48 Fun Facts About Polish Food

Prince Polo, the Polish wafer bar made in Cieszyn since 1955, was for decades the top-selling chocolate bar of which country?

Iceland has bought more Prince Polo than any other chocolate bar for decades, Nielsen data shows, and for years it was one of the few bars sold there at all. Icelanders call it Prins Póló.

Which MLB team stages a race of mascots in giant pierogi costumes between innings, copying Milwaukee's racing sausages?

The Pittsburgh Pirates run the Great Pierogi Race between the fifth and sixth innings, and once a year the pierogi travel to Milwaukee to take on the Brewers' racing sausages that inspired them.

Włoszczyzna, the Polish name for the soup-vegetable bundle of carrot, parsley and leek, literally credits which country?

Italy, Włochy in Polish, gives włoszczyzna its name, literally 'Italian stuff'. Tradition credits the Italian-born Queen Bona Sforza, who married King Sigismund I in 1518, with bringing the vegetables to Poland.

Ptasie Mleczko, the chocolate-coated marshmallow bars E. Wedel has sold since 1936, translates from Polish as what?

Bird's milk is an ancient figure of speech for an impossible luxury: Aristophanes used 'the milk of the birds' as a proverbial rarity. Jan Wedel is credited with choosing the name in 1936.

The Maxwell Street Polish, a grilled sausage under fried onions and yellow mustard, is a street food of which US city?

Chicago counts the Maxwell Street Polish among its classic street foods, yet the sandwich is widely credited to Jimmy Stefanovic, a Macedonian immigrant who took over his aunt and uncle's stand on Maxwell Street in 1939.

Mizeria, the cucumber and sour cream salad beside a Polish breaded cutlet, takes its name from a word for what?

Poverty, or misery, is the sense of the Latin miseria behind mizeria; the name is thought to reflect how Polish nobles looked down on a peasant dish. It is one of Poland's most popular salads all the same.

Grochówka wojskowa, the 'military' pea soup of Polish field kitchens, is said to be thick enough to hold what upright?

A spoon should stand straight up in a proper grochówka wojskowa, as the Polish saying goes. The soup is cheap, filling and easy to cook in bulk, so retired army field kitchens still dish it out at public events.

After a day of fasting, what sight in the sky tells a Polish family that Wigilia supper may begin?

The first star signals the start of Wigilia, a nod to the Star of Bethlehem, which is why Christmas itself is sometimes called Gwiazdka, 'little star', in Poland.

Which Polish drink, bottled at 96 per cent alcohol, ranks among the strongest liquors on sale anywhere?

Spirytus Rektyfikowany sits near the ceiling of ordinary distillation: column stills top out at about 96 per cent, because beyond that point alcohol and water boil off together instead of separating.

Kopytka, the Polish potato dumplings cut on the diagonal and served under goulash, are named for resembling what?

Little hooves is the literal meaning of kopytka, from kopyto, a hoof. The same dumplings are eaten in Belarus and Lithuania, and they can be served sweet, with melted butter and sugar, as well as under savoury sauces.

Zapiekanka, the toasted half-baguette of 1970s Polish street food, is classically topped with cheese and what?

Sautéed mushrooms under melted cheese, finished with a stripe of ketchup, define the classic zapiekanka. It appeared in the 1970s after Edward Gierek's government bought a licence to bake French-style baguettes.

Alongside stewed plum powidła, which flower's petal jam is the traditional filling of a Polish pączek doughnut?

Rose petal jam made from wild roses is the classic pączek filling, though bakeries now pipe in custard, strawberry, blueberry and Bavarian cream. The name is easily confused with paczki, which simply means parcels.

Faworki, the brittle fried ribbons dusted with icing sugar that Poles eat before Lent, go by which name in English?

Angel wings, also called chruściki, are ribbons of dough slit, twisted through the cut and deep-fried. The Polish name faworki comes from the French faveur, a ribbon of the kind ladies once gave to knights.

Why do Polish families lay one extra place at the Wigilia table, however many diners are expected on Christmas Eve?

For an unexpected guest, whoever may knock: the spare setting is a gesture of hospitality, and the custom became widespread in the nineteenth century.

Święconka, observed across Poland on the Saturday before Easter, is the church blessing of what?

Baskets of food are carried to church to be blessed, each item symbolic: eggs for resurrection, bread for Jesus, horseradish for Christ's bitter sacrifice and a lamb figure for Christ himself. The custom is said to date to the 7th century.

Kotlet schabowy, the breadcrumbed cutlet at the heart of a Polish Sunday dinner, is pounded from which cut of meat?

Pork loin, with or without the bone, is sliced, hammered flat, breaded and fried. The Sunday classic is younger than it looks: it goes back only to the nineteenth century, and a cookbook first published in 1860 has the recipe.

