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[[File:Restauracja Wierzynek.jpg|thumb|upright|The sign at the entrance to the [http://wierzynek.pl/nasza-legenda/ Wierzynek restaurant] at Rynek Główny 16 (no. 16, Grand Square) in Cracow]]
Among many tourist attractions in my beautiful hometown of Cracow (or Kraków, if you will), the former seat of the kings of Poland, there are two venerable establishments which pride themselves on dating back to the reign of King Casimir the Great – specifically, to the year 1364. One of them is Poland’s oldest institution of higher learning, the one where Copernicus went to college. Indeed, King Casimir obtained papal consent to open a university in Cracow in 1364. But it took him three more years to actually open the Academy of Cracow, and three years after that King Casimir died and the Academy closed for business. It was only in 1400 that King Vladislaus Jagailo and Queen Hedwig founded a new university in Cracow, which is known to this day as Jagiellonian University (and not Casimirian University). ``Founded “Founded in 1364" 1364” turns out to be somewhat of a stretch.
Okay, but what does it have to do with culinary history? Nothing. That’s why we’re now going to focus on the other establishment, one which even has the year 1364 written into its logo. Here’s what you can read about it in ''1,000 Places to See Before You Die'', a snobbish guidebook to the world’s most overpriced hotels, restaurants and other tourist traps:
{{Cytat
| Also on the square is the historic restaurant Wierzynek, the best place to enjoy courtly European service and traditional Polish specialties. Said to be one of the oldest operating restaurants in Europe, its history goes back to 1364, when innkeeper Mikolaj Wierzynek created a banquet served on gold and silver plates for the guests of King Casimir the Great, including Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Wierzynek restaurant has hosted every visiting head of state ever since. Experience 500 years of history at the elegant café downstairs or the venerable upstairs salon, where seasonal game, mountains trout, and mushroom-sauced delights are served amid decorative reminders of the establishment's establishment’s gloried past.
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Schultz
| imię = Patricia
| tytuł = 1,000 Places to See Before You Die: A Traveler's Traveler’s Lifelist
| url = https://books.google.pl/books?id=41O5QMgL1ZwC&lpg=PA300&pg=PA300
| wydawca = Workman Publishing
These are the questions I’m going to try and answer today.
== A Diplomatic Summit or a Family Reunion? ==[[File:Drzewo EN.png|class=full-page|Casimir the Great's Great’s family relationship. In yellow: more or less likely participants of the Cracow Congress of 1364.]]
[[File:Kazimierz Wielki - kamienica hetmańska.jpg|thumb|upright|left|A supposed portrait of Casimir the Great (2nd half of the 14th century) on a bossed keystone at the Hetman House (below one of the Wierzynek restaurant's restaurant’s dining rooms) in Cracow]]
The only historical source that mentions the banquet at Wierzynek’s are the ''Annals of the Glorious Kingdom of Poland'' by Jan Długosz, also known by his Latinized name, Joannes Longinus. According to his account, it all began when Charles of Luxembourg, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Bohemia (a kingdom roughly corresponding to the modern-day Czech Republic) was receiving envoys from Hungary and said something very offensive about King Louis of Hungary’s mom. It led, obviously, to a major diplomatic crisis. Louis, together with Duke Rudolph Habsburg of Austria (who also had his differences with the emperor and, incidentally, his father-in-law), was getting ready for war. This is when Pope Urban V decided it was enough that western Europe, recently ravaged by a pandemic of bubonic plague, was already being plunged into a bloody conflict (which would later come to be known as the Hundred Years’ War). Having rulers of the relatively stable and quickly developing central Europe at each other’s throats would be too much. Which is why he dispatched his nuncio, Peter of Volterra, to try and calm them down. The nuncio did a great job – he managed to prevent hostilities and to convince the wrangling monarchs to settle their argument through arbitration. It was agreed there would be two adjudicators: one was Duke Bolko the Small of Schweidnitz, the last sovereign ruler in Silesia and uncle of the emperor’s recently deceased third wife. The other was King Casimir of Poland, brother of the Hungarian queen mother whose honour had been besmirched.
