Book XII is almost entirely about a fictional banquet, said to be the last truly Old Polish feast. It is held by Judge Soplica in an abandoned castle about a mile away from his own manor called Soplicowo. Tribune Hreczecha, ever the Renaissance man, who served as the master chef in Book XI, now replaces his flyswatter with a ceremonial staff indicating that he is now the master of ceremonies. It is he who, in the Judge’s name, welcomes and seats the guests, and decides what dishes, in what order and on what tableware are to be served.
There are as many as three occasions for the big ceremonial dinner. First, it’s a religious holiday, "``the most solemn day of Our Lady of [the] Flowers".<ref>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Mickiewicz
| imię = Adam
}}, Book XI, verses 153–154</ref> Mickiewiczologists can’t entirely agree as to the identity of this Catholic solemnity. Some say there is no such holiday, so the poet must have meant Our Lady of the Herbs, that is, Assumption Day, observed on 15 August. They propose various arguments, from historical (in real life, Napoleon invaded Russia only on 24 June 1812) to climatic and botanical ones (the spring of 1812 came late, so no flowers were yet blooming in March). But the poet was quite unequivocal in Book XI that the action was taking place in the springtime rather than in the summer. Besides, Our Lady of the Flowers does exist, as it is an old folk name for the feast of Annunciation, observed on 25 March. On this day, the mother of Jesus gets herself knocked up, while Napoleon (according to Mickiewicz) begins his campaign to knock the Russian tsar down. The former brings hope for salvation of all humanity from sin, while the latter brings hope for resurrecting Poland as an independent state. The poem makes no mention of the disaster that Napoleon’s invasion of Russia would turn out to be; the mood is full of joy and hope until the end.
The second occasion is a triple betrothal; Thaddeus proposes to Sophie, the Notary to Telimena and the Assessor to Tekla Hreczecha, the daughter "``not too young, of some at least fifty years,"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XI, verse 669</ref> of the master of today’s ceremonies. And finally, the third occasion is the presence of Polish soldiers serving in the French army, including Gen. Dąbrowski, whom the Judge wishes to honour by inviting them to dinner. In line with the general’s request, the dinner will feature "``Polish cooking", reflecting Old Polish cuisine as imagined by Mickiewicz.
So let’s try (as [[Epic Cooking: Supper in the Castle|we already once did with an everyday Soplicowo supper]]) to reconstruct, at least partly, the menu of this exceptional banquet. How? By listing what dishes are mentioned in the poem and then looking them up in ''Compendium Ferculorum'' to check how they were made.
== What Did They Eat? ==
When describing the banquet that was going to be "``the last Old Polish feast", Mickiewicz hoped to share with his readers the feeling of nostalgia for foodways that had already been gone by his time. What he wanted to convey was: this Old Polish cuisine no longer exists, no one knows these dishes any more, no one remembers their flavours, even their names now sound unfamiliar. How did he achieve this effect? It’s simple: all he needed to do was to take a hundred-odd-years-old cookery book and list all the quaintest-sounding dish names he could find.
{{ Cytat
| źródło = A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 144–147, own translation based on Marcel Weyland's}}
[[File:Uczta u Radziwiłłów.jpg|thumb|left|<poem>"<i>``It is but a reminder of those famous boardsOnce set out in great houses of our ancient lords…"</i>"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 195–196</ref>
{{small|{{small|Painted by Aleksander Orłowski (1st half of the 19th century)}}}}</poem>]]
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.
The main body of ''Compendium Ferculorum'' (''A Collection of Dishes'') by Stanisław Czerniecki (pronounced: {{pron|stah|nee|swahf}} {{pron|chehR|nyets|kee}}), the cookbook that Mickiewicz loved to read while pining for Polish grub, follows a well-thought-out structure. It is divided into three chapters, each containing one hundred recipës (more or less; the author did cheat with the numbering a little), respectively, for meat dishes, fish dishes, and dairy and other dishes. At the end of each chapter, Czerniecki added ten bonus recipës, as well as one "``master chef's secret".