Rosół, the clear noodle broth of Polish weddings and sickbeds, is most often made from which meat?

Chicken makes rosół z kury, the most popular version, though a rosół królewski layers beef, hen and duck in one pot. The name comes from Old Polish rozsół, the soaking of preserved meat.

What gives chłodnik litewski, the chilled soup that cools Polish summers, its shocking pink colour?

Beetroot and its young leaves, stirred into soured milk or kefir, turn chłodnik pink. The 'litewski' in its name points to the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Lithuanians know the bowl as šaltibarščiai.

Krówki, the soft Polish milk toffees in white-and-yellow wrappers, are named as the diminutive of which farm animal?

Cows, or rather 'little cows', is what krówki means, and most wrappers carry a picture of a Holstein to prove it. The Pomorski family claims to have made the first ones before the German occupation forced a move to Milanówek.

Grójec, a medieval castellany seat, now sits in a district called Europe's biggest orchard for which fruit?

Apples from around Grójec are sold under an EU-protected name and are prized for their red blush, credited to the local microclimate. The district is said to grow about every third apple sold in Poland.

Sernik, the baked Polish cheesecake known since the 17th century, uses which fresh curd cheese instead of cream cheese?

Twaróg, the traditional Polish quark, gives sernik its body together with eggs and butter but no cream or sour cream. The krakowski version wears a lattice crust, the królewski a cocoa crust top and bottom, and the wiedeński none at all.

Hamtramck, the Polish enclave inside Detroit, throws its annual Pączki Day parade on which day of the church calendar?

Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday to the locals, is Pączki Day in Hamtramck, where people line up at the Polish bakeries. Back in Poland the doughnut binge comes earlier, on Fat Thursday.

How do Poland's surviving milk bars, now privately owned, manage to keep their prices so low?

State subsidies, set by a finance ministry regulation, cover part of the cost of the meals. Because many milk bars sit on prime sites, activists have rallied to defend them when gentrification threatened closure.

Oscypek, the spindle-shaped smoked cheese of the Tatras, must by EU rules be made mostly from which animal's milk?

Sheep must supply at least 60 per cent of the milk under oscypek's EU protected name, and the cheese may be made only from spring to early autumn, while the flocks graze fresh mountain grass.

Obwarzanek krakowski, the braided bread ring sold from Kraków street carts, holds which EU food label?

Protected Geographical Indication status, granted in 2010, means the ring may be baked only in Kraków and two neighbouring counties. Its name records the method: obwarzać means to parboil, which is done before baking.

The earliest record of Kraków obwarzanki, a 1394 court account for 'rings', was written for which Polish queen?

Jadwiga's court accounts for 2 March 1394 record 1 grosz spent 'for the queen, for rings of obwarzanki'. The rings began as Lenten fare, and from 1496 only Kraków's guild bakers were allowed to make them.

Rogal świętomarciński, the white-poppy crescent baked for St Martin's Day, is the protected pride of which city?

Poznań bakers were already advertising St Martin's croissants in the Dziennik Poznański in 1860. The crescent is said to copy a horseshoe shed by the saint's horse, and the EU protected the name in 2008.

Flaki, eaten in Poland since the 14th century and a favourite of King Władysław Jagiełło, is a peppery stew of what?

Beef tripe cut into thin strips is flaki, a word that literally means 'guts' and was borrowed from the German Fleck. The diminutive flaczki names the same soup, and German cousins go by Kuttelsuppe.

Żurek, the sour soup of the Polish Easter table, is served with halved hard-boiled eggs and which sausage?

Biała kiełbasa, the pale 'white' sausage, is boiled and served in the soup, whose tang comes from a starter of fermented rye flour. Once Easter fare, żurek is now eaten all year round.

Goldwasser, the herbal liqueur with flakes of gold leaf in every bottle, was created in the sixteenth century in which Baltic port?

Gdańsk, then Danzig, is where Ambrosius Vermeulen, an immigrant from the Low Countries, devised the liqueur. Since 1945 the original Danziger Goldwasser has been made in Germany, where its makers carried on after the city became Polish.

Żywiec brewery, opened in 1856, belonged until post-war nationalisation to which European dynasty?

The Habsburgs founded it through Archduke Albrecht Friedrich, who chose the site for its mountain spring water, and the family kept the brewery until the post-war Communist government confiscated it.

Kabanosy, the thin dry sausage sticks soldiers once ate on the march, take their name from kaban, an old word for what?

A fattened young pig, raised mainly on potatoes for its meat, was a kaban in Poland's eastern borderlands, a word borrowed from Turkic languages, where it means a boar. Abroad the sausage is sold as cabanossi.

