Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past Maria Dembin'ska Translated by Magdalena Thomas Revised and Adapted by William Woys Weaver UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS PHILADELPHIA In Memory of Henryk Dembinski (1911-1987) ix Editori Preface Three Latln words scribbled in the margin of the parchment WILLIAM WOYS WEAVER ledger book of Polish royal treasurer Henryk of Rog6w -ad regakm xxi List oflflu~tration~ scutellum, for the royal pot-not only extended a proprietary reach over the markets and gardens of medieval Poland; they also conjured 1 Chapter 1. Toward a Definition of Polish National Cookey up a court cuisine unique to Central Europe. Strangely Oriental, yet 25 Chapter 2. Poland in the Middle Ages peasantlike in its robust simplicity, it was a cookery that captured 47 Chapter 3. The Dramatis Personae ofthe Oid Polish Table all the complexities of Poland in that far-off age, a nation of great power slowly twisting toward upheaval, of farmlands and towns 7 1 Chapter 4. Food and Drink in Medzeval Poland thronging with emigrants from cultures unable to meld with the Pol- 137 Medieval Recipes rn the Polish Style ish countryside around them. And yet for a time, it was also a rare W~LLLAMWOYS W EAVER period of peace. Maria Demblnska went back to the royal account 201 Notes books - indeed, to all the medieval records she could find- in order 209 Bibliography to reconstruct this chapter of Poland's history. Her work is now a scholarly classic. 2 19 Acknowledgments Maria Dembinska's research was originally prepared in 1963 223 Inifex as a doctoral dissertation at Warsaw University and the Institute of Material Culture of the Polish Academy of Science. Published under the title Konsumpcja Zywnoiciowa pu Polsce $redniowiecmej(Food Con. sumption in Medieval Poland), it was immediately recognized as a groundbreaking study of food in an area of medieval scholarship that is not well known to the rest of Europe. Even today, although her work is often cited by Slavic writers, it does not appear in any of the general works dealing with French, English, or Italian medieval food chosen any number of ways to view the Middle Ages; however, her studies. The inaccessibility of Polish Language sources, and ~erhapsthe main interest lay in defining social structure in terms of food con- unduly complex nature of medieval soclety in the far reaches of Cen- sumption, a theme she pursued throughout her professional career. tral Europe, provide natural barriers against the sort of cross-cultural Her approach was completely novel given the Marxist defini- exploration that has characterized similar research m England and tions of history imposed on Polish universities before the collapse of France. Communism In 1989. Yet we must remember that Maria Dembinska Maria Dembinska was aware of this difficulty, and she pub- began her serious work during the intellectual thaw that followed the lished an English synopsis of the book in the proceedings of the Sec- death of Stalin. Her approach was innovative for other reasons as ond International Symposium for Ethnological Food Research held at well, for she was one of the first Polish scholars to reassess what was Helsinki in 1973. It was her hope that this would spur interest in a meant by "Polish cuisine," and she effectively challenged a number of complete revised edition of her work, perhaps in France, where there old but persistent myths. Only a person with a name like Dembifiska, was a large 6migre Polish community. A son in Paris and a daughter in a name instantly recognized in Poland as one of the great noble fam- Los Angeles provided Maria with family contacts outside Communist ilies, could dare assume such an oracular position. Poland that served her well in circulating her research at international Yet her name alone was no guarantee; it was her extraordi- symposia, a luxury not available to many Polish scholars at the tlme. nary integrity and determination that carried her through her career. This was especially so for someone like Maria, who was not a member Maria Dembinska's situation was a curious melange of elements that of the Communist Party and who was by no means proletarian, having were possible only in Communist Poland: she was by virtue of her been born Countess Gohchowska and having married Count Henryk birth a symbol of Old Poland, and yet it was this same Polishness that Dembinski. Nor was her study cast in a Marxist framework. In fact, served as a psychological means of resistance. Maria could have left during the period of martial law in the 1980s, she taught underground Poland after she and her husband lost their eight-thousand-acre estate courses on Polish hlstory that would surely have landed her in jail if at Przysucha, but