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|"''Now a very rare book, published over a hundred years ago by Stanisław Czerniecki.''"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Poet's explanatory notes, own translation</ref><br>A copy of ''Compendium ferculorum'' by Stanisław Czerniecki opened on the author' dedication to Princess Helena Tekla Lubomirska.]]
So what was it about Czerniecki? Well, he was indeed an experience chef, responsible to organizing aristocratic banquests banquets for thousands of guests and also the author of the first cookbook printed in the Polish language. Only that this book – or, rather, a booklet, as it was small enough to fit into a pocket on one's chest, which was where the Tribune held it – had the bilingual, Latin-Polish title: ''''Compendium Ferculorum albo Zebranie potraw'' (both parts meaning ''A Collection of Dishes''). And this was – as we shall see tomorrow – precisely from this book that the Tribune got the recipes for all the dishes he would serve at the great banquest banquet in Book XII.
Besides, it wasn't only the recipes that Mickiewicz took from the ''Compendium''. The of the dinner given by the "Count of Tęczyn" to Pope Urban VIII in Rome was also inspired by the same cookbook, and specifically, from the dedication its author adressed to his employer, Princess Helena Tekla Lubomirska. Princess Lubomirska, the wife of Prince Aleksander Michał Lubomirski, took active part in Polish political wife; she was also a great partoness of arts. Wacław Potocki and Jan Andrzej Morsztyn, whom I have quoted in some of my previous posts, dedicated their poems to her, while Czerniecki did the same with his cookbook. In the dedication, he recalled the time when, in 1633, her father, Prince Jerzy Ossoliński, Grand Chancellor of the Crown (rougly equivalent to a prime minister), was sent by the king of Poland as an envoy to the Holy See. At the time, the Polish Commonwealth was at the peak of its power and glory, a fact Ossoliński was not going to let anyone fail to notice. His retinue included the famed winged hussars, crimson-and-gold-upholstered carriages, ten camels carrying opulent presents for the pope, while the prince's mount was dressed in diamonds, pearls and rubies, and deliberately shod with loose golden horseshoes – so that the horse could lose them along the way for everyone to see. The banquest banquet which Ossoliński gave to the pope was without a doubt no less osstentatious. This is how Czerniecki described it:
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[[File:Pałac w Kopaszewie.jpg|thumb|Kopaszewo Palace, Kościan County, Greater Poland]]
This is where the Tribune got interrupted again and there would be no later occasion to pick up the thread. Now that our appetite for an interesting story has been whetted, the dish is being snatched away from our mouths! But don't despair, not all is lost; if something's missing in the canonical version, maybe we can find it in the deleted scenes? That's right! There's an original manuscript version of ''Pan Tadeusz'' with a passage that never made it into print. It says that the Tribune's cookbook originally belonged to a Greater Poland nobleman called Captain Poniński who used this book to give opulent feasts. Before he died, he had given it to his neighbour, Lord Skórzewski, who lived in the village of Kopaszewo. His widow, Lady Skórzewska, in turn, offered it to Bartek Dobrzyński, a Lithuanian who often travelled to Greater Poland for business. But Dobrzyński was a poor nobleman with a modest kitchen and had no use of a cookbook meant for aristocratic courts, so he gave it to the Tribune, for the benefit of Judge Soplica's household.<ref>{{Cyt
[[File:Turew - Chłapowski03.jpg|thumb|left|"''Feast befitting these guests so to Polish hearts dear…''"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XI, verses 101–103</ref><br>
Turew Palace, Kościan County, Greater Poland.]]
This Greater Poland connection isn't random. This is where Mickiewicz stayed for a few months in 1831, while an anti-Russian uprising was raging in the Russian partition of Poland. He wished to join the insurgency, but the border between Russian and Prussian partitions was guarded so well that the got stuck in Greater Poland, a region on the Prussian side. The uprising had been long quelled when Mickiewicz was still visiting the noble manors of the Prussian partition, sightseeing, romancing and writing poetry. Many of the details of everyday life, allegedly typical for Lithuanian nobility, that you will find in ''Pan Tadeusz'' are actually the result of the observations the poet made in Greater Poland. And his precious cookbook – "a dear souvenir of righteous customs", as he wrote in the deleted passage – really did once belong to an Antoni Poniński, who gifted it to Ludwik Skórzewski and whose widow, Honorata Skórzewska, gave it as a present to… no, not to Bartek Dobrzyński, but to Mickiwicz himself, while he was a guest at Kopaszewo.<ref>{{Cyt