The Polish table is like a huge melting pot of recipes and ingredients from all over Europe. From Lithuania came recipes for fermented red borsch and bigos, the Germans brought knuckle of pork, the French gave us mizeria (cucumber and sour cream salad), while from Russia came pierogi, pickled mushrooms and fruit preserves. Recipes for faworki (pastry ribbons) and doughnuts were brought from Vienna, following King Jan III Sobieski’s successful offensive against the Turks.

At one time, the average Pole’s staples were bread, groats, peas, cabbage and the inexpensive herring – pickled, salted or smoked. A significant contribution to the development of Polish cuisine was made by Queen Bona Sforza, who brought with her not only Italian chefs, but also some of the vegetables which are now the basis for Polish soups: root parsley, celeriac and leek. The queen’s vegetable garden exists to this day in the Lobzow district of Krakow.

Successful Polish exports include zur, a soup made of fermented bread, and pickled cucumbers – still made in the traditional way, sunk in barrels in the Narew river. We also have delicacies which might make foreigners squirm, such as czernina (blood soup), tripe and jellied tongue.

To the Jews we owe such dishes as carp and potato pancakes served with sour cream and sugar. Meanwhile, potatoes, known by many different names (ziemniaki, kartofle, bulwy, pyry…), seem to be indispensable in today’s Polish cooking. They are the basis for dishes from Suwalki (cepeliny), from Podlasie (potato cakes and black pudding), from Kashubia (pulki) and from Silesia (Silesian dumplings). It is hard to believe that when they first went on sale in 1739 at a grocery store in Krakow, they were more expensive than chocolate!

Polish cooks have always made use of a rich variety of herbs and spices: pepper, caraway, mustard, nutmeg, juniper to flavour venison, thyme (introduced by Queen Bona) and the unjustly forgotten czarnuszka. (black seeds used in baking).