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This ritual repetitiveness of Soplica's meals was adjusted only to the season and to the Catholic calendar of feasts and fasts. In this case, it's Lithuanian cold borscht, a summertime soup that is still as popular in both Lithuania and Poland as ''gazpacho'' is in Spain.
There is a linguistic problem here, though. Mickiewicz has used two different terms, "''chłodnik''" (pronounced ''{{small|WHAWD}}-neek'') and "''chołodziec''"(''haw-{{small|WAW}}-jets''). Both words derive from the adjective "''chłodny''", or "cold", but while Mickiewiczologists have no doubt that "''chłodnik''" refers to a cold soup, there is some disagreement as to what kind of dish ''chołodziec'' was.<ref>{{Cyt
| tytuł = Pamiętnik Literacki: czasopismo kwartalne poświęcone historii i krytyce literatury polskiej
| url =
There's another interesting difference, though. On the third day, the cold borscht was "whitened", or clouded with sour cream, but on the first and second days, it wasn't. Why? One possible explanation would be that the first two days were Friday and Saturday, that is, fasting days. In Polish tradition, dairy products were proscribed on fasting days along as well as meat. It was only on Sunday that the same cold borscht was served again, but this time, enhanced with the luxurious additive. Except that if the Soplicas fasted on Saturday, then they must have done it only in the afternoon, because [[Epic Cooking: Breakfast at Judge Soplica's|for breakfast they'd had not only cream, but even smoked goose breasts, beef tongues, ham and steaks]]! This may be explained away only by the poet's inconsistency.
Sp how do you prepared this whitened Lithuanian cold borscht? Here's a recipe from ''THe The Lithuanian Cook'', a Polish-language cookbook by Wincentyna Zawadzka. The first edition was published two decades after Mickiewicz had penned ''Pan Tadeusz'', but I suppose the recipe would have been quite similar in his times. Heck, even today Lithuanian cold borscht is still made in pretty much the same fashion.
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