The nuncio also engaged in matchmaking and arranged the marriage of the freshly widowed emperor with Casimir’s granddaughter, Duchess Elizabeth of Stolp, Pomerania. The wedding was held in Cracow. According to Longinus, people invited by King Casimir included – apart from the young bride (and her family) and the not-so-young groom (and his family) – King Louis of Hungary, King Sigismund of Denmark, King Peter of Cyprus, Duke Bolko the Small of Schweidnitz, Duke Otto V of Bavaria, Duke Semovit of Masovia, Duke Vladislav II of Opole, etc. The wedding reception lasted twenty days, during which barrels of wine were put out in the streets for the common folk, while the royals and lords passed their time with tournaments, dances and banquets. The festivities were overseen – again, according to Longinus – by a certain Wierzynek, ``a “a councillor of Cracow, native of the Rhineland" Rhineland” and ``manager “manager of the royal treasury"treasury”. He held one of the banquets in his own home, where – in gratitude for ``unspeakable benevolence" “unspeakable benevolence” – he seated King Casimir (and not the emperor!) in the place of honour and showered him with presents that were worth more than the new empress’s dowry.<ref name=Długosz>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Długosz
| imię = Jan
}}</ref>
[[File:Busta Alzbeta Pomoranska.jpg|thumb|170px|Empress Elizabeth's Elizabeth’s bust in Saint Vitus' Vitus’ Cathedral in Prague (ca. 1380)]]
So much for Longinus. Unfortunately, historians realized long ago that much of this story is at odds with what you can read in other historical documents, especially in the Cracow cathedral chronicle, the ''Annals of the Holy Cross'' (although these contain errors too, which Longinus merely repeated) and ''The Capture of Alexandria'', an epic poem by Guillaume de Machaut (more about which later). Neither the date, nor the purpose, nor the guestlist of the event turned out to be exactly as the chronicler claimed they were. This is how these discrepancies were summed up at the end of the 19th century by Prof. Stanisław Kutrzeba:
{{Cytat
| Clear-headed historical criticism does not fully trust Longinus, who tends to combine distinct facts, seek relationships among them where there aren't aren’t any and embellish his account with more than just stylistic additions. No more did the beautiful story of a king's king’s fight for his sister's sister’s honour and of his granddaughter's granddaughter’s wedding survive the scalpel of critique. Doubts, minor at first, eventually dismantled almost entirely the structure which Longinus had skillfully pieced together.
| źródło = {{Cyt
| tytuł = Rocznik Krakowski
}}</ref>
It’s commonly accepted that Wirsing’s banquet took place during the third of the meetings mentioned above – the one of September 1364. This one took the top spot in the number-of-crowned-heads-in-one-place category, which surely stirred people’s imagination. But if sources confuse this summit with the imperial wedding of May 1363, then you can imagine just as well that Wirsing’s feast was part of the multi-day wedding festivities. Especially if you remember that Longinus compared the value of Wirsing’s gifts for Casimir to that of the bride’s dowry. Although, after all, if Wirsing had done such a good job as a wedding reception manager, than why couldn’t he repeat his own success during the political summit a year and a half later? Perhaps there was more than just one ``banquet “banquet at Wierzynek's"Wierzynek’s”?
== Tourist-Gastronomic Establishment ==
It wasn’t until the second half of the 19th century that the first restaurants began to open in Cracow. Some of them have had their ups and downs, but still operate under the same names and at the same addresses as over a hundred years ago. Hawełka, Wentzl, the hotel restaurants at Pod Różą, Pollera, Grand…
[[File:Jan Matejko - Uczta u Wierzynka 1877.jpg|thumb|upright|left|This is how Jan Matejko, in 1877, imagined guests arriving at the banquet at Wierzynek's Wierzynek’s – on the opposite side of the Grand Square to where the restaurant bearing his name is now located.]]What about Wierzynek? Well, the history of this establishment dates back all the way to… 1947. This is when Kazimierz Książek opened the restaurant in the Morsztyn House at no. 16, Grand Square (Rynek Główny 16). It’s said that it was from Dr. Jerzy Dobrzycki, head of the Cracow History Museum, that he got the idea to name the restaurant ``Pod Wierzynkiem" ''“Pod Wierzynkiem”'' (``At Wierzynek's"“At Wierzynek’s”).<ref>{{Cyt
| tytuł = Styl.pl
| nazwisko r = Leśnicki
{{Cytat
| In the Wierzynek menu, as on medieval tables, reigns the golden roast duck, quail eggs, barrel-cured herrings and steaming-hot sour ryemeal soup with rabbit stock, served alongside smoked ribs. There is juniper-scented wild-boar ham, Mikołaj Wierzynek plum brandy and Casimir the Great vodka. This is how I imagine the menu composed by the Cracow councillor's councillor’s chefs and this is what I serve.