These three "``secrets" were recipës that required the highest level of culinary expertise, attainable only by the most skilled of chefs. Czerniecki divulges them as a sort of present for his readers. The first of these secrets is a recipë for a capon in a bottle. The trick was to carefully skin the capon (a well-fattened castrated rooster), put the skin inside a bottle, fill it with a mixture of milk and eggs, and sew it up, then plug the bottle and plunge into boiling water. As the mixture expanded in heat, it made the skin swell and stiffen, producing an illusion of a whole capon fit inside a bottle. The bird’s flesh could have been cooked and served separately, but it wasn’t about the meat. It was all about the deception, the surprise and making sure that the guests would "``not be without great astonishment".<ref>S. Czerniecki, ''op. cit.'', s. 44</ref> Mickiewicz made no use of this particular idea in his poem, but we will come back to the two other secrets later on.
When searching for ideas for his description of the big festive meal, Mickiewicz took something from each of the three chapters, but it was in the third where he found the weirdest-sounding ones. Czerniecki introduces the chapter with the following words:
}}, own translation }}
So by now we know where the second line of the aforecited excerpt is coming from. What about the next two? It seems that the idea for these "``tragacanths, brignoles and pinoli" came not from any specific recipës, but from the "``General Memorandum for the Preparation of a Banquet" that Czerniecki included at the beginning of his book. It was a checklist of things and people that you should have at your disposal before you start preparing a big lordly feast. It opens with a list of various kinds of meat, followed by sundry dairy products, cereals, fruits, vegetables, spices, preserves, different kinds of fish and sugar, as well as kitchen utensils and jobs (including, for example, floor-sweepers equipped with brooms, shovels and wheelbarrows, because, you know, if there’s going to be plenty of food, then there’s also going to be plenty of leavings). As for the spices, the list covered, among others, the following:
{{ Cytat
There’s not much context here, so it’s possible Mickiewicz couldn’t even guess what some of these items were supposed to mean. But their meanings, of course, are precisely what we’re interested in here. So, without further ado, let’s break them down one by one:
[[File:Korzenie.jpg|thumb|upright|"''``Followed by other dishes, but who can them tell!"''"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verse 143</ref><br>Fragment of the "``General Memorandum for the Preparation of a Banquet" from ''Compendium Ferculorum'']]
'''"``Contusa" (Polish: ''kontuza'')'''
: An insipid mush for the ill, made from overcooked chicken, ground in a mortar into a pulp (hence the name; a contusion is produced in a similar manner after all), passed through a sieve and thinned down with some broth. No aromatics other than parsley. It's rather hard to imagine a dish like this at an opulent feast. Or that you could serve something of such consistency on a platter.
'''"``Arcas" (Polish: ''arkas'')'''
: Something between fresh cheese and jelly. It was made by boiling sweetened milk and adding lemon juice to curdle it. We're going to come back to this once we get to desserts.
'''''Blancmange'' (Polish: ''blemas, blamas'')'''
: A dessert quite similar to the arcas, but fit for Catholic lean days, as it was made from almond milk. The name means "``white food" in French, which seems to be a pretty accurate description.
'''Scrod'''
: Young cod fish. I used this word to translate the archaic Polish word "''``pomuchla"''", which actually referred to Baltic cod of any age, as opposed to cod caught in other seas. We will be returning to fish later on.
'''''Figatelli'' (Polish: ''figatele, figatelle'')'''
: The Italian word refers to Corsican dried pork sausage. In Polish, "''``figatelle"''" is an archaic word for meatballs, which could be boiled, fried or baked. Often seasoned with raisins, they were served as a side to various dishes, including soups.
'''"``Cybets" (Polish: ''cybety'')''': This word appears in ''Compendium'' only once, that is, in the "``Memorandum", but not in any of the recipës, so it's hard to tell what Czerniecki meant by it. It could possibly refer to civet, a kind of fragrance fixative obtained from the glands found near the anus of an African weasel-like animal; or to Muscat-of-Alexandria raisins, known in Italian as ''zibibbo''; or to cubeb pepper.
'''Musk (Polish: ''piżmo'')'''
'''''Brignoles'' (Polish: ''brunele, brunelle'')'''
: Brignoles is a French town famous for its plums and prunes. The Polish word "''``brunelle"''" may have referred to dried plums of any kind.
So far, all we’ve got are just individual ingredients. If we want entire dishes, we’ve got to check out other verses of the poem. As in any Polish dinner, we will start with the soups.
== Soups ==
[[File:Still Life with Chinese Bowl and Nautilus 1662 Willem Kalf.jpg|thumb|upright|"''``Here Matthew… dipped a bread crust in his soup…"''"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verse 397</ref><br>{{small|{{small|Painted by Willem Kalf (1662)}}}}]]
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.
