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With these words begins the last chapter, or Book XII, of ''Pan Tadeusz''. Its creation must have been overseen by no fewer than three muses: Calliope (who presides over epic poetry), Thalia (responsible for the comic relief) and Gastronomia (not listed among the classic nine). As [[Epic Cooking: The Perfect Cook|we've seen in the previous post]], Adam Mickiewicz, the epic poem's poem’s author, took inspiration from two old Polish cookbooks. From one (''The Perfect Cook'' by Wojciech Wielądko) he took the title, from the other (''Compendium Ferculorum'' by Stanisław Czerniecki), everything else.

Book XII is almost entirely about a  fictional banquet, said to be the last truly Old Polish feast. It is held by Judge Soplica in an abandoned castle about a  mile away from his own manor called Soplicowo. Tribune Hreczecha, ever the Renaissance man, who served as the master chef in Book XI, now replaces his flyswatter with a  ceremonial staff indicating that he is now the master of ceremonies. It is he who, in the Judge's Judge’s name, welcomes and seats the guests, and decides what dishes, in what order and on what tableware are to be served.

There are as many as three occasions for the big ceremonial dinner. First, it's it’s a &nbsp;religious holiday, "the most solemn day of Our Lady of [the] Flowers".<ref>{{Cyt

}}, Book XI, verses 153–154</ref> Mickiewiczologists can't can’t entirely agree as to the identity of this Catholic solemnity. Some say there is no such holiday, so the poet must have meant Our Lady of the Herbs, that is, Assumption Day, observed on 15 August. They propose various arguments, from historical (in real life, Napoleon invaded Russia only on 24 June 1812) to climatic and botanical ones (the spring of 1812 came late, so no flowers were yet blooming in March). But the poet was quite unequivocal in Book XI that the action was taking place in the springtime rather than in the summer. Besides, Our Lady of the Flowers does exist, as it is an old folk name for the feast of Annunciation, observed on 25 March. On this day, the mother of Jesus gets herself knocked up, while Napoleon (according to Mickiewicz) begins his campaign to knock the Russian tsar down. The former brings hope for salvation of all humanity from sin, while the latter brings hope for resurrecting Poland as an independent state. The poem makes no mention of the disaster that Napoleon's Napoleon’s invasion of Russia would turn out to be; the mood is full of joy and hope until the end.

The second occasion is a &nbsp;triple betrothal; Thaddeus proposes to Sophie, the Notary to Telimena and the Assessor to Tekla Hreczecha, the daughter "not too young, of some at least fifty years,"<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XI, verse 669</ref> of the master of today's today’s ceremonies. And finally, the third occasion is the presence of Polish soldiers serving in the French army, including Gen. Dąbrowski, whom the Judge wishes to honour by inviting them to dinner. In line with the general's general’s request, the dinner will feature "Polish cooking", reflecting Old Polish cuisine as imagined by Mickiewicz.

So let's let’s try (as [[Epic Cooking: Supper in the Castle|we already once did with an everyday Soplicowo supper]]) to reconstruct, at least partly, the menu of this exceptional banquet. How? By listing what dishes are mentioned in the poem and then looking them up in ''Compendium Ferculorum'' to check how they were made.

When describing the banquet that was going to be "the last Old Polish feast", Mickiewicz hoped to share with his readers the feeling of nostalgia for foodways that had already been gone by his time. What he wanted to convey was: this Old Polish cuisine no longer exists, no one knows these dishes any more, no one remembers their flavours, even their names now sound unfamiliar. How did he achieve this effect? It's It’s simple: all he needed to do was to take a &nbsp;hundred-odd-years-old cookery book and list all the quaintest-sounding dish names he could find.

You don't don’t know any of these specialities? Don't Don’t worry, Mickiewicz was actually assuming that the readers in his own time wouldn't wouldn’t know them either; heck, he doesn't doesn’t seem to have known their exact meanings himself. The excerpt above is just a &nbsp;jumble of random words that don't don’t really add up to any meaningful menu. We're We’re going to decipher them in a &nbsp;moment, but first let's let’s see where the poet took them from.