| źródło = Elżbieta Filipiak as quoted in: {{Cyt
| tytuł = Dziennik Polski
{{Cytat
| It was him [Wierzynek, a councillor of Cracow] who, on King Casimir of Poland's Poland’s orders, demonstrated during these days such magnificence, opulence and liberality while hosting all the kings, princes, lords and any guests and strangers who had arrived by invitation or out of their own desire, that not only was food offered in generous amounts, but anything anyone asked for out of need or habit was provided to him in abundance.
| źródło = Jan Długosz, ''op. cit.'', own translation
| oryg = Qui [Wÿerzinek consul Cracowiensis] Kazimiro Polonie rege iubente, tantam regibus, princibus, baronibus et quibuslibet hospitibus et advenis, tam invitatis quam suapte venientibus monstravit in procurando illos diebus magnificenciam, opulenciam et liberalitatem, ut singulis non solum victualia largissima et expense preberentur, sed etiam que cuiusque postulasset privata necessitas vel usus, in abundancia ultro largirentur.
}} }}
This must be one of the earliest descriptions of what is now considered an important part of traditional Polish hospitality, that is, forcing more food and drink down one’s guests’ throats than they are able to ingest. I can almost hear Wirsing and King Casimir urge their commensals with ``You “You should try this one too! Just a little piece. But you must! Aren't Aren’t you gonna drink with me?"”
Later descriptions of the banquet often stress the lavishness of golden and silver tableware, which is probably how some historians have interpreted the mentions of expensive gifts that were presented to the visiting monarchs. This may have been influenced by analogy to a chronicler’s account of another famous banquet from Poland’s medieval history – the one in Gniezno, AD 1000, where Duke Boleslav the Brave entertained Emperor Otto III and impressed him so much that Otto made Boleslav Poland’s first king.
{{Cytat
| So Bolesław was thus gloriously raised to kingship by the emperor, and he gave an example of the liberality innate in him when for three days following his coronation he celebrated a feast in style fit for a king or emperor. Every day the plates and the tableware were new, and many different ones were given out, ever richer again. For at the end of the feast he ordered the waiters and the cupbearers to gather the gold and silver vessels – for there was nothing made of wood there – from all three days' days’ courses, that is, the cups and goblets, the bowls and plates and the drinking horns, and he presented them to the emperor as a token of honor {{...}}
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko =
}} }}
It’s possible that these gifts were not so much handed to the guests as allowed to be taken. During the congress of Cracow, these may have been parts of the interior design of royal sleeping chambers at the Wawel Castle, ``sumptuously “sumptuously decorated with purple and scarlet, gold, pearls and jewels"jewels”,<ref name=Długosz/> as well as precious-metal plates, which the visitors simply helped themselves to after the party. It’s like you steal a towel from a hotel room and the hotel manager decides to make you a present of it; this just seems to have been the norm in the Middle Ages. It’s little surprise, then, that both the guests and the chroniclers paid much more attention to the tableware than to the food and drink that was served on it. Especially that, outside of special occasions, even at royal tables people normally ate from trenchers cut out of stale loaves of rye bread, which – soaked with rich, spicy sauces – were later consumed by the servants.<ref>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Dembińska
| imię = Maria
Guillaume de Machaut wrote a little more about the food served in Cracow.
[[File:Józef Simmler Uczta u Wierzynka.jpg|thumb|''Wierzynek's Wierzynek’s Banquet'' by Józef Simmler (1862)]]
{{Cytat
| <poem>And what a welcome did they get!
How they were honoured, served and dined
On bread and victuals, and on wine,
De Machaut wrote there was no point asking for further details of the feast, as grandeur of such scale couldn’t be put into words anyway. Still, I’m going to try and imagine what kind of dishes may have been served on King Casimir’s and his visitors’ table. Unfortunately, no Polish recipës from the Middle Ages have survived to our time, but we do have Czech recipës, which are worth looking at. Why? Because, firstly, the most important guest was Emperor Charles, ruler of the Czech-speaking Bohemia who resided at the Hradčany Castle in Prague, so it makes sense that some Czech recipës could have been included in the menu to honour him. And, secondly, the Poles generally looked up to Czech civilization, which stood much higher than their own at the time.