An unspecified soup is also used by the poet in a rather bawdy joke. You see, in Polish, the word "''``zupa"''" ("``soup") rhymes with "''``dupa"''" ("``arse"), so Mickiewicz used the former to avoid mentioning the latter. Translating the pun into English is, of course, a challenge; this is how Mr. Marcel Weyland has dealt with it:
{{ Cytat
}}
One Mickiewiczologist who intentionally refrained from trying to understand the meanings of these "``mysterious dishes", so as not to let the magic of the "``cryptic flavours" escape, announced that from the time of Mickiewicz onward, "``these very two soups – white and red! – will forever stand on the national table, no matter what."<ref>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Jarosińska
| imię = Izabela
| rok = 1994
| strony = 208–209
}}, own translation</ref> The problem is that if you do try and decipher them (and this is exactly what we’re about to do), then this patriotic vision of two soups in Poland’s national colours will fall apart like a house of cards. Let’s begin with the "``royal borscht" and see if it was really red. As it happens, it’s the first recipë in the third chapter of ''Compendium Ferculorum''.
[[File:Barszcz królewski.jpg|thumb|A very mushroomy (hence the brown colour) sour-rye soup with herrings prepared by Gieno Mientkiewicz with Arek Andrzejewski's sourdough starter (Herring-Eaters' Night, Szczecin, February 2020). You could call it a simplified version of the royal borscht.]]
}}
It will be good, for sure, but hardly red. It’s not the familiar red beetroot borscht, but rather something modern Poles would call either "''``barszcz biały"''" ("``white borscht") or "''``żurek"''" ("``sour soup"), made from fermented flour-and-water mixture (or thinned sourdough, if you will). It used to exist in two versions: the festive one, cooked on smoked-meat stock and served on sausage, bacon and eggs, is still very much around. The Lenten version, with salted herring, once very common, is now somewhat forgotten. What Czerniecki calls "``royal borscht" is the Lenten variant, but in a royal guise, so apart from the cheap herring, there are also more upscale fish species, such as pike, salmon and sturgeon. Mushrooms are there too, probably even more than two ("``two mushrooms into borscht" is a Polish idiom expressing excess), as well as the exotic cumin.
And what about the other soup? The mention of a gold coin, pearls and "``a secret old recipë" leaves no doubt that it’s Czerniecki’s third master chef’s secret. But if you read the recipë carefully, you will see that it’s no so much a banquet dish, but another concoction for the ill.
{{ Cytat
}}
[[File:Monety i perły.jpg|thumb|upright=.9|left|<poem>"<i>``The Old-Polish clear broth, prepared with great art,
Into which, by a secret old recipë, threw
The Tribune a gold coin and of pearls not a few"</i>"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 139–141</ref>
{{small|Detail of a painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1618)}}</poem>]]
| źródło = A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 148–151}}
[[File:Snyders Fish stall.jpg|thumb|"''``Those fish!"''"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verse 148</ref><br>{{small|Painted by Frans Snyders (1630)}}]]
Again, this is just an enumeration of fish species taken directly from the "``General Memorandum". The full catalogue goes like this:
{{ Cytat
[[File:Szczuka.jpg|thumb|upright|left|An uncut three-way pike as cooked by Norbert Sokołowski from the Wilanów Palace Museum]]
Some of the species here are further subdivided according to age and size. In traditional Polish terminology, the pike, for example, ranges from the ''obłączka'' (smallest) to ''szczupak półmiskowy'' ("``platter-sized"), ''szczupak łokietny'' ("``cubit-long"), ''szczupak podgłówny'' ("``sub-main") to ''szczupak główny'' ("``main", the largest). These terms used to have their equivalents in English too: gilthed, hurling pick, pickerel, pike and luce.