The main body of ''Compendium Ferculorum'' (''A Collection of Dishes'') by Stanisław Czerniecki (pronounced: {{pron|stah|nee|swahf}} {{pron|chehR|nyets|kee}}), the cookbook that Mickiewicz loved to read while pining for Polish grub, follows a &nbsp;well-thought-out structure. It is divided into three chapters, each containing one hundred recipës (more or less; the author did cheat with the numbering a &nbsp;little), respectively, for meat dishes, fish dishes, and dairy and other dishes. At the end of each chapter, Czerniecki added ten bonus recipës, as well as one "master chef's secret".

These three "secrets" were recipës that required the highest level of culinary expertise, attainable only by the most skilled of chefs. Czerniecki divulges them as a &nbsp;sort of present for his readers. The first of these secrets is a &nbsp;recipë for a &nbsp;capon in a &nbsp;bottle. The trick was to carefully skin the capon (a &nbsp;well-fattened castrated rooster), put the skin inside a &nbsp;bottle, fill it with a &nbsp;mixture of milk and eggs, and sew it up, then plug the bottle and plunge into boiling water. As the mixture expanded in heat, it made the skin swell and stiffen, producing an illusion of a &nbsp;whole capon fit inside a &nbsp;bottle. The bird's bird’s flesh could have been cooked and served separately, but it wasn't wasn’t about the meat. It was all about the deception, the surprise and making sure that the guests would "not be without great astonishment".<ref>S. Czerniecki, ''op. cit.'', s.&nbsp;44</ref> Mickiewicz made no use of this particular idea in his poem, but we will come back to the two other secrets later on.

So by now we know where the second line of the aforecited excerpt is coming from. What about the next two? It seems that the idea for these "tragacanths, brignoles and pinoli" came not from any specific recipës, but from the "General Memorandum for the Preparation of a Banquet" that Czerniecki included at the beginning of his book. It was a &nbsp;checklist of things and people that you should have at your disposal before you start preparing a &nbsp;big lordly feast. It opens with a &nbsp;list of various kinds of meat, followed by sundry dairy products, cereals, fruits, vegetables, spices, preserves, different kinds of fish and sugar, as well as kitchen utensils and jobs (including, for example, floor-sweepers equipped with brooms, shovels and wheelbarrows, because, you know, if there's there’s going to be plenty of food, then there's there’s also going to be plenty of leavings). As for the spices, the list covered, among others, the following:

There's There’s not much context here, so it's it’s possible Mickiewicz couldn't couldn’t even guess what some of these items were supposed to mean. But their meanings, of course, are precisely what we're we’re interested in here. So, without further ado, let's let’s break them down one by one:

So far, all we've we’ve got are just individual ingredients. If we want entire dishes, we've we’ve got to check out other verses of the poem. As in any Polish dinner, we will start with the soups.

In all of ''Pan Tadeusz'' I've I’ve counted five distinct kinds of this crucial element of Polish cuisine. We've We’ve already discussed two of them, the [[Epic Cooking: Breakfast at Judge Soplica's#Soup|beer soup]] and the [[Epic Cooking: Supper in the Castle#First Course|Lithuanian cold borscht]], in previous posts. Elsewhere in the epic, when Thaddeus's Thaddeus’s would-be father wanted to propose to a &nbsp;great lord's lord’s daughter, he was served "black gruel",<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book II, verse 282; Book X, verse 585</ref> or ''czernina'' (blood soup, which is, incidentally, more of a &nbsp;Greater Poland speciality than a &nbsp;Lithuanian one), as a &nbsp;sign of refusal. Naturally, this soup's soup’s symbolism meant that it couldn't couldn’t be served at a &nbsp;betrothal dinner.

