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I took the recipës from ''Compendium Ferculorum'' (''A Collection of Dishes'') by Stanisław Czerniecki{{czyt|Stanisław Czerniecki}}, first published in 1682. I wrote then that it was the oldest cookbook ever printed in Polish. Well, that's no longer true. Polish and Ukrainian historians have recently confirmed that an even older Polish-language cookery book was published a century and a half before ''Compendium Ferculorum''. Not a single volume of that older book has survived to our times, but now we know for sure it was there. Some clues about its possible existence in the past had been know earlier, but as the surviving fragments could be suspected of being some 19th-century hoaxes, there was no certainty. Until now. So let's follow the fascinating history of this new oldest Polish printed cookbook and how it was rediscoveed. And then, let's pick and try out a recipe from it – one for beginners, of course.

Naturally, copying books by hand was labour-intensive and, therefore, costly (even despite relatively low labour costs in the past). Besides, few people could read anyway, so cookbooks (just like any books for that matter) were a rare luxury. This began to change once Johannes Gutenberg {{czyt|Johannes Gutenberg}} invented the movable-type printing press. He used his invention to publish the first printed book (a Bible, obviously) in 1455. It was only 15 years later in Rome that the first ever cookbook was published in print. It was ''De honesta voluptate et valetudine'' (''Of Honest Pleasure and Good Health'') by Bartolomeo Sacchi {{czyt|Bartolomeo Sacchi}} (1421–1481), better known as Platina, who served as a papal secretary and librarian, although he actually copied most of the recipës from Martin do Como's handwritten ''Libro de arte coquinaria'' (''Book of Culinary Arts''). It took another 15 years for the first cookbook printed in a vernacular language to come out, namely the German ''Küchenmeisterei'' {{czyt|Küchenmeisterei}} published by Peter Wagner{{czyt|Peter Wagner}}. The 15th century also saw the first printed cookbooks in French, Italian and English, and the first half of the 16th century, in Dutch, Catalan, Spanish and Czech. The latter book, entitled ''Kuchařstvi'' {{czyt|Kuchařstvi}} and published by Pavel Severýn {{czyt|Pavel Severýn}} in 1535, in Prague, was a translation of the aforementioned German text. Both titles can be translated as ''Cooking Mastery''.

In 1891, Zygmunt Wolski {{czyt|Zygmunt Wolski}} (1862–1931), an apprentice librarian at the Krasiński Library in Warsaw, visited Cezary Wilanowski's {{czyt|Cezary Wilanowski}} (1846–1893) second-hand bookshop, where he found a folder containing four loose sheets of paper that had been removed from an old book cover. The cover bore no title, but it did bear the year of publication: 1538. The four sheets which were reused to strengthen the cover came from three different printed books. Two of the sheets were covered with culinary recipes -- all for different kinds of vinegar, as it happened. Wolski carefully examined the watermarks on the paper, the typeface and the language used in the recipes, and concluded that they must have been printed in the first half of the 16th century.<ref> {{Cyt

Wolski found the sheets only a year after Artur Benis {{czyt|Artur Benis}} (1865–1932), a historian at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow who was busy researching the history of book printing in Poland, had published his work on inventories of Cracow's mid-16th-century print shops. Such inventories were typically made for the purposes of inheritance proceedings and contained lists of books which a print shop owner had printed, but died before he could sell them. And so, in an inventory made in 1555, after the death of Helena Unglerowa{{czyt|Helena Unglerowa}}, the widow of Florian Ungler {{czyt|Florian Ungler}} (d.&nbsp;1536), who had been the first person to print books entirely in Polish, there was a mention of 100 unbound copies of a book whose rather unpronounceable title (to anyone who isn't Polish) was ''Kuchmistrzosthwo'' {{czyt|Kuchmistrzostwo}} (''Cooking Mastery'').<ref>{{Cyt