So we’ve got quite a few fish species, but what about fish dishes? Here Mickiewicz was somewhat less specific. He did mention one delicacy, though, which was served at the end of the dinner as the master chef’s ''pièce de résistance''.
| źródło = A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 152–154}}
Obviously, that’s the second "``secret" from the ''Compendium''. This one, for a "``whole, uncut fish, cooked in three ways", except that in Czerniecki’s actual recipë it was the middle that was boiled, the head was fried and the tail, roasted.<ref>S. Czerniecki, ''op. cit.'', [https://polona.pl/item/compendium-fercvlorvm-albo-zebranie-potraw,MzQ5MDIzMw/78 s. 67]</ref> Not just any fish will do here. It must be both appropriately dignified and long, which means a mature pike is the best choice. The trick is rather simple: all you need to do is to spit-roast the fish over low-burning coals. The part that’s meant to be boiled must be wrapped in cloth that is constantly doused with salted water with vinegar. The part that’s supposed to be fried is basted with oil and sprinkled with flour. And the part that’s meant to be roasted is roasted. And here’s the full recipë as written by Czerniecki:
[[File:Szczuka całkiem nierozdzielna 2.jpg|thumb|The fried part of the pike being sprinkled with bread crumbs]]
}}
Mickiewicz only used the pike in saffron sauce in a similë, without paying any more attention to it, but in Old Polish times it was one of the nobility’s favourite fish-based specialities. And saffron, in general, was one of their fave seasonings; Czerniecki even described Polish cookery as "``saffrony and peppery".<ref>S. Czerniecki, ''op. cit.'', [https://polona.pl/item/compendium-fercvlorvm-albo-zebranie-potraw,MzQ5MDIzMw/20 s. 9]</ref> But since we’ve already used the pike in the previous dish, let’s now have salmon instead, which – again, according to Czerniecki – "``is in our Poland of the most subtle flavour." Salmon in "``royal saffron sauce" is the opening recipë of the ''Compendium'''s second chapter.
{{ Cytat
== Meat Dishes ==
[[File:Alexander Adriaenssen - Still life with a ham and chicken on silver plates, glasses of wine and beer, a bread roll, a peeled lemon and an earthenware jug on a table draped with a grey cloth.jpg|thumb|left|"''``For the rest, of all viands there was a great stock…"''"<ref>A. Mickiewcz, ''op. cit.'', Book XI, verse 147</ref><br>{{small|Painted by Alexander Adriaenssen (17th century)}}]]
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.
As you can see, most of this flesh was roasted. What’s interesting, Czerniecki included almost no instructions for roasting in his cookbook. He must have thought the procedure too simple to even bother writing about; you just stick the animal on a spit and turn it over a flame, that’s all. Most of his recipës are, in fact, for boiled or stewed meats. But we’re lucky to have ten recipës from his addendum to the first chapter, all for roast condiments. The author proposes condiments, or rather sauces, made from mushrooms, garlic, mustard seeds, juniper berries, cauliflower, capers, limes, anchovies, oysters… But let’s pick the one that is the simplest to make and also the most typically Polish – the onion condiment.
[[File:Pieczeń po huzarsku.jpg|thumb|"''``Others, huge roasts onto enormous spits drag…"''"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XI, verses 138–139</ref><br>Hussar-style roast beef as made by Ms. Monika Śmigielska, author of the blog [http://www.kuchennykredens.pl/gwozdz-odswietnego-obiadu-wojna-zapomniana-pieczen-huzarska/ "``Kuchenny Kredens",] where you can find a more up-to-date recipë (in Polish).]]
{{ Cytat
}}
Roast beef that is sliced not all the way through, with onion filling stuffed into the pockets, is a dish that is still very much part of Polish cuisine today. It was given its current name, "``hussar-style beef", in the 19th century, when the stripes of yellowish stuffing reminded our ancestors of the decorative frogging on hussar uniforms.
We know from the poem that poultry was also served. And we haven’t yet made any use of the caviar that we know was there. As it turns out, roast capon goes perfectly with caviar, at least if we’re to believe Czerniecki. Here’s the last recipë from the first chapter of his cookbook:
== Desserts ==
It’s time for dessert at last. For this course we’re going to have an "``arcas" and a blancmange (but you knew that already). Let’s start with the "``arcas", which, for the record, is an English word I made up for lack of any better (other than "``milk jelly") rendering of the Polish term, "''``arkas"''", which, itself, is of unclear etymology.
[[File:Arkas.jpg|thumb|upright|left|A pyramid-shaped lemon-flavoured ''arkas'', or milk jelly, served with a saffron-infused pear, almond flakes and spicy plum sauce, made by my niece at the workshop in the Wilanów Palace.]]
| źródło = A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 25–27}}
So what exactly is a centrepiece? Imagine the familiar stand for salt and pepper shakers. Sometimes you may come across more elaborate versions with cruets of vinegar and olive oil, and a napkin holder. And now imagine this kind of stand, but blown up to gigantic proportions, so that is takes up half of the table, and with rich ornamentation to boot. This is what a centrepiece, also known by the French term, ''surtout de table'' (literally, "``all over the table"), is.