they chose to stay because they were loyal to the she had been discovered. How she managed all of this is material for a ~deaof Poland and deeply convinced that someday the country would novel; to say the least, Maria Dembinska was not easily intimidated. agaln be free. Everything she wrote about Poland must be read in this The focus of Maria Dembinska's study was not a cullnary his- context. While the Communists took away the material world that tory of the Polish Middle Ages but rather an analysis of the dlet as a once defined who Maria Dembifiska was, m the end, she gave back to key to what she termed "the Polish reality of that time." She was well Poland something of even greater value. acquainted with the historical refinements of haute cuisine, both For the historian trymg to flesh out the history of an age long Polish and French. Indeed, her grandmother, Countess Anne gone, the task is difficult enough as an intellectual challenge. Adding Coluchowska (nee Murat), was not only French, but a direct descen- the restrictions of a police state and a political atmosphere deeply dant of Napoleon's Marshal Murar. Maria Dembitiska could have ting mail in and out of Poland intact. We also agreed to meet in Hun- antagon~sticto certain types of research, it is a wonder that Maria Dembinska was able to achieve anything at all. Yet she had the party gary in 1983 during an ethnographic conference and that 1 would take functionaries on her side for one fundamental reason: nationalism. from her what was necessary to have the book published in the What she wrote about Poland helped to supply missing pieces to the United States. This included a complete copy of her book, which by Polish story, indeed to one of the most brilliant chapters of Polish his- then had become extremely difficult to find. When we finally met at Matrafiired, Hungary, Polish Soh- tory: the reign of the Jagiellon dynasty. Bits of her research even sur- darity agitation was evident everywhere. So were the Hungarlan faced in the hugely popular W staropolskiej kuchni i przy polskim stok police. It is difficult to describe the oppressive atmosphere that hung (Old Polish Traditions in the Kitchen and at the Table) by Maria over that conference, the food shortages, even the "off schedule" visits Lemnis, issued by Interpress in 1979.' to private homes where once we sat drinking wine with the lights out Dr. Don Yoder of the University of Pennsylvania was one of so that the police would not suspect foreigners were on the premises. the first in the United States to recognize that an English edition of Maria smuggled out of Poland her own copy of the book, all of the Maria's book was overdue. In a seminal article entitled "Folk Cook- original artwork (stuffed under Solidarity propaganda), and other ery" in Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, edited by Richard M. materials connected with it. The propaganda was discovered at the Dorson in 1972, Yoder singled out Maria's book for its combmation of Polish border, and she would have been detained then and there had historical research with ethnographic sources. In 1977 Yoder Intro- she not given the guard one of two antlque silver collar pins of the duced me to Maria at an international conference in Wales. Yoder and royal arms of Poland she had with her (she gave the other one to me). I had just come from Poland and an extraordinary visit to my mater- Our conspiracy was thus a success, and a friend of mine with a diplo- nal grandfather's birthplace. It was in Wales, over a fresh supply of matic passport spirited me into Austria with the manuscript files Polish vodka, that Maria and I initiated our friendship and our discus- intact. Nonetheless, for me that trip from Budapest seemed a day of sions about an English-language edition of her book. This unfolded pure terror. But coupled with sheer emotional exhaustion was the into a voluminous transatlantic correspondence addressed to "Dear happy knowledge that the English version of the book was truly Willy"; I became a collaborator, a faraway light during very dark times launched. for Poland. The next problem was finding a translator. Although Maria During the next five years, Maria and I outlined the project Dembinska's second language was flawless French and she could move and discussed the many ways we could render the book in English. I easlly into Latin, Greek, Russian, German, and medieval Polish, she had interested the University of Pennsylvania Press in publishing it, nevertheless found English more difficult than her own complex but a great deal of legal work had to be done with contracts, and worst mother tongue and realized that she could not translate the book her- of all, the Polish mails could not be trusted due to petty thefts and self.