An unspecified soup is also used by the poet in a &nbsp;rather bawdy joke. You see, in Polish, the word "''zupa''" ("soup") rhymes with "''dupa''" ("arse"), so Mickiewicz used the former to avoid mentioning the latter. Translating the pun into English is, of course, a &nbsp;challenge; this is how Mr. Marcel Weyland has dealt with it:

But the description of the banquet we're we’re discussing today begins with two soups taken straight from ''Compendium Ferculorum'':

}}, own translation</ref> The problem is that if you do try and decipher them (and this is exactly what we're we’re about to do), then this patriotic vision of two soups in Poland's Poland’s national colours will fall apart like a &nbsp;house of cards. Let's Let’s begin with the "royal borscht" and see if it was really red. As it happens, it's it’s the first recipë in the third chapter of ''Compendium Ferculorum''.

It will be good, for sure, but hardly red. It's It’s not the familiar red beetroot borscht, but rather something modern Poles would call either "''barszcz biały''" ("white borscht") or "''żurek''" ("sour soup"), made from fermented flour-and-water mixture (or thinned sourdough, if you will). It used to exist in two versions: the festive one, cooked on smoked-meat stock and served on sausage, bacon and eggs, is still very much around. The Lenten version, with salted herring, once very common, is now somewhat forgotten. What Czerniecki calls "royal borscht" is the Lenten variant, but in a &nbsp;royal guise, so apart from the cheap herring, there are also more upscale fish species, such as pike, salmon and sturgeon. Mushrooms are there too, probably even more than two ("two mushrooms into borscht" is a &nbsp;Polish idiom expressing excess), as well as the exotic cumin.

And what about the other soup? The mention of a &nbsp;gold coin, pearls and "a secret old recipë" leaves no doubt that it's Czerniecki's it’s Czerniecki’s third master chef's chef’s secret. But if you read the recipë carefully, you will see that it's it’s no so much a &nbsp;banquet dish, but another concoction for the ill.

You can see that this was a &nbsp;cure for the well-to-do only. All we're we’re getting out of an entire stag, an ox, a &nbsp;quarter of a &nbsp;ram, four partridges and one capon is one and a &nbsp;half tablespoons of meat juice that we're we’re supposed to let the patient quaff to make him sweat. Sounds rather like some kind of homeopathic scam, doesn't doesn’t it? It's It’s even more suspicious, if you consider what must have eventually happened with the ducat and the pearls that the chef would have said he'd he’d needed for this elixir. In any case, it doesn't doesn’t seem these ingredients had any influence on the preparation's preparation’s medicinal properties, flavour or even colour. If you had thought that, if the borscht hadn't 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 wasn’t actually red in colour, it was golden; besides, gold doesn't doesn’t dissolve in water (unless it's it’s royal water, or ''aqua regia'', but that wouldn't wouldn’t be really fit for consumption). It's 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.

For the purpose of our reconstruction, though, I suggest we take another of Czerniecki's Czerniecki’s broth recipës. A &nbsp;good dinner broth. Just like the one that opens the first chapter of the ''Compendium''.

Now, this is the kind of broth that you can still see on many a &nbsp;Polish table every Sunday! This recipë seems quite modern in that, unlike many other Old Polish dishes, it's 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 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 let’s see a &nbsp;recipë for the ''figatelle''.

Big aristocratic banquets often lasted for at least a &nbsp;few days. Considering the frequency of lean (fasting) days (every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday), there was no way for the feat not to overlap with a &nbsp;lean day. On such days the menu was modified to include fish, but no meat of any land animals. This why ''Compendium Ferculorum'' has an entire chapter devoted exclusively to fish dishes. The banquet in ''Pan Tadeusz'' is condensed to just one day, but the menu contains both meat and fish items. You may have already noticed that of the two soups, one was meat-based while the other was a &nbsp;fish soup. So let's let’s continue with this convention and have one fish dish to every meat serving on our menu. And, since the poet devoted more attention to fish, let's let’s start with this.

So we've we’ve got quite a &nbsp;few fish species, but what about fish dishes? Here Mickiewicz was somewhat less specific. He did mention one delicacy, though, which was served at the end of the dinner as the master chef's chef’s ''pièce de résistance''.

