In Search of Lost Culinary Identity

przesiedlency_fila_forum_.jpg, default, Polish settlers in the Western Territories. In the photo: Ewa Wichary, Bogusław Wojtaszek, Antonina Wojtaszek, Felicja, Wincenty Fila, Zofia Fila, Zos

#polish cuisine

Following World War II, the borders of Poland were moved westward. As a result, the ethnic German populations who lived in the regions of Lower Silesia, Pomerania, and Masuria were resettled and the traditional regional cuisine of those areas effectively ceased to exist. Many local culinary traditions faded from memory.

Many decades later, thanks to popularisation efforts, publications, and attempts at reconstruction, the memory of the pre-war culinary traditions of those regions is being painstakingly recovered. Questions are being raised about culinary identity. There are ongoing discussions as to whether long-forgotten multicultural culinary traditions might be used to create new regional cuisines, blending together traditional products and historical knowledge with modern-day gastronomy. As the culinary journalist Robert Makłowicz says, 'cuisine and nationalism are mutually exclusive'. There are no dishes of entirely pure ethnic lineage, as Poles come from a country that was once the shared homeland of dozens of nations and they drink from many different wellsprings.

Is there no Wrocław cuisine?

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Baked White Sausage. One of the stands during the Polagra Food fair, photo: Jakub Kaczmarczyk / PAP

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In the opinion of chef Piotr Kucharski (himself from Wrocław), there is no Wrocław cuisine these days. Although over 70 years have passed since the war, attempts to define a ‘typically Wrocław’ cuisine often end in failure. Were you to ask residents of Lower Silesia's capital city about regional specialities, each would provide a different answer. The culinary memory of the city only reaches back a couple of generations – to the kitchens of parents and grandparents. These earlier generations were repatriated to Silesia from the East after WWII and thus brought with them family recipes from the Eastern regions. Wrocław (previously Breslau) was culturally and culinarily foreign to them. That is probably why, says Kucharski, 'dishes from various regions of Poland function here alongside one another, but they don't intermix – if they did, it might be possible to speak of a new regional cuisine'.

For those who are passionate about pre-war Wrocław (Breslau), the crime novels of Marek Krajewski offer a sense of the city and its cuisine. Readers might feel a tug in their stomachs as they read what Krajewski’s Eberhard Mock, the Breslau police commissioner and 'virtuoso of taste', would enjoy eating. Monk’s diet includes gigantic dumplings decorated with fried pork crisps, eaten with roast pork and thick white cabbage, and washed down with pints of Świdnica beer. Such a meal might be preceded by a chicken jelly adorned with a wreath of mushrooms in vinegar and accompanied by fried herring in vinegar marinade, goose necks stuffed with onion, liver and goose lard with crispy potato slices, pieces of roast pork floating in a thick sauce topped with flour and cream, liver balls with parsley, Polish hot sausages, or dry knockwursts. All this washed down, of course, with vodka, lemon vodka, or other alcoholic drinks. For a lighter meal, Mock and his fellow Breslauers might enjoy a piece of military bread with spicy, chopped meat. After all, it is said that Breslauers so loved sausages that they could eat them every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Silesian heaven over Wrocław

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Country lard, Jędrzej Wojnar / AG

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Eberhard Mock tracked down his criminals before 1939. Nearly a century later, historians like Wrocław cuisine specialist Grzegorz Sobel track down – with detective-like determination – the recipes of old Wrocław:

The flavour of old Wrocław is a culinary mosaic made up of a minority share of local specialities and a majority of other, varied cultural influences – one could name Silesian, Polish, French, English, East Prussian, Viennese, Italian, and Czech cuisines – whose assimilation upon the tables of the city's residents took place unceasingly since the Middle Ages. It achieved its final form just before the First World War and its character and specific nature place it in the category of the typical bourgeois cuisine of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in which meat dominated... It is the task of the culinary historian, then, to rescue from oblivion those cuisines that were typical of our city.

It is by no means out of the question that Mock was also familiar with 'Silesian heaven' or Schlesische Himmelreich. That is bacon steamed in fruit: dried or fresh apples, pears, or plums, typically served with dumplings. There was probably no home in Silesia in which this dish wasn't served at least once a year. Smoked and cooked bacon is the main ingredient of another of Breslau's popular dishes – Breslauer Häckerle, a type of salad with added herring, pickled cucumbers and onions, and sometimes sour apples. All of that was mixed with oil and mustard and spiced with black pepper.

