Changes

| Take thin rye-bran borscht [i.e., fermented rye meal]; add some dried fish, be it pike or vimba; dried salmon; Danubian carp; smoked or fresh beluga; dried sturgeon; a whole onion, which you will discard before serving; soaked herrings, either Danubian or marine; dried mushrooms; fine buckwheatmeal; and cumin. Boil it all together, salt to taste. Serve it in a bowl, it will be good.

You can see that this was a cure for the well-to-do only. All we're getting out of an entire stag, an ox, a quarter of a ram, four partridges and one capon is one and a half tablespoons of meat juice that we're supposed to let the patient quaff to make him sweat. Sounds rather like some kind of homeopathic scam, doesn't it? It's even more suspicious, if you consider what happens to must have eventually happened with the ducat and the pearls that the chef would have said he'd needed for this elixir. In any case, it doesn't seem these ingredients had any influence on the preparation's medicinal properties, flavour or even colour. If you had thought that, if the borscht hadn't turned out to be the red soup, then perhaps it was this red-ducat broth, then think again. The Polish red ducat wasn't actually red in colour, it was golden; besides, gold doesn't dissolve in water (unless it's royal water, or ''aqua regia'', but that wouldn't be really fit for consumption). It's more likely that, like any other good broth, this one, even if cooked without the gold coin, would have been golden in colour – that is, neither white nor red.

| Polish broth is to be made as follows: Take beef or veal, a hazel grouse or a partridge, pigeons or any other meat that can be boiled for broth. Soak the meat, salt it well, place in a pot and scald with hot water. Let the water stand for some time, then strain back onto the meat. Add parsley, butter, salt, skim the scum, and when well cooked, serve hot. You should also remember, lest the broth smells smell like water and or wind, to add parsley or dill, onion or garlic, mace or rosemary, or peppercorns according to your taste.

Now, this is the kind of broth that you can still see on many a Polish table every Sunday! This recipe seems quite modern in that, unlike many other Old Polish dishes, it's quite moderate in terms of exotic spices (only mace and pepper!), while making use of familiar herbs, like parsley, dill and rosemary. The one thing that does seem to be missing are the now -mandatory noodles. But noodles aren't the only possible soup garnish and as we already know that there were meatballs on the menu, then why not serve them together with the broth? So now let's see a recipe for the ''figatelle''.

| Take some veal or a capon, beef or game, or fresh lean pork. Remove the veins and chop up finely. Take beef, wether-mutton or venison tallow, remove the veins, chop up as finely as you can. Grate or chop finely some white bread. Mix it all together with a few eggs. Add pepper and nutmeg. Make any meatballs you like, big or small, boiled or baked, and if you want, you can also add raisins, large, small or both, according to your need. Cook them in boiling water. If you want wish to serve them aloneon their own, then garnish them with parsley. And if you want to serve them alongside another dish, then add them when after they are already cooked.