Obviously, that's that’s the second "secret" from the ''Compendium''. This one, for a &nbsp;"whole, uncut fish, cooked in three ways", except that in Czerniecki's Czerniecki’s actual recipë it was the middle that was boiled, the head was fried and the tail, roasted.<ref>S. Czerniecki, ''op. cit.'', [https://polona.pl/item/compendium-fercvlorvm-albo-zebranie-potraw,MzQ5MDIzMw/78 s.&nbsp;67]</ref> Not just any fish will do here. It must be both appropriately dignified and long, which means a &nbsp;mature pike is the best choice. The trick is rather simple: all you need to do is to spit-roast the fish over low-burning coals. The part that's that’s meant to be boiled must be wrapped in cloth that is constantly doused with salted water with vinegar. The part that's that’s supposed to be fried is basted with oil and sprinkled with flour. And the part that's that’s meant to be roasted is roasted. And here's here’s the full recipë as written by Czerniecki:

Mickiewicz only used the pike in saffron sauce in a &nbsp;similë, without paying any more attention to it, but in Old Polish times it was one of the nobility's nobility’s favourite fish-based specialities. And saffron, in general, was one of their fave seasonings; Czerniecki even described Polish cookery as "saffrony and peppery".<ref>S. Czerniecki, ''op. cit.'', [https://polona.pl/item/compendium-fercvlorvm-albo-zebranie-potraw,MzQ5MDIzMw/20 s.&nbsp;9]</ref> But since we've we’ve already used the pike in the previous dish, let's let’s now have salmon instead, which – again, according to Czerniecki – "is in our Poland of the most subtle flavour." Salmon in "royal saffron sauce" is the opening recipë of the ''Compendium'''s second chapter.

And for the third fish dish, let's let’s take that one of Czerniecki's Czerniecki’s recipës that will allow us to use up the carp and the pine nuts that we already have in store.

When composing the meaty part of our menu, we'll we’ll need to make even more use of our own imagination, because the poet didn't didn’t mention any specific meat dishes in the banquet's banquet’s description. We only know from the section about the meal's meal’s preparation that meat was plentiful, both in terms of quality and diversity.

As you can see, most of this flesh was roasted. What's What’s interesting, Czerniecki included almost no instructions for roasting in his cookbook. He must have thought the procedure too simple to even bother writing about; you just stick the animal on a &nbsp;spit and turn it over a &nbsp;flame, that's that’s all. Most of his recipës are, in fact, for boiled or stewed meats. But we're we’re lucky to have ten recipës from his addendum to the first chapter, all for roast condiments. The author proposes condiments, or rather sauces, made from mushrooms, garlic, mustard seeds, juniper berries, cauliflower, capers, limes, anchovies, oysters… But let's let’s pick the one that is the simplest to make and also the most typically Polish – the onion condiment.

Roast beef that is sliced not all the way through, with onion filling stuffed into the pockets, is a &nbsp;dish that is still very much part of Polish cuisine today. It was given its current name, "hussar-style beef", in the 19th century, when the stripes of yellowish stuffing reminded our ancestors of the decorative frogging on hussar uniforms.

We know from the poem that poultry was also served. And we haven't haven’t yet made any use of the caviar that we know was there. As it turns out, roast capon goes perfectly with caviar, at least if we're we’re to believe Czerniecki. Here's Here’s the last recipë from the first chapter of his cookbook:

I'll I’ll leave it up to you whether to use Venetian or Turkish caviar.

And finally, to use up the prunes, let's let’s have a &nbsp;dish of stewed meat, let's let’s say veal. This is Czerniecki's Czerniecki’s recipë for a &nbsp;prune stew:

It's It’s time for dessert at last. For this course we're we’re going to have an "arcas" and a &nbsp;blancmange (but you knew that already). Let's Let’s start with the "arcas", which, for the record, is an English word I made up for lack of any better (other than "milk jelly") rendering of the Polish term, "''arkas''", which, itself, is of unclear etymology.

Czerniecki doesn't doesn’t mention it in this recipë, but if you want to make sure the jelly will settle, you may want to stiffen it with a &nbsp;little tragacanth.

