A Joke & an Icon: The Classic Polish Pork Cutlet
Although it is considered one of the most traditional Polish dishes, kotlet schabowy – breaded pork cutlet – hasn’t actually been a part of our tradition for that long, and it very much resembles its European cousins – the Austrian schnitzel and the Italian cotoletta alla milanese. One might say that there’s nothing special about it, and yet for years schabowy with a side of boiled potatoes and either braised sauerkraut or mizeria (cucumber salad), has been almost synonymous with the typical Polish obiad (lunch).
Pork wasn’t particularly popular in old Poland, and there were no recipes for any type of chops in 17th- and 18th-century cookbooks such as Czerniecki’s Compendium Ferculorum or Wielądko’s Kucharz Doskonały (‘The Perfect Cook’). Professor Jarosław Dumanowski, who researches old Polish culinary traditions, clarifies that 'the conviction that pork was always a part of Polish cuisine is a misconception’. As he explains, 'this meat started to be appreciated and described in cookbooks not so long ago, and that change was linked to the fall of the old Polish cuisine of the Polish nobility'.
The dish of the town
Schabowe were probably introduced as a variation of the Austrian Wiener Schnitzel which is a thin, breaded cutlet made with veal, but which also has a pork version called Wiener Schnitzel vom Schwein. There was a long debate between Austrians and Italians about whether it actually originated in Austria or was brought there from the Italian region of Lombardy, since it’s closely related to cotoletta alla milanese. Anyway, all of those form the European variety of breaded meats.
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Cover and title page of the book by Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa, '365 Meals for Five Złotys', photo: Polona National Library
Cutlets as we know them today only appear in the practical and popular 365 obiadów za 5 złotych (365 Meals for Five Złotys) by Lucyna Ćwierciakiewiczowa, which was published in 1860 and had innumerable editions, becoming one of Poland’s most popular cookbooks ever. One of the reasons for that was that it was aimed at a much broader audience of mieszczaństwo – city folk. Ćwierciakiewiczowa advises:
Take the part which is called the chop or the cutlet, cut it so as to have some meat attached to every bone, beat the pieces well, season them, dip them in egg mixed with water, sprinkle them with bread crumbs mixed with flour, and fry them in butter or hot lard.
In Maria Ochorowicz-Monatowa’s Uniwersalna książka kucharska (‘The Universal Cookbook’) published in the early 20th century, we can already find almost a dozen recipes for pork cutlets, both breaded and not. Yet it was only during the times of the People’s Republic of Poland that schabowy became a staple on Polish tables, in homes and in canteens and milk bars. Whenever there was meat (which was often missing from people’s tables at the time), schabowy was a favourite. Songs were sung about it (‘Then we will dream a colourful, painted dream / with our faces hugging breaded schabowe cutlets’ – sang Wiesław Gołas in 1977 in his hit W Polskę idziemy / To Poland We Go) and novels featured it as an omnipresent element of the urban culinary world. In Leopold Tyrmand’s The Man With White Eyes (Zły, 1955), we learn that in the early fifties at Warsaw’s Main Train Station you could only buy either schabowy or kidneys.
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Title page from the book by Maria Monatowa 'Universal cookbook with illustrations and color plates, awarded at hygienic exhibitions in Warsaw in 1910 and 1926', photo: Biblioteka Nardowa Polona
Schabowy: A joke & an icon
Even today, and even if we don’t eat it that often ourselves, to many Poles the traditional obiad consists of an obligatory soup (most often rosół or tomato soup) and a drugie danie (‘second dish’) of a pork cutlet (schabowy or mielony – which is minced and resembles a fried meatball), potatoes and a warm or cold vegetable side dish – cabbage, beets or a cucumber-and-cream salad called mizeria are among the most popular choices. This simple, unsophisticated fare is sometimes mocked and people who don’t enjoy trying new things are ironically referred to as kotleciarze (those who eat kotlety), while grać do kotleta – ‘to play to the cutlet’ – is a phrase most often used by musicians who have to take gigs at events where nobody is listening to them anyway.
While the reputation of kotlety deteriorated somehow when many Poles turned to a more varied, international and healthier diet, the lasting importance of schabowy is confirmed by the fact it is without a doubt one of the most popular – if not the most popular – Polish dish among… Polish vegans. Yes, that’s right: the plant-based version, made with either soy protein or oyster mushrooms, is a hit in vegan bars all over Poland, bringing the nostalgic flavour of childhood to those who gave up meat for ethical or health-related reasons.
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Wiener schnitzel, photo: Rrrainbow /Getty Images
Even if nowadays we prefer pizza, try to keep healthy or decide not to eat meat anymore, still to many of us schabowy remains the quintessential Polish dish – the dish we intuitively recall when we think of ‘our traditional food’, even if we know this tradition is rather recent and not even all that Polish.
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