. Here you will find many recipës for carp, pike, stockfish (dried cod), as well as salmon, eel, weatherfish, lampreys and crayfish. A &nbsp;large portion of the chapter covers various kinds of aspic dishes. One particualry elaborate recipë is for carp in ''kisielica''{{czyt|kisielica}}, or a &nbsp;kind of jelly made from fermented rye flour and divided into four parts, each in a &nbsp;different colour: black (with blod), brown (with cinnamon), green (with parsley) or white (with cream). But this is one is definitely for more advanced cooks, too.

The third chapter has recipës for ``Saturday food", which means food allowed by the Catholic Church on the milder fasting days, such as Saturday. The milder version of fasting still excluded the meat of land-dwelling animals, but allowed the consumption of dairy and eggs. This chapter abounds in recipës for various kinds of dumplings, porridges and yolk-thickened soups. At the very end, in an implicit fourth chapter, we can find the vinegar recipës, some of which we already know. But let's let’s stick to the porridges. The Polish word for ``porridge", ''``kasza"''{{czyt|kasza}}, had a &nbsp;boader meaning in the past than it has today and referred not only to boiled cereal grains, but to any kind of food with porridge-like consistency. For example, you could cut some apples into chunks, fry them up and then pass through a &nbsp;sieve to obtain ``apple porridge".

I suppose that to any Polish person this dish would immediately bring back childhood memories. Rice with cream, sugar and cinnamon was a &nbsp;typical children's children’s food when I was growing up. The only difference between modern and hitorical versions is that in our times, you would cook the rice in milk and only then mix it with cream, rather than cook the rice already in the cream. A &nbsp;more important difference is in the way this dish was and is perceived. In our times, it would be seen as a &nbsp;rather simple dish, tinged perhaps with a &nbsp;bit of nostalgia for some people. But in the 16th century, it would have been a &nbsp;pinnacle of luxury. Rice, sugar and cinnamon were all treated as exotic spices imported from overseas for a &nbsp;lot of money. Butter and cream were source locally, but they were the most expensive of all dairy products. What's What’s more, in a &nbsp;cuisine where colours played an especially important role, white was prized above all other colours -- – hence the warning not burn the rice. All in all, it was definitely a &nbsp;rich man's man’s porridge.

For my reconstruction, I used 30%-fat cream, which I diluted a &nbsp;little with milk. I added cane sugar (beet sugar was unknown in the 16th century) already while cooking, to let it dissolve well in the cream. At the end, I only had sprinkle the porridge with powdered cinnamon -- – and that's that’s it! I did like the flavour -- – it tasted just the way I expected rice with cream, sugar and cinnamon to taste.

If you can read Polish and would like to try out some other recipës form the oldest cookbook in that language, then I've I’ve got some good news: the entire manuscript, edited by Bulatova and Dumanowski, was [https://sklep.wilanow-palac.pl/zbior-dla-kuchmistrza-tak-potraw-jako-ciast-robienia-wypisany-roku-1757-dnia-24-lipca-p-641.html published in 2011 by Wilanów Palace Museum in Warsaw.] This way, almost half a &nbsp;millenium after the first publication of ''Kuchmistrzostwo'', its recipës were published in print once again.

And to summarize what I wrote above, here's here’s a &nbsp;little table to show you the sequence in which the first cookbooks printed in given languages were originally published in print (until the middle of the 16th century) -- – in relation to selected events from universal history.

• 1455, Mayence (Mainz) – Johannes Gutenberg (<big>☚</big>) prints the first book (a &nbsp;Bible) using a &nbsp;movable-type printing press.

• 1466, Thorn (Toruń) – King Casimir Jegiellon of Poland and Ludwig von Erlichshausen, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order of Knights, sign a &nbsp;peace treaty, ending the Thirteen-Year War and restoring Poland's Poland’s access to the Baltic Sea.

• 1489, Cracow – Veit Stoß finishes his work on St. Mary's Mary’s altarpiece, a &nbsp;masterpiece of Gothic sculpture (still in Cracow).</br>• 1489, Milan – Leonardo da Vinci paints ''Lady with an Ermine'' (<big>☚</big>), a &nbsp;masterpiece of Renaissance painting (now in Cracow).

• 1492 – Cristoffa Colombo (<big>☚</big>) sails under a &nbsp;Spanish flag in search of a &nbsp;western route to India, ending up in the Caribbean.

• 1522, Graudenz (Grudziądz) – Niklas Koppernigk aka Copernicus (<big>☚</big>), canon of Ermland, delivers a &nbsp;speech about monetary policy at the dietine (regional assembly) of Royal Prussia.</br>• 1526, Mohács – King Louis Jagiellon of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia dies in a &nbsp;battle against Ottoman Turks led by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent.