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| The fact that John III brought the potato to [his royal palace at] Wilanów from the Viennese expedition is considered incontestable in the subject-matter literature. A  sceptic, who remembers [Sobieski'sSobieski’s] retreat from Párkány [a follow-up battle to the siege of Vienna] from his history classes, might think that King John had more pressing problems on his head following his famous victory, but the king's king’s letter, which has assertedly been preserved, testifies to the contrary.

The man who actually planted them was the Wilanów gardener Paweł Wienczarek, who later transferred his potato-planting knowledge to his son-in-law, Jan Łuba. The latter is known for being the first in Poland (during the reign of the next king, Augustus II) to grow potatoes on a larger scale in his garden at Nowolipki near Warsaw and sell them as a luxury item to the royal and magnate kitchens. At least this is what [https://books.google.pl/books?id=1B5KAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA539 Orgelbrand's Orgelbrand’s 1868 encyclopedia] says. Prof. Zalewski, already quoted above, adds that Łuba imported whole wagons of seed potatoes from Saxony, as the king ``demanded “demanded a  platter of potatoes (fried whole) with his every dinner"dinner”, citing (wait for it) ``a “a well-informed historian"historian”.

Jędrzej Kitowicz, an 18th-century priest known for his account of everyday life in Poland during the reign of Augustus III, also pointed to Saxony as the place where the ``earth apples" “earth apples” were imported from. Potatoes were not an immediate hit, according to him. Some priests, he wrote, spread around the opinion that these tubers were disgusting in taste and unhealthy. And the reason they were doing this was that they were afraid that someone might inadvertently commit sacrilege by mistakenly adding potato starch instead of wheat flour to the dough for altar bread.<ref>{{Cyt

But let’s go back to Sobieski. The truth is, even if he had received a&nbsp;bag of potatoes from the emperor as a&nbsp;present, it’s still unlikely that he ever developed a&nbsp;taste for them. In those times rich people (and they were the only ones who could afford potatoes) found the idea of eating something that grows or lives in dirt repulsive. They treated the potato as a&nbsp;botanical curiosity and had it grown as a&nbsp;decorative plant, but were completely uninterested in the dirty, unshapely tubers. There was an exception to their distaste for things found in earth, though: truffles. There must have been a&nbsp;clever potato dealer who persuaded his customers that the potato is kinda like a&nbsp;truffle, as the German word for ``potato"“potato”(borrowed into some dialects of Polish as well) is Kartoffel, which comes from tartufo, the Italian word for ``truffle"“truffle”. It took about a&nbsp;hundred more years before potatoes got cheap enough that the peasants could discover the advantages of this versatile vegetable, which you can not only cook and eat in so many ways, but also use to make starch, fodder and, of course, vodka.

[[File:Ukrainian borscht.JPG|thumb|Ukrainian borscht (the real thing, not what passes for ``Ukrainian borscht" “Ukrainian borscht” in Poland)]]

| According to one legend, Zaporizhian Cossacks have a &nbsp;direct link with the invention of borscht. In 1683, armies of the Ottoman Empire besieged Vienna. Armies of Christian nations, led by King John Sobieski of Poland, rushed to the Austrians' Austrians’ rescue. Among coalition soldiers there were also Ukrainian Cossacks. Time was scarce, the two-thousand-strong Turkish army was pressing on Vienna and the Austrian capital may have fallen at any time. The Cossacks were in such haste to help their allies that they failed to gather adequate provisions. They had to eat whatever they could find in local gardens. But the Cossack soul – and the Cossack stomach in particular – needed something tasty and filling. Fortunately, the Cossacks had pork fatback – yet another culinary symbol of Ukraine. And then it occurred to someone to sauté beetroots in lard before cooking them in stock. The result was both quick and tasty, especially considering the conditions in which the Cossacks had found themselves. This is how the procedure of sautéing was invented, which allows the beetroots to retain their colour and taste. On top of that, the Polish-Austrian armies defeated the Turks so overwhelmingly that the Turkish pasha sentenced his favourite vizier to death.

Which means that if not for John III’s relief of Vienna, Ukrainians would not have come up with the idea to cook their borscht with beetroots instead of hogweed (which was the original ingredient; in fact, the very word ``borscht" “borscht” comes from the Slavic name for hogweed). Which is great, only that, according to Nikolai Burlakoff,<ref>{{Cyt

One blogger, who signs his posts as ``bfaure"“bfaure”, displays quite a&nbsp;healthy approach to this kind of legends. This is how he prefaces another one of them:

| So, one starts the homage to the magnificent croissant with a &nbsp;story of its origin too good to be true – which of course it isn’t. When it comes to food, however, great stories don’t have to be true in order to be truly great, and this one has all the elements of greatness.

[[File:Hans Eichler, Munster baker discovers Turkish invaders in Vienna.png|thumb|center|upright=1.5|A Münster baker discovers a &nbsp;Turkish tunnel in Vienna]]

This legend has its Jewish variant as well, which says that Viennese Jews, in gratitude to the Polish king and his Winged Hussars, baked special rolls in the shape of a&nbsp;stirrup. And as the German word for ``stirrup" “stirrup” is Bügel, the rolls have been dubbed ``bagels"“bagels”. The bagels would later travel all the way to New York, where a&nbsp;sandwich of a&nbsp;halved bagel spread with cream cheese and covered with a&nbsp;slice of lox (smoked salmon) became the favourite snack, first among American Jews, and in the second half of the 20th century – among Americans in general.

| tytuł = The Bagel: The Surprising History of a &nbsp;Modest Bread

}}</ref> the association between King John III and the bagel is not entirely unfounded, if not as romantic as the legend would have it. As it happens, the saviour of Vienna was the first king of Poland who did not confirm a&nbsp;privilege, first issued by King John Albert in 1496, which gave the Cracovian guild of bakers (Christian only) a&nbsp;monopoly for baking wheat-flour bread and ''obwarzanki''. What it meant is that Jewish bakers could finally bake their bagels legally and sell them openly to both Jewish and Christian customers. No wonder the Yiddish phrase in ''meylekh Sabetskis yorn'' (literally, ``in “in King Sobieski's time"Sobieski’s time”) is synonymous to ``good “good old days"days”.

[[File:{{#setmainimage:Building 19 Sobieski bagels.png}}|thumb|center|From a &nbsp;commercial leaflet of the Building #19 discount store chain]]

| Of course, that [is] not how the croissant originated. It would be an additional two hundred years before anybody would determine a recipe &nbsp;recipë for the fantastic pastry we recognize today. No matter. The glory of the croissant resonates with us, even if the story told is a &nbsp;wonderful myth. Me? I like my myths, with coffee, thanks.

[[File:Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki 11.PNG|thumb|left|upright|<poem>``Jerzy “Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, oriental interpreter.

whence he returned with propitious news to Vienna on 17 August 1683."”</poem>]]

| According the contemporary sources, Kulczycki considered himself a ``native Pole" &nbsp;“native Pole” coming from the ``Polish “Polish royal free city of Sambor"Sambor”. He probably belonged to a &nbsp;Polonized, Roman Catholic branch of a &nbsp;Ukrainian family, which belonged to the noble clan Lis and originated from the village of Kulchytsi near Sambir [in what is now western Ukraine]. Nevertheless, Kulczycki's Kulczycki’s ethnicity has often been a &nbsp;bone of contention. Ukrainian scholars consider him an Orthodox Ukrainian from Zaporizhia, who fought many times against the Turks and spent two years in captivity. Austrian and Hungarian historians claim he was a &nbsp;Serb named Đura Kolčić of Sombor with a &nbsp;fake Polish identity. Nothing is known about Kulczycki's Kulczycki’s youth except that the arrived in Vienna from Serbia. He spoke both Turkish and Hungarian, which landed him a &nbsp;job as an interpreter at the Oriental Company, a &nbsp;society of Viennese merchants trading with the Ottoman Empire. Having become an independent merchant of oriental commodities, he settled at Leopoldstadt near Vienna. In July of 1683, during the siege of the imperial capital, after five weeks of hostilities, he dressed up as a &nbsp;Turkish soldier and – with the consent of the mayor and the commander of the city's city’s defences, Count Starhemberg – he left the city in the evening of 13 August to get help. He passed through the Turkish camp without problems and in the morning of 15 August he reached Duke Charles V of Lorraine, with whose written response he returned to Vienna. This feat brought him fame and riches; he was awarded Viennese citizenship and a &nbsp;plot of land for his new house.

But even to this legend there is a&nbsp;counterlegend, according to which Koltschitzky did not open the first coffeehouse in Vienna, because he had been beaten to it by three years, by an Armenian (or maybe Greek?) merchant named Johannes Diodato. That said, Koltschitzky was without a&nbsp;doubt one of two Poles – alongside [https://www.trzesniewski.at/shop/broetchen Franciszek Trześniewski,] author of Vienna’s ``unpronounceably good" “unpronounceably good” open sandwiches – who made great contributions to Vienna’s culinary scene. Unless Koltschitzky was Ukrainian, that is. Or Serbian.

{{Nawigacja|poprz=Saint Piva of Warka|nast=Epic Cooking: Breakfast at Judge Soplica'sSoplica’s}}