But that's not all. The same year 1891 saw the publication of two further works which shed more light on these two sheets. Firstly, Benis published the second volume of his ''Inventories'', which contained a mention of a single copy of a cookbook owned by Helena Gałczyna {{czyt|Helena Gałczyna}} (d.&nbsp;1549), the widow of another Cracow printer, Maciej Szarffenberg {{czyt|Maciej Szarffenberg}} (d.&nbsp;1547). Additionally, four copies of the same book were listed in the inventory of a Szymon Tyrlikowski's book collection. The title indicated in both inventories, however, was written as ''Kucharstvo'' or ''Kucharsthvo'' {{czyt|Kucharstwo}} (''Cookery'').<ref>{{Cyt

Secondly, Čeněk Zíbrt {{czyt|Čeněk Zíbrt}} (1864–1932), a historian at Charles University in Prague, published a reprint of the earliest cookbook printed in the Czech language, that is, the aforementioned ''Kuchařství''.<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> This allowed Władysław Wisłocki {{czyt|Władysław Wisłocki}} (1841–1900), custodian of the Jagiellonian University Library, to compare the vinegar recipes discovered by Wolski with recipes found in the Czech book. And he realized that what Wolski found were indeed fragments of the oldest printed Polish cookbook, which happened to be a translation of the Czech ''Kuchařství''. And, according to Wisłocki, the title was rendered into Polish as ''Kucharstwo'', rather than ''Kuchmistrzostwo'' as Wolski had claimed.<ref>{{Cyt

For something more, one had to wait almost forty years, but I believe it was worth it. It was then that Kazimierz Piekarski {{czyt|Kazimierz Piekarski}} (1893–1944), head of the Old Prints Department at the Jagiellonian Library, discovered a badly damaged sheet of paper printed with more recipes from ''Kuchmistrzostwo'' (or ''Kucharstwo'', if you wish). He removed the sheet, naturally, from the cover of a different tome, namely the 1549 edition of the Latin-language ''De Tuenda Valetudine Libri Sex'' (''Six Books on the Preservation of Health'') by the aforementioned Galen.

Piekarski examined the typefaces used both on the sheet he had found and on the pages with vinegar recipes discovered by Wolski, and then compared them with the typefaces known to be used by different Cracow printers in the first half of the 16th century. And he came to the conclusion that the two fragments came from two different editions of the same cookbook. The sheet found at the Jagiellonian Library was printed with types used at Maciej Szarffenberg's print shop, while the two sheets discovered in Warsaw must have been printed with types employed by Hieronim Wietor {{czyt|Hieronim Wietor}} (ca. 1480–1547) – rather than by Florian Ungler as Wolski had assumed. But if a hundred unsold copies were found in Mrs. Unlger's inventory, then Ungler must have also printed his own edition of the same cookbook, although not a single copy of that edition has survived to our times.<ref>{{Cyt

And then, there remains the question of how to date this oldest Polish cookbook. Its first edition couldn't be published earlier than 1535, which was when ''Kuchařství'' came out in Prague. After all, the translation can't be older that the original. The latest possible date, on the other hand, is 1547, wich is when the cookbook was noted in Szarffenberg's inventory. It was only in the 21st century that it was possible to significantly narrow this 12-year gap, thanks to a catalogue of the library which belonged to Austrian book collector Hieronymus Beck von Leopoldsdorf {{czyt|Hieronymus Beck von Leopoldsdorf}} (1525–1596). One of the items listed in his catalogue is "„''Kuchmistrzstwo'' [sic] Prossowol 1536”. It's unclear what "Prossowol" could mean; it may have refered to some printer who hailed from the village of Proszowice {{czyt|Proszowice}} near Cracow. In any case, if that printer published an edition of ''Kuchmistrzostwo'' as early 1536, then it would mean that the Polish translation came out only a year after the Czech original.<ref>{{Cyt

The discovery which practically removed all the remaining doubts about the actual existence of ''Kuchmistrzostwo'' and its contents was made about ten years ago by Dr Svitlana Bulatova {{czyt|Switłana Bułatowa}} at the Manuscript Institute of the National Library of Ukraine in Kyiv.<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> But hold on, you may say, why the Manuscript Institute? We're talking about a printed book, aren't we? Well, yes, but keep in mind what we said about culinary recipes being constantly copied and rewritten. Back when nobody kept a smartphone equipped with a camera and an OCR function in the pocket -- back when even photocopiers didn't exist -- people commonly copied recipes they found in printed sources by hand. Sometimes they would even create entire manuscript cookbooks that were compilations of recipes taken from diverse sources, both printed and handwritten. It was one such manuscript, entitles ''Zbiór dla kuchmistrza, tak potraw jako ciast robienia'' {{czyt|Zbiór dla kuchmistrza, tak potraw jako ciast robienia}} (''A Collection for the Master Chef, of Recipes for Dishes, as Well as Cakes'') cookbook that caught Dr. Bulatova's attention and led her to get in touch with the foremost specialist on the history of Polish cuisine, Prof. Jarosław Dumanowski {{czyt|Jarosław Dumanowski}} at Copernicus University in Toruń.

The manuscript contains a total of about a thousand recipes, as well as medical, veterinary and gardening tips -- all written by the same hand. The sources these recipes and tips were gleaned from are not always indicated in the text, but you can see from the different styles and grammars that they must have originated in various historical periods -- mostly within the 16th and 17th centuries. And yet, the copyist who made the manuscript clearly indicated on the title page that he finished his work on 25 July 1757 (such dating is further borne out by water marks found on the paper). Which means by the time the manuscript was created, the recipes which were copied into had already been quite old. The copyist himself didn't sign his work, but the book's first owner left her signatures on three different pages. It was Rozalia Pociejowa ''née'' Zahorowska {{czyt|Rozalia Pociejowa Zahorowska}} (ca.&nbsp;1690–1762), a prominent noblewoman from the region of Volynia in what is now western Ukraine. What led her to commission such a compilation of recipes from previous centuries? Did she wish to study culinary history? Or maybe these old recipes still seemed relevant to her own times and she saw the collection in purely practical terms? We don't really know.

There are other clues, too, which confirm that the author of the manuscript had access to the same printed cookbook of which only the three sheets survive today. One is that the manuscript contains the modified title of one of the recipes that we already saw on the sheet found at the Jagiellonian Library: "buffalo, bison or other game which is uncommon in Polish lands, but only in foreign countries". Another is a word incorrectly written the letter "t" where one would expect the letter "k". It looks like the 18th-century copyist had trouble reading the 16th-century typeface, in which the k's and the t's do indeed look quite similar. See for yourselves: can your make out the word written in pricture below?<ref>The correct answer is: ''"kotła"''{{czyt|kotła}}.</ref> So if the copyist misspelled a word because he misread a printed letter, then he must have been copying a printed text -- and this means the printed text must have existed in the first place!

Both recipes for squirrels -- in their Czech-language version -- were tried out by a group of Czechs: food writer Roman Vaněk {{czyt|Roman Vaněk}} and chef Pavel Mencl{{czyt|Pavel Mencl}}, with the help of historian Martin Franc{{czyt|Martin Franc}}, in an episode of the TV show ''Zmlsané dějiny'' {{czyt|Zmlsané dějiny}} (''Hungry for History''). Obtaining the principal raw material proved to be difficult as red squirrels, which are native to Europe, are protected by law. They ended up importing some grey squirrels from Britain, where they are trapped and killed as an invasive species. The culinary reënactors were quite satisfied with the end result, except that the colours weren't as bright as they had expected: rather than yellow and black, the sauces came out in different shades of brown. But this only shows that colours were perceived differently by people back when no aritificial food colouring was available.

The third chapter has recipes for "Saturday food", which means food allowed by the Catholic Church on the milder fasting days, such as Saturday. The milder version of fasting still excluded the meat of land-dwelling animals, but allowed the consumption of dairy and eggs. This chapter abounds in recipes for various kinds of dumplings, porridges and yolk-thickened soups. At the very end, in an implicit fourth chapter, we can find the vinegar recipes, some of which we already know. But let's stick to the porridges. The Polish word for "porridge", ''"kasza"''{{czyt|kasza}}, had a boader meaning in the past than it has today and referred not only to boiled cereal grains, but to any kind of food with porridge-like consistency. For example, you could cut some apples into chunks, fry them up and then pass through a sieve to obtain "apple porridge".