Which Dominican friar, hailed in the Polish cry 'Święty Jacku z pierogami!', fed pierogi to famine victims in legend?

Saint Hyacinth, Jacek in Polish, is said to have fed people pierogi during the famine that followed the Mongol invasion of 1241, and one theory has him bringing the dumplings from the East via Kievan Rus'. His tomb is in Kraków.

The word pierogi is usually traced to a Proto-Slavic root, pirъ, that means what?

Feast is the meaning of pirъ, and Brückner's dictionary explains pieróg as the name of a ritual pastry. Vasmer's derives it the same way but records a rival theory that starts from a word for spelt.

Gołąbki, whose Polish name means 'little pigeons', are parcels of minced meat and rice wrapped in what?

Cabbage leaves, boiled until supple, are rolled around the filling. Linguists disagree about the name: some see a plump bird in the shape, others suspect a borrowed Eastern word later reshaped into 'pigeon'.

Silesian kluski, the round potato dumplings stiffened with potato starch, have a thumb-pressed dent made to hold what?

Gravy pools in the dimple of a kluska śląska, and the hollow is also said to help the dumpling cook evenly. In Silesian homes they are the fixed Sunday partner of beef roulade.

Cebularz, the onion-topped flatbread first baked by Jewish bakers, is the signature bread of which eastern Polish city?

Lublin's Old Town bakeries made it their own in the nineteenth century, and the recipe spread from there: before the war Jewish bakers in other towns of the region were selling it too.

Which sweet, flat shortcrust cake, decorated with eggs, hares and pussy willows, is baked in Poland only for Easter?

Mazurek is the reward for getting through Lent: after forty days of fasting, the flat shortcrust arrives thick with nuts, kajmak or jam, and its top often spells out an Easter greeting.

Which Polish pastry turned 'papal' after John Paul II recalled in 1999 eating it after his school-leaving exams?

Kremówka won its papal nickname after John Paul II told a crowd in his home town, Wadowice, how he and his classmates went for cream cakes after their exams. By one account he bet he could eat the most, and lost.

In the old-Polish hospitality the szlachta prided itself on, guests were welcomed at the door with bread and what?

Salt with bread, chlebem i solą, greeted guests at noble houses, and the custom lives on at Polish weddings, where parents meet the newlyweds with both on their return from church.

Which grade of Polish mead, the richest of the four protected by EU law, uses two parts honey to one of water?

Półtorak means 'one and a half': each measure of honey gets just half a measure of water, which is two parts to one. Dwójniak is equal parts, and the lighter trójniak and czwórniak add more water still.

Compendium ferculorum, the oldest surviving cookbook written in Polish, inspired the great banquet in which Adam Mickiewicz poem?

Pan Tadeusz, Poland's national epic, ends with a nostalgic Old Polish banquet, which Mickiewicz drew from the 1682 cookbook by Stanisław Czerniecki, head chef to the Lubomirski princes.

Żubrówka, the flavoured vodka from Białystok, is sold with a single blade of which plant in every bottle?

Bison grass gives the vodka its flavour and its name, since żubr is Polish for the European bison. The grass is gathered in the Białowieża Forest, where the animals roam.

Pierekaczewnik, a rolled meat pie with EU Traditional Speciality status, belongs to which minority settled in Podlasie?

Lipka Tatars of Podlasie bake pierekaczewnik mostly for the Bayram holidays, because it takes so long: near-transparent sheets of dough are layered with filling, rolled up and coiled like a snail's shell.

Which Kraków merchant hosted the 1364 banquet for Emperor Charles IV that a Main Square restaurant is still named after?

Mikołaj Wierzynek hosted the banquet, on behalf of Kraków's city council, when Casimir the Great gathered Europe's monarchs in September 1364. The chronicler Jan Długosz wrote that the guests left with lavish gifts.

Wuzetka, the chocolate cream cake sold in the Polish capital since the late 1940s, probably takes its name from what?

A city road route, the W-Z or East-West Route across the capital, ran past the confectionery that first sold the cake, though some trace the name to WZC, the city's confectionery plants. It soon became a home bake across Poland.

Before Wigilia supper begins, what do Polish families break and share while exchanging wishes for the year ahead?

A thin wafer called opłatek, plain flour and water, passes from hand to hand: each person breaks a piece from another's and offers a wish in return. It stands for forgiveness and for being together.

Bigos, Poland's long-simmered 'hunter's stew', combines assorted meats with which preserved vegetable?

Sauerkraut is the base of bigos, simmered for hours with the meats. It began as a cheap stand-in for the lemons and vinegar of noble kitchens, and the stew is said to improve with every reheating.