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Where did the Tribune get his ideas for all the dishes to be served at the last Old Polish feast from? Well, he didn't rely on his own memory, nor on any home recipesrecipës, but he carefully reached for an old printed cookbook.

In a footnote, Mickiewicz adds that it's "now a very rare book, published over a hundred years ago by Stanisław Czerniecki."<ref name=obj>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Poet's explanatory notes, own translation</ref> And this is where it gets tricky. A Polish cookbook entitled ''Kucharz doskonały'' (''The Excellent Cook'' or ''The Perfect Cook'', depending on how you translate it) did exist, but it was first published only in 1783, which was less than half a century rather than "over a hundred years" before ''Pan Tadeusz''. What's more, it wasn't written by Stanisław Czerniecki (pronounced: {{pron|stah|nee|sWahf}} {{pron|chehr|nyet|skee}}). It was actually ''La cuisinière bourgeoise'' by Menon, translated into Polish and published by Wojciech Wielądko (pronounced: {{pron|voy|cheH}} {{pron|vyeh|lawnt|kaw}}), a man who otherwise had little to do with catering business. All the Tribune would have found there were French culinary novelties rather than time-honoured Old Polish recipesrecipës.

So what was it about Czerniecki? Well, he was indeed an experienced chef, responsible for setting up aristocratic 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 it was – as we shall see in the next post – precisely from this book that the Tribune got the recipes recipës for all the dishes he would serve at the great banquet in Book XII.

Besides, it wasn't only the recipes recipës that Mickiewicz took from the ''Compendium''. The mention of the dinner given by the "Count of Tęczyn" to Pope Urban VIII in Rome was also inspired by the same cookbook, and specifically, by the dedication its author addressed to his employer, Princess Helena Tekla Lubomirska. Princess Lubomirska, the wife of Prince Aleksander Michał Lubomirski, took active part in Polish political life; she was also a great patroness 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 (roughly 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 might 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 banquet which Ossoliński gave to the pope was without a doubt no less osstentatious. This is how Czerniecki described it:

| Adam suggested to give a purely Polish-Lithuanian feast, according to ancient recipes recipës from “The Perfect Cook”, a tattered old book which he carries around like some treasure in his travelling library and often reads with great pleasure. Obviously, this idea fell through {{...}}

Distinguished Mickiewiczologist, Prof. Stanisław Pigoń, once suggested a rather convincing solution to this puzzle: the book that Mickiewicz loved to read when pining for Polish cuisine and dreaming of having an actual Old Polish banquet was indeed ''Compendium ferculorum'', but it was old and tattered, and missing its title page. So Mickiewicz knew very well the contents of the work and the dedication, as well as the author's name, but he was ignorant of the book's title. On the other hand, he probably never read ''The Perfect Cook'', but he might have heard about it; the title could have stuck in his head and he may have later associated it with the mysterious treasure-trove of Old Polish recipes recipës that had somehow found its way into his hands.

So there was one master chef (with the Tribune in this role, obviously), commanding five cooks, who, in turn, shouted orders to scullions, who were doing all the dirty work. If fifty knives were clattering at the same time, then there must have been at least ten scullions to every cook. The Tribune, meanwhile, was just standing in the middle, reading the recipes recipës aloud and making sure they were "carried all out to the letter": take, chop, pour, boil, take, chop, pour, boil…