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The funny thing is that if you showed the text above to anyone who actually lives in Poland they would be quite surprised by how many inaccuracies it contains. First of all, the correct spelling is "''"pączki"''", not "paczki". It's true that "''"paczki"''" means "packages", but it's a completely different (and unrelated) word than "''"pączki"''" (notice the little hook under the "a"?), which is the correct term for Polish doughnuts. Secondly, the correct pronunciation is more like ''{{smallpron|pawnch|PAUNCHkee}}-key'' than ''{{smallpron|POONCHpoonch|kee}}-key''. Thirdly, prunes and apricots seem pretty weird as ''pączki'' fillings; everybody knows that rose-hip jam is the most traditional and most aromatic one. And finally, the chief ''pączki''-eating day is not Fat Tuesday, but Fat Thursday, six days earlier.

Let's start with the linguistic part. The Polish word for a doughnut (usually, in the shape of a flattened sphere, with some kind of filling in it) is "''"pączek"''", pronounced '': {{smallpron|pawn|PAWNchek}}-check''. The plural form, used for more than one doughnut, is "''"pączki"''", which is pronounced '': {{smallpron|PAWNCHpawnch|kee}}-kee''. The latter word has nothing to do with packages. That's "''"paczki"''" (without the hook-shaped squiggle), pronounced '': {{smallpron|PAHTCHpahtch|kee}}-kee''. It's the plural form of "''"paczka"''" (''{{smallpron|PAHTCHpahtch|kah}}-kah''), or "a package". As you can see, the explanation you can occasionally come across in America that ''pączki'' are [https://twitter.com/BethelBakery/status/949661885393199105 "''"little packages of goodness"''"] is as sweet as it is wrong. So where does the Polish word for doughnuts actually come from?

"''Pączek"''" is a diminutive form of the word "''"pąk"''" ({{pron. ''|pawnk''}}), which is a botanical term referring to a flower bud or leaf bud. What do doughnuts have to do with flower buds, you may ask. Not so much, if you're thinking about the American ring-shaped donuts, but it's different with the ball-shaped Polish ones. Originally, the word "''"pąk"''" referred to anything that is round, bulging (''pękate''), swollen (''napęczniałe'') and about to burst (''pęknąć''). Ultimately, all these "''"pąk- / pęk- / pącz- / pęcz-"''" words are most likely of onomatopoeic origin, meaning that they're supposed to resemble the sound of something swollen that is bursting.<ref> {{Cyt

But the weirdest thing about how "paczki" became a Polish loanword in English is how English speakers (in North America at least) tend to pronounce it. Why is it ''{{smallpron|POONCHpoonch|kee}}-kee'' and not ''{{smallpron|pawnch|PAWNCHkee}}-kee'', which would be so much closer to the original Polish pronunciation? Are the Polish Americans wrong to say the word the way they do? And even if they are, then why did this "wrong" pronunciation become so common?

It turns out they're not that wrong after all. ''{{smallpron|PAWNCHPawnch|kee}}-kee'' may be the accepted pronuncation pronunciation in modern standard Polish, but modern standard Polish is a relatively recent creation, a product of state-run schools, radio and television that have worked for the past few generations to unify the language across Poland. In the past, though, each region had its own dialect and subdialects, used especially by the rural populace, and pronunciation differences between regions could be quite substantial.

}}</ref> In all these regions, ''pączki'' was, in fact, pronounced '': {{smallpron|poonch|POONCHkee}}-kee''. If you're reading this, then I assume you don't speak much Polish, but if you're interested in examples, then you can find a few in the [[:pl:Punczki z powidłami na tłusty wtorek#Pączki czy pųczki?|Polish-language version of this blog post]]; look for "''"pónczki"''" or "''"punczki"''" (the spelling may vary). And all these regions produced waves of migrants who would settle in the United States or Canada, bringing their own pronunciation of "''"pączki"''", as well as the recipes, to the banks of the Great Lakes.

So when is the last time for the Orthodox to fry their Carnival pancakes before Lent? It can't be the Cheesefare Sunday, because you can't do any work on the Sabbath. Friday and Saturday are lean days even outside of Lent. So it must be Thursday, then. Same with the last occasion to cook meat; Greeks, for example, celebrate Barbecue Thursday (''Tsiknopempti'') on the last Thursday before Meatfare Sunday. So it would seem that Catholics copied their Fat Thursday from the Orthodox. Catholics in Poland seem to have copied even more: the traditional Polish names for the three Sundays of Catholic Pre-Lent are ''Niedziela Starozapustna'' ("Old Shrovetide Sunday", because it had been the first Sunday of fasting back when fasting was mandatory in Pre-Lent), then ''Niedziela Mięsopustna'' ("Meatfare Sunday", same as for the Orthodox) and ''Niedziela Zapustna'' ("Shrovetide Sunday"). In fact, the English word "Carnival" has the same origin as the Polish "''"mięsopust"''"; it comes from Latin "''"carne vale"''", which means "farewell to meat".