The centrepiece which the Tribune dug out from the storage was enormous even by Baroque standards. On a round tray the size of a carriage wheel<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verse 34</ref> there stood at least thirty porcelain figurines "``dressed in Polish apparel".<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 42–43</ref> These figures represented a scene from a typical local political assembly of Old Polish times – an election campaign, a vote tally, an unsuccessful veto, the winner’s joy and the loser’s wife’s grief. I won’t be going into details here; if you want, you can read the Tribune’s description of the scene, to which Lord Chamberlain quipped, "``that election's quite curious, we grant, but just now we are hungry; it's food that we want."<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 122–123</ref>
[[File:Kazimierz Mrówczyński, Soplicowo - Arcyserwis.jpg|thumb|<poem>"<i>``The guests meanwhile, awaiting their meal in the hall,
With surprise let their gaze on the centrepiece fall, {{...}}
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>
{{small|Illustration by Kazimierz Mrówczyński (1898)}}</poem>]]
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).
[[File:Serwis.jpg|thumb|<poem>"<i>``Round the edge of the platter stood neatly displayedScores of little blown figures of porcelain made…"</i>"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 41–42</ref>
A Meissen-porcelain centrepiece (ca. 1760), Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.</poem>]]
| źródło = A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 35–40, 159–184}}
[[File:Piana na krzaku rozmarynowym.jpg|thumb|left|<poem>"<i>``Warmed by the heat of the dayThe light sugary ices had melted away…"</i>"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 159–162</ref>A rosemary bush covered with whipped-cream "``foam" (which has already partly trickled down) and surrounded with cream-filled wafer tubes, the work of Ms. Marta Stelmach (2013).</poem>]]
A winter landscape made out of "``sugary foams", that is, sweetened whipped cream, is yet another Baroque idea for a culinary illusion taken from Czerniecki’s ''Compendium''. In the original version the whipped cream was supposed to be poured on a rosemary bush surrounded with wafer cream rolls. The whole thing was meant to look like an evergreen tree covered with heavy snow with cones lying on the ground. And here’s the recipë:
{{ Cytat
| źródło = S. Czerniecki, ''op. cit.'', [https://polona.pl/item/compendium-fercvlorvm-albo-zebranie-potraw,MzQ5MDIzMw/101 s. 90], own translation }}
{{clear}}
[[File:Lody szafranowe.jpg|thumb|<poem>"<i>``The guests to the courtyard repaired,Having finished their ices, to taste the cool air."</i>"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 488–489</ref>
Saffron ice cream by Bogdan Gałązka, Gothic Restaurant, Malbork.</poem>]]
After some time, this foam would trickle down from the bush, producing the illusion of thaw. Winter was gone, spring and summer were here. The foam would also uncover a dark forest made of fruit preserves, fields of buckwheat made from chocolate, apple and pear trees made from, I don’t know, some apple-and-pear mousse? And saffron wheat fields, which I suppose doesn’t mean naked saffron threads imitating ears of wheat, but rather some kind of paste dyed yellow with saffron. And if soon afterwards "``the grain, painted gold, slowly melt[ed] while absorbing the warmth of the hall",<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 174–175</ref> then it surely must have been saffron ice cream. That would have been a truly Baroque twist: snow imitated by lukewarm cream "``foam" followed by summer crops made from ice cream! Sadly, Czerniecki provides no ice cream recipë in his book. But I do know that you can get delicious saffron ice cream (with ground orchid tubers, which give it a peculiar fudgy texture) at Gothic Restaurant in the Malbork Castle.<ref>''Update:'' Sadly, the restaurant didn't survive the covid-19 pandemic and closed down in May 2020.</ref> I’d say this treat alone would be a good enough reason to visit Malbork, even if the largest brick Gothic castle in the world wasn’t in itself a worthy tourist destination.
At the end all that was left were cinnamon canes and laurel branches that were somehow covered in cumin seeds. I’m not sure whether these branches would have made a good snack. I’d rather imagine, in this role, some kind of cumin or caraway-flavoured bread sticks.