In the 19th century, another tasty treat made its way from the countryside to the kitchens of Breslau – 'proud Heinrich', a roasted white sausage, prepared in a base of beer, cloves, pepper, and cumin. We also cannot forget to mention Schwärtelbraten, roasted with their skin, Saint Martin's Day goose, Wrocław patés made with French dough, and stuffed ragoût made of partridges with added ham, shallots, and spices. A couple of years ago, one of the restaurants in Wrocław recreated these dishes. Prague ham baked in bread dough was considered a gem, as were pretzels with cumin.

There also was no lack of sweet treats, since among those who moved to Breslau were many pastry cooks from, for instance, Switzerland. One of those forgotten novelties was the Queen Louise Cake (she was the wife of Prussian ruler Frederick William III) with nuts, frosting and whipped cream, or the Silesian bun with cinnamon crumble (Schlesische Streuselkuchen), known as the ‘imperial delicacy’.

The Königsberg meatball

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Meatballs, photo: DPA / PAP

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The Masuria region, known as the Land of a Thousand Lakes, is associated, on the one hand, with freshwater fish and, on the other hand, with the remnants of borderland cuisine – such as Lithuanian dumplings. Despite the interest in pre-war local cooking in the form of local food festivals and despite research being done on source materials and the reconstruction of some dishes (suffice it to mention fishballs in sauce with smoked bacon, plum soup with dumplings, peas with smoked meat, dumplings with bacon crisps, or various pancakes), it is still difficult to find restaurants in this tourist region that hark back to the culinary traditions of old East Prussia.

This cuisine is still produced sporadically in the homes of a few thousand people of East Prussian heritage. You won't find the 'signature dish' of old East Prussia – Königsberg meatballs with ground veal and anchovies in a cream-caper sauce – in restaurants. Once long ago, the fame of this dish reached much farther afield, as far as the kitchens of Gdańsk and Wrocław. Another speciality was the famed Königsberg tripe, cooked in cauldrons with marjoram, vinegar, and mustard. Today, the former residents of these parts have dispersed and, with their departure, most of the regional traditions and recipes have been lost.

Gdańsk foie gras?

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Cooking according to recipes from the 14th century as part of the 'Culinary Journey in Time', Metamorfoza restaurant, Gdańsk, photo: Renata Dąbrowska / AG

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The Hanseatic cuisine of Gdańsk (formerly Danzig) was also multicultural. Thanks to publications such as the Gdańsk Cookbook (based on the 19th-century Danziger Kochbuch), attempts are made from time to time to 'dust off' the old Gdańsk recipes and to encourage chefs and restaurateurs to try reaching back to the past for inspiration. This succeeds on occasion – for instance, at food festivals during which old Danzig delicacies are served based on long-forgotten recipes from Żuławy, Kociewie, Kashubia and Gdańsk.

A few years ago, the no-longer-existent Gdańsk restaurant Metamorfoza (which featured modern Polish and regional cuisine) served - under the rubric of 'Culinary Time Travel' - a series of delicacies of the 19th-century Danzig bourgeoisie enhanced with some original ideas of its chef. His inspiration came from a book published over 150 years ago entitled The Cuisine of Old Danzig, and the dishes offered were a mix of old Gdańsk tradition with the very latest in culinary trends. Among the items served were herring in quince, rutabaga soup with a goose meat broth, venison pie in musk sauce, and goose stuffed with groats and chestnuts. 'One of the elements which we should promote in the world is Danzig foie gras – a goose-liver paté with fatty pork and smoked bacon. We could recreate this delicacy and promote it as our tourist calling card', insists historian Janusz Ścibor. Quite recently, the Gdańsk restaurant Villa Eva added to its menu a section entitled 'Günter Grass's Pantry', recalling the memory of Danzig's former cuisine.

A new regional cuisine

Can we utilise history in developing modern regional cuisines today? Culinary historians believe we can, because cuisine – both high and low cuisine – is part of history and represents a kind of whole. Culinary traditions – including regional cuisines – were tarnished during the Communist era, and the system destroyed Polish gastronomy. After 1989, chefs and food producers began to seek out new values. This generated an interest in historical cuisines and inspired new interpretations, inspired by forgotten products and dishes. This culinary 'neoarchaism' brings together the inspiration of old values and a fascination with traditional products and dishes, but in a modern manner and using avant-garde techniques. The past, then, can indeed inspire us.

Originally written in Polish, translated by Yale Reisner, Nov 2020

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