What Did Poles Eat for Christmas Past? Prof. Dumanowski Explains

What Did Poles Eat for Christmas Past? Professor Dumanowski Explains

compendium_ferculorum.jpg, default, Cover and page from Stanisław Czerniecki’s ‘Compendium Ferculorum’, 1682, ed. Jarosław Dumanowski & Magdalena Spychaj, photo: Wilanów Palace Museum, What Did Poles Eat for Christmas Past? Professor Dumanowski Explains

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A specialist in the history of culture and cuisine, Professor Jarosław Dumanowski from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń talks about what was eaten in olden Poland, whether a beaver is an animal, and why the Polish Christmas Eve supper of Wigilia should be on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

Ola Salwa: Several years ago, you argued that Wigilia should be on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Has there been any progress?

Jarosław Dumanowski: Not yet. Adding a custom onto this world list is a really big ordeal and it’s the Polish government that has to initiate the procedure of inscription. The idea has been sprouting for several years. Xavier Debeni inspired me to act on it, and I was supported by my colleagues from the European Institute for the History and Cultures of Food in Tours, which the local authorities appointed to include French cuisine on the UNESCO list. In the end, what ended up on the list was not so much the ‘cuisine’ as the ‘gastronomic meal of the French’. Either way, it’s not just Wigilia, but also other Polish culinary traditions – such as gingerbread culture or serving goose meat on Saint Martin’s Day – that could be included, in my opinion, on the UNESCO list.

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Traditional dishes at the Christmas Eve dinner table, photo: Łukasz Bochman / Forum

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OS: In Poland, culinary culture is generally treated a little less ‘seriously’ than it is in France.

JD: We also often don’t understand how deeply rooted in tradition it is and where it comes from. It’s not only a relic of the past, Wigilia is also in line with contemporary trends – for example, limiting the consumption of meat or eating seasonal dishes.

OS: Assuming that the Polish Christmas Eve supper could be entered onto the UNESCO list, what dishes would be on the menu?

JD: None.

OS: ?!

JD: It’s an intangible world heritage list – and food is tangible. What’s unique here are the specific rules or customs related to Wigilia – the type of celebrations occurring during periods of fasting, more specifically, making a unique festive menu out of fasting dishes, as well as knowledge and culinary techniques. It’s also about combining seasonality, about being in compliance with the rhythm of nature, with religious traditions as well as maintaining social ties. This was also important in the ‘gastronomic meal of the French’ – it’s a ritual that brings people together. Of course, the dishes would certainly appear in the description of Wiligia as exemplifications: it could be, for example, siemieniotka [hemp seed soup – editor’s note], which is eaten in Silesia or Greater Poland, kutia from the eastern regions of Poland, perhaps carp, cabbage with mushrooms, barszcz or almond soup.

OS: So each region of Poland has its own unique dishes, but what’s common to all is the Christmas Eve dinner to be understood as a meal?

JD: Not exactly. When we say ‘Wigilia’ today, we are referring to 24^th December, the day before Christmas. Until some 200 years ago, no one would have known which Christmas Eve you are talking about, because the custom of fasting on the eve of an important holiday was common. There was the Eve of the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ on 31^stDecember, the Eve of the Epiphany on 5^th January, and so on. There were also fasts on Saturdays, because they preceded Sundays, although obviously, there was no special menu prepared every week. Inventiveness appeared only before major holidays. Jan Szyttler, author of the first mass-published cookbook, writes that on Christmas Eve you have to serve pike, even the smallest one, with saffron.

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Gefilte fish on a Polish Christmas Eve table, photo: Jakub Włodek / AG

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OS: So, do we know what was eaten long ago – though this reference to time might be a bit vague – on Christmas Eve?

JD: We assume that since Wigilia is a Polish tradition, more or less the same foods were eaten as today. But it wasn’t exactly like that, although seasonal and local dishes were incorporated. From my research, it appears there were two ways in which former fasting celebrations occurred via food.

The first way was the fast of the rich, for example, the nobility and priests. They ate a lot of fish, mostly freshwater; seafood was rather inaccessible, no unpreserved food was transported then. The elite, therefore, ate fresh fish, such as pike, carp, sturgeon, the Vistula salmon or the vimba – a now forgotten, fatty fish from the Cyprinidae family. In addition, they also ate processed fish, such as stockfish, i.e. dried fish, most often cod. Dried beluga was also popular; today it’s extremely rare, because as mankind we’ve almost completely exterminated this species. Raisins, walnuts, pine nuts, candied or dried fruit imported from the Mediterranean Sea were added to local products. Pickled lemons, typical of Maghreb cuisine, were also brought to Poland.

