The Polish 'Makowiec': An Intoxicating Cake?

makowiec_gettyimages-1286526429.jpg, default, 'Makowiec' (poppy seed cake), photo: Zbigniew Lewczak/Getty Images, The Polish 'Makowiec': An Intoxicating Cake?

Recipes

#polish cuisine

One of the most original – and probably the most controversial – Polish cakes, makowiec most often is a strudel-like, yeast cake filled with a luxurious mixture of finely-ground poppy seeds, butter, honey, dried fruits and nuts. There are other shapes and variations, but one thing is clear – poppy-seeds are one of the most beloved, festive delicacies in Poland.

There’s a bunch of traditional regional variations of the poppy seed roll: you have strudels from Ejszeryszki, Sędziszów and Kościelec (where a special method of dough making is used – instead of being left to rise in a warm spot, the dough is put in cold water until it comes to the surface), but also a rectangular kołocz from Silesia, filled with poppy seeds and topped by a streusel, which is traditionally served at weddings. Possibly the most cherished variety is makowiec lubartowski, made in the area of Lubartów, a town in the Lubelszczyzna region in eastern Poland. This particular cake consists of almost nothing other than poppy seeds combined with local honey, nuts and raisins, with just a thin pastry casing – as many makowiec lovers would agree, the more filling, the better!

Essential Symbols & Essential Oils

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Poppy heads, photo: Tommy Lee Walker/Getty Images

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Poppy seeds are a highly symbolic ingredient, therefore present at the tables on many festive occasions such as Christmas, Easter, weddings and… funerals. In Ancient Greece, poppies were believed to grow on the shores of Lethe – the river of oblivion – in Hades. Also the Slavs considered them plants that enabled you to cross the boundary between life and death. They even used poppy seeds to make dishes meant for the dead who, as ancient faith had it, would come back every now and then to visit the living. The custom of eating them may also be linked to apocryphal Christian legends which claim poppies sprouted from where the blood of Jesus fell during his crucifixion. Poppy seeds were historically valued because of the precious oil which was pressed already in the 15th century. As doctor Józef Peszke wrote in his article Kuchnia polska dawna: urywki z jej dziejów od czasów najdawniejszych do końca wieku XVII (Old-Polish Cuisine: Excerpts from its History from the Olden Days until the End of the 17th Century), published in Gazeta Domowa weekly in 1903:

Various oils were used to finish the dishes, but the most common were poppy-seed and hemp-seed oils. They were either bought, or pressed at court from poppies and hemps, so that they were always fresh, and never rancid.

While there are no recipes using poppies in Stanisław Czerniecki’s Compendium Ferculorum, the author does include them on the list of essential ingredients and also advises to chop onions‚ as finely as poppy-seeds, which is yet more proof of how well the ingredient was known. According to some historical sources, in 1681 the royal baker of Jan III Sobieski prepared a huge makowiec embellished with a representation of the king’s beloved wife Marysieńka, much to the ruler’s amusement. Another Polish king, Stanisław August Poniatowski, is said to have once received one over four metres long and so heavy, it had to be carried by the baker’s nine children.

Scandalous & the Narcotic

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Christmas pastries on the Polish table. In the photo: poppy seed cake (makowiec) and cheesecake (sernik), photo: Michał Kość/Forum

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Yet makowiec is not just a thing of mythology, customs and festivities. Makowiec is scandalous, as it has a reputation of being slightly dangerous: due to the high content of poppy seeds some people believe it is able to inject morphine into your system.

You are probably well aware of the fact that poppy seeds are a natural source of opium – also known as poppy tears – the main ingredient of morphine, codeine and heroine. While poppies have been used in folk medicine for centuries, and were believed to have calming effects, it is not actually possible to get high on a poppy-seed roll – even if you devoured an entire cake, you wouldn’t feel intoxicated, maybe only by too much sugar. That’s because only seeds from special kinds of poppies that have a very low morphine content are used for comestible purposes, and yet… even when this rule is strictly abided by, the cake can still cause morphine-related legal problems, since eating it can result in a slightly higher morphine level in your blood.

Thumbnail — Kołocz Śląski, photo: Marek Lasyk/Reporter/East News

Don’t be too afraid though: unless you are due for a blood test right afterwards, you can safely have as much makowiec as you like. If you want to prepare the classic roll, you need to first make the yeast-based dough with milk, flour, sugar, egg-yolks and butter, and then spread the poppy-seed, butter, honey, nut and raisin mixture on the risen dough and roll it. You can also use the same filling with thin strudel pastry or make a shortcrust tart filled with poppies.

Or you can even try this simple, yet delicious version – the apple and poppy-seed cake, which was invented in the 1970s and for some mysterious reason is called the ‘Japanese makowiec’. Cooks from the time of the Polish People’s Republic must have had a special affinity for Japan, since Japanese herring (śledź po japońsku) was also popular – although none of these dishes has any real connection to Asia.

Recipe for the Japanese makowiec

The Lubartów 'makowiec', Maria Siej’s pastry shop in Lubartów, photo: Wojciech Pacewicz / PAP

For the filling:

500 g poppy seeds
400 g powdered sugar
200 g butter hot milk for soaking the seeds
7 eggs
7 juicy apples
50 g each: walnuts, almonds, dried apricots, raisins, orange peel
2 teaspoons baking powder
100 g semolina

Pour hot milk over the seeds in a pot, cover with a lid and leave for the night to soak. The next day sift it on a sieve and grind 3 times in a meat grinder.

Peel and grate the apples.

Heat the oven to 180° C / 350° F Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and beat the latter until they are stiff. Slowly add the egg yolks, sugar and butter to the foam. Then add the ground and soaked poppy seeds, semolina, baking powder, grated apples and finely chopped nuts and dried fruits.

Mix slowly with a spatula and pour into a big baking tin. Bake for an hour.

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