This may be another reason why the peak day of Polish Carnival is six days before Lent. You want to put some buffer between the fat-laced revelry and the mandatory fast. And don't think this is only a Polish idea. Fat Thursday is also observed in Italy (''giovedì grasso''), Spain (''jueves lardero''), Swabia (''Schmotziger Donnerstag''), Luxembourg (''Fetten Donneschdeg'') and Picardy (''jeudi jeudyou''). In the Catholic South Slavic countries (Croatia and Slovakia) the peak of the Carnival falls on Shrovetide Sunday. In the Nordic countries the biggest parties are held on Shrove Monday, known as ''Fastelavn''. On the same day people also have fun in the Rhineland, where they celebrate ''Rosenmontag'' (usually translated as "Rose Monday" even though it actually comes from the dialectical verb "''"roose"''", meaning "to party"). In Cornwall the day is known as "Peasen Monday", a day for eating peasoup, while in other parts of England it's "Collop Monday", observed by eating pork collops. But in most countries, including France, the Carnival's peak day is Shrove (or Fat) Tuesday.

If we look into old cookbooks, we'll see that the bakers and pastrycooks of yore had even bigger problems using the correct terminology. Very often, they seem to have lumped all kinds of fried dough (pancakes, fritters, crullers, doughnuts) under the same label. Let's take, for example, the manuscript recipe collection written at the end of the 17th century at the court of the princely house of Radziwiłł. For the most part, it's a Polish translation of the German cookbook, ''Ein Koch- und Artzney-Buch'' ("A Cookery and Medicine Book"). The anonymous translator chose to render all instances of the German term "''"Krapfen"''" as "''"pączek"''", even if he noticed himself that the recipe was really for pancakes rather than doughnuts.

I don't really know why the German "''"Waffen-Krapfen"''" ("war fritters"?) were translated as "priestly doughnuts". In modern German the word "''"Krapfen"''" does refer to a doughnut. But in some regions of Germany (Brandenburg, Saxony and Hither Pomerania) doughnuts are known as "''"Pfannkuchen"''" which is the word for "pancakes" in other German-speaking parts. The Radziwiłł cookbook also mentions "''"kręple"''", or a kind of crullers. Here, both the recipe and the name come from eastern Germany, where "''"Kräppel"''" is a dialectical variant of "''"Krapfen"''". From the same source come the Silesian ''kręple'' (doughnuts) and the Jewish ''kreplach'' (meat-filled dumplings).

About a century after the Radziwiłł manuscript, Wojciech Wielądko translated a more recent cookbook into Polish, this time from French. The original book was ''La cuisinière bourgeoise'' by Menon. The titular "urban female cook" somehow changed both her gender and her estate in the Polish translation, becoming ''Kucharz doskonały'', or "the perfect male cook". In this translation, the word "''"pączek"''" was used to render the French "''"beignet"''", even though it usually referred to various kinds of fritters rather than doughnuts.

It would seem then that in the past the meaning of "''"pączek"''" was as broad as of the French "''"beignet"''", encompassing a whole range of fried-dough foods, usually ball-shaped, and not solely doughnuts. Among the many kinds of Old Polish ''pączki'' (typically aping the Wester ''Krapfen'' and ''beignets'') there were such creations as "bag doughnuts" (''pączki workowe'', made from balls of dough that were put into bags, cooked in boiling water and cut into slices that were then fried) or "syringe doughnuts" (''pączki strykowe'', made by squirting batter into boiling oil, possibly related to the funnel cakes of the Pennsylvania Dutch).

There's even a mid-19th-century recipe for ''beignets à la polonaise'' that you can find in ''La cuisine classique'' by Urbain Dubois and Émile Bernard, two French chefs who had worked for Polish and Russian aristocrats. But if you think that these "Polish-style ''beignets"''" are the ''pączki'' we know from Poland today, then you're going to be disappointed. These are more like modern Polish "croquettes" made from filled and rolled-up ''crêpes'' (Polish ''naleśniki''), but sweet rather than savoury.

Today, we wouldn't call any of these fritters "''"pączek"''", mostly because they all lacked one crucial ingredient – yeast. All these old-time ''pączki'' were made from unleavened dough, so they were dense and hard, as colourfully described by Jędrzej Kitowicz.