The second way is the fast of the poorer social strata. If fish were eaten, then they were salted herring or stockfish. Additionally, peas, in the form of, for example, a light soup – not with sausage or bacon, but in the form of a light puree, with mushrooms – or pea pancakes, pound cakes, croissants: both sweet and non-sweet. Barszcz was also served, mainly made of pickled beetroot, but sometimes mixed with flour leaven, much like how a typical Polish Easter sour soup is made today. The menu also featured prune soup with mushrooms. In Stanisław Czerniecki’s book [Compendium Ferculorum from 1682, the first Polish cookbook], amid the fasting delicacies you can find fish in gingerbread sauce or fish blood soup made of carp blood, beer and cherry juice.

OS: Was avoiding meat a common pre-Christmas custom? Recently, I spoke to a chef from Podlasie, who says there was no fasting during Christmas Eve in his region because people ate beaver tails.

JD: But there’s no contradiction here.

OS: What do you mean? Isn’t fasting about excluding meat from your diet?

JD: According to our great-grandfathers, it was a fasting dish. In the olden days, it was wrong to eat products derived from ‘warm-blooded’ animals before Christmas, because they were supposed to add vigour and violence, and increase the tendency to commit sin. Therefore, forbidden foods were pork, mutton, beef, but also eggs, butter and dairy products. Fasting dishes were prepared from ‘cold-blooded’ creatures such as fish, snails, frogs, some water birds, and beavers. This division comes from the 4th century, not from the teachings of the later Linnaeus, so that sort of logic might surprise us today.

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‘A Visit from Father’, illustration, 19th century, photo: Piotr Mecik / Forum

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OS: Actually, what surprises me is how you mentioned the presence of almond soup on the Polish table: it’s neither local, nor seasonal.

JD: The Wigilia menu combined locality with exoticism, like the aforementioned pike in saffron sauce. Almonds were brought from the south to the cold north of Christian Europe to provide some needed fat. In a world without refined vegetable oil or olive oil, or where it’s very expensive, and where fasting prohibits the consumption of ‘warm-blooded’ lard or butter, the lack of fat is strongly felt and uncomfortable. In one of the oldest handwritten European cookbooks from the 12th century, there’s even a separate chapter on almonds, since they were used to make sauces, milk, flour, purees and were even added to vinegar. So actually, today’s trendy coffee with almond milk is nothing new...

OS: Almonds can also be found in the more exotic dishes served during Wigilia, such as gefilte fish.

JD: That isn’t just a Jewish dish. The recipe for carp with raisins and almonds appears in Czerniecki’s book, who wrote down many sweet and spicy fish dishes. When orientalism in Polish cuisine was abandoned at some point, these and other Old Polish dishes were preserved in isolated groups such as with the Tatars, Jews, Kashubians and Kurpie.

OS: Where did the idea to include foreign spices or additives in Polish dishes even come from? Does it simply result from the constant migration of peoples, such as the barbarian invasion in the Middle Ages or some other event?

JD: Not only. The need to stand out through food appeared back in the times of ancient Rome. The first stage was to eat more food, but how much more can one eat? Then, unknown products from other worlds were imported – dried fruit and spices. When religious restrictions appeared, wealthy people tried to make this period more enjoyable without breaking the rules of fasting, for example, by adding sugar imported from Indonesia. Today, this exoticism means very little, but let us remember that in the olden days, food was exceptionally valuable – people often toiled their entire lives for food products.

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Noodles with poppyseed on a Christmas Eve table in Skrybicze, photo: Michał Kość / Forum

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More information on the ancient culinary arts, not only fasting, can be found in the Polish book Kapłony i szczeżuje. Opowieść o zapomnianej kuchni polskiej (Capons and Duck Mussels: Tales of Poland’s Forgotten Cuisine) by Jarosław Dumanowski and Magdalena Kaszprzyk-Chevriaux (Czarne Publishing House).

Interview conducted in Polish, Dec 2019, translated by Agnes Dudek, Nov 2020

Language English

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