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== From cannonballs to sponges ==
[[File:Kobieta sprzedająca pączki.jpg|thumb|upright|A street vendor of ''pączki'' in 1934 Warsaw]]
So what's the relationship between a doughnut and a ''pączek''? Are these two different things or just English and Polish names for the same thing? Or is ''pączek'' a specific kind of doughnut? The perfect ''pączek'', in my opinion at least, is filled with rose-petal jam, fried in lard and decorated with icing and candied orange zest. But what if you give it a different filling (or no filling at all), fry it butter (or even vegetable oil) and dust with powdered sugar instead? It's still going to be a ''pączek''. And a doughnut. So what makes a ''pączek'' a ''pączek'' and what makes a doughnut and a doughnut?
If we look into old cookbooks, we'll see that the bakers and pastrycooks of yore had even bigger problems using the correct terminology. Very often, they seem to have lumped all kinds of fried dough (pancakes, fritters, crullers, doughnuts) under the same label. Let's take, for example, the manuscript recipe collection written at the end of the 17th century at the court of the princely house of Radziwiłł. For the most part, it's a Polish translation of the German cookbook, ''Ein Koch- und Artzney-Buch'' ("A Cookery and Medicine Book"). The anonymous translator chose to render all instances of the German term "''Krapfen''" as "''pączek''", even if he noticed himself that the recipe was really for pancakes rather than doughnuts.