Changes

When it comes to Szczecin – or western Polish borderlands in general – it’s difficult to speak of any long-held culinary traditions. The Germans took with them any local traditions that might have been here prior to World War 2 – either to western Germany or to mass graves. The territories vacated by the expelled Germans and annexed by Poland in 1945 were then resettled by people from Poland’s eastern borderlands that had been ceded to the Soviet Union. This way Poland literally shifted westwards and old recipes recipës brought from Poland’s former East became the foundation for a new culinary culture in Poland’s new West. In Szczecin, people built atop this foundation, adding such novelties as Soviet army inventions, exotic recipes recipës brought by sailors and fishermen from overseas, and – more recently – attempts at reconstructing old German local specialities (such as the Stettin gingerbread).

PS2 is a reddish-brown canned fish spread made from rice, tomato paste, vegetable oil and some fish, seasoned with onions, salt and spices. A favourite of Polish hikers and students, it’s one of those canned foods you would never put in your mouth at home, but somehow becomes a beloved snack on an outdoor excursion. Its production in Szczecin began at about the same time as the arrival of the first PS1 machine. Wojciech Jakacki, production manager at Gryf (Griffin), a Szczecin-based state-owned far-sea fishing and fish-processing company, is credited as the author of the original recipe recipë for PS2. Back in the 1960s, the company’s far-sea fishing activity was located off the coast of West Africa. This is how Gryf’s founder, Mr. Bogusław Borysowicz, remembers where Jakacki drew his inspiration from:

Now the problem is, I couldn’t find any mention of, let alone a recipe recipë for, this supposed West African “chop-chop” dish. A spice by the name “pima” does not exist either (I mean, it doesn’t exist on the Internet, but that’s as good as not existing at all). Did Mr. Borysowicz misremember the names? Or did he repeat names that had been already butchered by the Gryf fishermen? In West African Pidgin English, the word ''chop'' means simply “food” or “to eat”. So is it possible that the fishermen were treated to a local delicacy by someone who encouraged them by saying, “eat food”, and the Poles took it to be the name of the dish? If we want to identify it, we may have to try a different approach.

File:Świadectwo.jpg | Rationalization proposal certificate, dated 1976, for the recipe recipë for PS2