As you may have heard, potatoes are quite popular in Poland. The potato has found its way into the hearts, minds, and onto the plates of Poles everywhere. But how did they make their way there? Discover the Polish history of the potato with Culture.pl!
In 1821, Adam Mickiewicz wrote a poem. One perhaps less well-known than Pan Tadeusz, but worth discovering. The poem Kartofla (Potato), which Mickiewicz never finished and wasn’t published during his lifetime, describes the pleasures of life in the countryside, when suddenly… a potato jumps off of the stove and demands attention:
While a poet praises vegetables with his lyre
Suddenly, a potato pipes up from the fire:
Orders now the lute to be set to song
So the poet rhymes as he goes along:
Thanks to God’s great power, the old is now new,
From disordered worlds a construction grew;
How then, when grand millennia passed,
A certain Hebrew man made new faith for us.
While the auld Greek gods, suffering sorry fates,
Made worlds out of chaos, fleeing in great haste,
That Columbus frightened them with his brave attack
As he sailed the seas, then came roaring back,
And the Lord our God with his saints judged worth
Of Columbus’ trail … so on and so forth
Shetato – A Wee Poem in Four Songs, translation by Marek Kaźmierski
Ziemniak or kartofel?
When the poem was written, potatoes had been around in Poland for quite a while – the history of Polish potato goes back 300 years. However, for quite some time this vegetable wasn’t known by a single name. Likely no other plant or vegetable had such a plethora of names, including many different regional ones like pyrki, pyry, grule or even rzepa (turnip greens), just to mention a few. The word ziemniak only came to be used only in the 20th century. In the 19th century books the term kartofel prevailed.
Professor Jan Miodek, a prolific Polish linguist, has confessed to his lexical penchant for the word kartofel and his specific dislike for the (most popular) word ziemniak. Kartofel is also supported by literary tradition – it was used by Mickiewicz and by Bolesław Prus in Lalka (The Doll). Julian Tuwim also used the word kartofel in his poem entitled… Kartofle:
Uniquely Polish Ways of Serving Vegetables
Even though Polish cuisine has a reputation of being quite meat and potato-heavy, we Poles actually invented a whole bunch of interesting ways of eating vegetables. No meal is complete without them.
Can you feel it? The pagan years smelling of campfire,
Smouldering juniper wood crackling with sparks,
Woolly smoke drifting with the wind,
And raw potatoes wrinkling from the heat.
…And never a potato served on the table
Was as tempting as one with burning scent, charred,
Voraciously taken with a clamp-stick
Out of grey, hot flour of the forest ash.
Toss it from hand to hand! Blow on it! Watch out! It’s hot!
Its braised skin burns you when peeled!
Toss it in salt from a piece of paper! Put it in your blowing mouth and devour!
Let it melt on your jumping tongue!…
Professor Miodek explains the origins of both kartofel and ziemniak:
The Polish word kartofel, even though it originates from German (Kartoffel, formerly Tartuffel), in fact comes from the Italian word tartufo which means… truffle. Not surprisingly, since old potato varieties were very similar to truffles, and besides they grew underground. In the course of years, the meaning evolved and it changed from an edible mushroom to a plant with edible bulbs. The Polish word zieminak, on the other hand, has its origin in the French collocation pomme de terre, which corresponds to jabłko ziemne (earth apple), recorded in Polish early 20th century dictionaries.
In 1760, Mitzler de Kolof, the Enlightenment publisher, in his Magazyn Wszelkich Nauk do Szczęśliwego Życia Ludzkiego Potrzebnych (A Compendium of Knowledge Necessary to Live a Happy Life) used the term ‘tartofl’ (because of course potatoes are necessary for a happy life!).
A king & his gardener
Bringing potatoes to Poland is attributed to King Jan III Sobieski (he is said to have sent a big sack of potatoes to his wife Marysieńka during the Vienna siege), but it was Paweł Wienczarek, a gardener of the Wilanów Palace grounds, who planted the exotic tubers in the gardens of Wilanów. Later, his son-in-law, Jan Łuba, popularised potato-growing in Warsaw, during the reign of King August Mocny. As the story goes, Łuba would bring carts full of potato seedlings all the way from Saxony. The king, craving this delicious treat, demanded to be served a plate of fried potatoes with his meals each day. As popularity of this luxurious treat grew, gardeners in noblemen’s estates began experimenting with the controversial vegetable. Although, at first they did not have much success – no frost-resistant varieties were known at the time and their experience in potato preservation and growing was lacking.
In his Opis Obyczajów za Panowania Augusta III(A Description of Customs under the Reign of August III), Jan Kitowicz points out:
Poles were disgusted with potatoes and considered them harmful to human health. Some priests even tried to convince simple folk that potatoes had adverse health effects. The priests didn’t believe what they were saying, but wanted to make sure that Poles would not acquire the German liking for potatoes and would not replace wheat flour with potato starch in the altar offerings, which would be an act of sacrilege. Nevertheless, by the end of the reign of King August III, potatoes were known all over Poland, Lithuania and Ruthenia.
Endless possibilities
In 18th-century compendiums and calendars, one could read about how people used and prepared potatoes overseas. Priest Jan Krzysztof Kluk, a naturalist, wrote in 1788 that potatoes may be dried in the sun, crushed and stored for later use, for example, to make the so-called gąszcz (thick gravy) with broth or with water and butter. Such gąszcz, in Kluk’s opinion, was a healthy gourmet meal, especially for those with weak stomach. Another way to consume potatoes was to boil, slice and serve them hot with herring, broth or fish soup.
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