Old flavors and cuisine – students recreated old recipes
Our students, together with students and lecturers from the University of the Commission of National Education in Kraków and the Medical University of Wrocław, reconstructed 17th- and 18th-century culinary recipes.
Students and researchers from the UW Faculty of Historical and Pedagogical Sciences participated on Tuesday, 18 June 2024, in a workshop consisting of both lectures on ancient cooking and practical exercises in preparing Old Polish dishes.
Thanks to the cooperation with the Lion’s Gate restaurant, they had the opportunity to prepare a number of historical specialties. In this way, they faced old Polish flavors.
Even before the workshop, dr Jakub Węglorz, of the Department of Polish and Universal History from the 16th to 18th centuries. (Historical Institute, Faculty of Historical and Pedagogical Sciences, UWr) encouraged: – It’s sure to be peppery and saffron-colored.
And so it was. It was also tasty.
The students, divided into groups based on ancient recipes, performed the assigned work, and everything was supervised by the chef from the Lion’s Gate.
During the breaks, there was no shortage of scientific lectures;
dr. hab. prof. UKEN Andrzej Kuropatnicki (Dean of the Faculty of Humanities) on “Humoral Diet.”
dr Marcin Gadoch (UKEN) on “The History of Bread Sourdough.”
dr Danuta Raj (Medical University) on “Functional foods past and present.”
dr Jakub Węglorz (UWr) on “Confections, castor beads and morsels – drugs or delicacies?”.
Educational workshops are organized as part of educational initiatives aimed at students (extra-curricular activities).
– Thanks to the cooperation with the restaurateur and the chef, we decided to reconstruct some interesting culinary recipes. These are recipes from the 17th and 18th centuries that were popular, having been used in the manors of the nobility. Rather, these are wealthy recipes used by people who had access to expensive spices, rare ingredients, meat, butter – told dr Jakub Węglorz of the UWr Historical Institute.
The most surprising thing about Old Polish cuisine is the mixes of flavors. – It’s not even about a specific single dish, but how they taste. The use of very unusual spices, blends of spices, pungent, spicy flavors, combined with sweet flavors, results in a very exotic experience – told dr Węglorz.
Recipes from the 17th and 18th centuries feature many of today’s familiar ingredients – there is meat, flour, vegetables and fruits. However, some ingredients can surprise. – We don’t use such ingredients that are very exotic from our point of view, such as game birds, like sterilized animals such as scop or capon, because they are very difficult to find on the market today. It’s hard to buy food quail or pigeons – the scientist said.
Spices also proved to be a problem, as only some are known from modern recipes. – We have large amounts of saffron, cardamom, aframon, long pepper, common pepper, spices that are very uncommon. Of such unusual additions, we will also add powdered pearls to desserts, and powdered deer horn to coffee to achieve a rich froth – Węglorz said.
This is another such initiative.
Previous ones were about restoring an old drug https://uwr.edu.pl/en/touching-the-past-a-matter-of-historical-reconstructions/
and the history of anatomy
Here a report and PAP film
complied by Katarzyna Górowicz-Maćkiewicz
Have a look at the report by Dominika Hull-Bruska