Today the Poles are most keen to ape the Americans; earlier, ``what “what a Frenchman dreamed up, a Pole soon adopted"adopted”<ref>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Mickiewicz
| imię = Adam
| tytuł = Pan Tadeusz, or The Last Foray in Lithuania: A Tale of the Gentry during 1811–1812
| inni = translated by Marcel Weyland
| url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170707131534/http://www.antoranz.net/BIBLIOTEKA/PT051225/PanTad-eng/PT-Start.htm#CONTENTS
The gist of the Bohemian soul,
Bread and salted fish and cold.
Black pepper, leeks, a rotten cabbage roll,
Smoked meat as hard and black as coal;
Lice, fleas, pigs, mold:
Ten people eating from one bowl,
A bitter drink — it’s beer, I’m told —
Bad beds, and dark, straw, filth, a hole,
Lice, fleas, pigs, mold,
The gist of the Bohemian soul,
}}</ref>
Let’s a take a peek, then, into the oldest recipë collection in the beautiful Czech language. It’s ''Spis o krmiech kterak mají dělány býti'' (''How to Prepare Dishes''), known from a 15th-century manuscript, although some individual recipës included in it may be much older. It turns out that, even back then, Bohemian-Polish culinary exchange wasn’t entirely one-sided and that among about 160 recipës we can find in the cookbook there are five which are described as ''po polsku'', or ``in “in the Polish manner"manner”. One of them is for Polish-style mutton and the remaining four are variants of ''štika po polsku'', or pike in the Polish way. Pike was a highly prized fish in the Middle Ages, so on a lean day it wouldn’t have been out of place on the royal table. And how better to receive a Bohemian king in Poland than by treating him to a Polish-style Bohemian dish? So let’s see how it was made.
{{Cytat
| Cook some stock that is not too salty. Scale the pike, cut into pieces, wash in clean water, and when the stock comes to boil, put the pike inside and cook well. Then strain it and put into a bowl. Chop up some onion very finely, cook it in boiling water, and when it's it’s done, divide the onion into two parts. Grind one part with parsley in a crock, and once it is well ground, pour wine or vinegar into the crock, mix well and force through a sieve. Pour this sauce into a kettle or a pot, put the pike inside and season with all spices except cloves. You can prepare carp and other kinds of fish in the same way. Lace the other part of onion with saffron. And when you arrange the pike in the bowl, put this onion on top.
| źródło = ''Spis o krmiech kterak mají dèlány byti'' (15th–16th cent. manuscript), quoted in: {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Zíbrt
| strony = 102
}}, own translation
| oryg = Zastav rosol nevelmi slaný, ostruž štiku a roztrhni ji na kusy, vymyj ji čistú vodú a když rosol zevře, daj ji do nĕho a obvař dobře. Potom ji oced' oceď a naklad' naklaď na misu. Usekajž cibuli velmi drobnĕ, vař ji v vodĕ, at' ať prudce vře, a když uvře rozdĕl sobĕ tu cibuli na dvé, jednu polovici tři v pánvi s petruželi; když ji dobře utřeš, vezmi vína, anebo octa, rozpust' rozpusť to v pánvi a potáhni skrze hartoch dajž tu jichu do kotlika nebo do hrnce, vklad' vklaď tam štiku, zakořeň všemi kořeními kromĕ hřebičkuo. Muožeš tiem zpuosobem kapry i jiné ryby dĕlati. Druhú pak polovici cibuli ošarfaň. A když štiku na misu daš, daj to cibuli svrchu.
}}
[[File:{{#setmainimage:Abramowicz Uczta u Wierzynka 1876.jpg}}|thumb|upright=1.2|left|''Wierzynek's Wierzynek’s Banquet'' by Bronisław Abramowicz (1876)]]If anyone decides to give this recipë a try, then please let me know whether it’s any good. As for me, I wouldn’t want to waste good fish. Because what was so Polish about this preparation? If you compare the recipës described as ``Polish style" “Polish style” with others in the same cookbook, you will notice that the difference was mostly in the method of thermal treatment. All of the supposedly Polish dishes were simply boiled, whereas in other recipës boiling was at most only the first step, which could be followed by roasting, baking, frying, stuffing, covering in aspic, etc.<ref>{{Cyt
| tytuł = W poszukiwaniu istoty języka
| nazwisko r = Jakobson
| nazwisko = Flandrin
| imię = Jean-Louis
| tytuł = L'ordre L’ordre des mets
| wydawca = Éditions Odile Jacob
| miejsce = Paris