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Cześć! What do you know about Polish traditional cuisine?

4 years ago
This week I have another news for you from the Polski Daily website! If you’re interested in learning more about Polish language and culture, you can sign up for weekly newsletters here: polskidaily.eu!

Traditionally, in the Middle Ages, Poles ate rather poorly. Mostly bread or groats, accompanied by a little bit of some kind of animal fat. They could rarely afford meat, more often they fished.
Among many dishes considered traditionally Polish, you might find ones that we have thanks to our minorities. For example famous and popular New York bagels were originally invented by Jews in Kraków. First references about them come from the royal medieval books from the 14th century!

From the German cuisine, we got knedle. Our western neighbours eat them mostly with the savory, meat filling, but in Poland we prefer to have them served sweet, with plums and cinnamon inside. Plum – the best kind is called „węgierka”, which means „Hungarian”! Everyday Polish dish – kotlet schabowy – pork breaded cutlet is VERY similar to the Austrian wiener schnitzel. We must remember that often dishes are simply regional, so it’s difficult to decide which country they belong to. With time, many dishes started to evolve into different, new flavours. An interesting example can be flaki – tripe soup – which is a dish cooked all over Europe and eastern Asia. In Poland it was known already in the 14th century. It was the favourite dish of our king Władysław Jagiełło. But in many different parts of the world flaki are cooked, seasoned and served completely differently!

You may find many differences in Polish cuisine between different regions, due to the partitions. For 123 years Poland didn’t exist, it’s territory was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because of this reason, Poles in the south prefer schnitzels, Poles in the east eat pierogi and in the west they choose sauerkraut! ;)

Cheers!

Dominika