We're We’re still keeping with the rule that for each recipë that isn't isn’t lean, we're we’re also having one that is. So now let's let’s make some blancmange, which would be purely vegan, if not for the presence of the aforementioned musk (which is added to make sure the aroma doesn't doesn’t fade away).

Mickiewicz didn't didn’t devote nearly as much space to the dishes as he did to the tableware and in particular to the huge silver-and-porcelain centrepiece.

So what exactly is a &nbsp;centrepiece? Imagine the familiar stand for salt and pepper shakers. Sometimes you may come across more elaborate versions with cruets of vinegar and olive oil, and a &nbsp;napkin holder. And now imagine this kind of stand, but blown up to gigantic proportions, so that is takes up half of the table, and with rich ornamentation to boot. This is what a &nbsp;centrepiece, also known by the French term, ''surtout de table'' (literally, "all over the table"), is.

The centrepiece which the Tribune dug out from the storage was enormous even by Baroque standards. On a &nbsp;round tray the size of a &nbsp;carriage wheel<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verse 34</ref> there stood at least thirty porcelain figurines "dressed in Polish apparel".<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 42–43</ref> These figures represented a &nbsp;scene from a &nbsp;typical local political assembly of Old Polish times – an election campaign, a &nbsp;vote tally, an unsuccessful veto, the winner's winner’s joy and the loser's wife's loser’s wife’s grief. I won't won’t be going into details here; if you want, you can read the Tribune's Tribune’s description of the scene, to which Lord Chamberlain quipped, "that election's quite curious, we grant, but just now we are hungry; it's food that we want."<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 122–123</ref>

Let's Let’s focus instead on the foodstuffs that were displayed on this centrepiece, even if they were there more for decoration than for eating – just like fondant icing on modern-day layer cakes (such as [https://www.facebook.com/pg/pinarosacakes/photos the wonders that my sister makes,] for example). So now brace yourselves for a &nbsp;longer piece of anapestic tetrametre (I believe it is really worth reading, though).

A winter landscape made out of "sugary foams", that is, sweetened whipped cream, is yet another Baroque idea for a &nbsp;culinary illusion taken from Czerniecki's Czerniecki’s ''Compendium''. In the original version the whipped cream was supposed to be poured on a &nbsp;rosemary bush surrounded with wafer cream rolls. The whole thing was meant to look like an evergreen tree covered with heavy snow with cones lying on the ground. And here's here’s the recipë:

After some time, this foam would trickle down from the bush, producing the illusion of thaw. Winter was gone, spring and summer were here. The foam would also uncover a &nbsp;dark forest made of fruit preserves, fields of buckwheat made from chocolate, apple and pear trees made from, I don't don’t know, some apple-and-pear mousse? And saffron wheat fields, which I suppose doesn't doesn’t mean naked saffron threads imitating ears of wheat, but rather some kind of paste dyed yellow with saffron. And if soon afterwards "the grain, painted gold, slowly melt[ed] while absorbing the warmth of the hall",<ref>A. Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book XII, verses 174–175</ref> then it surely must have been saffron ice cream. That would have been a &nbsp;truly Baroque twist: snow imitated by lukewarm cream "foam" followed by summer crops made from ice cream! Sadly, Czerniecki provides no ice cream recipë in his book. But I do know that you can get delicious saffron ice cream (with ground orchid tubers, which give it a &nbsp;peculiar fudgy texture) at Gothic Restaurant in the Malbork Castle.<ref>''Update:'' Sadly, the restaurant didn't survive the covid-19 pandemic and closed down in May 2020.</ref> I'd I’d say this treat alone would be a &nbsp;good enough reason to visit Malbork, even if the largest brick Gothic castle in the world wasn't wasn’t in itself a &nbsp;worthy tourist destination.

At the end all that was left were cinnamon canes and laurel branches that were somehow covered in cumin seeds. I'm I’m not sure whether these branches would have made a &nbsp;good snack. I'd I’d rather imagine, in this role, some kind of cumin or caraway-flavoured bread sticks.

Anyway, one thing is crucial: to have an audience that will be able to appreciate this art of culinary illusion. Alas, it seems that the Tribune wasn't wasn’t so lucky in this regard.