Compendium ferculorum, albo Zebranie potraw (A Collection of Dishes) is a cookbook by Stanisław Czerniecki. First put in print in 1682, it is the earliest known cookery book published originally in Polish. Czerniecki wrote it in his capacity as head chef at the court of the house of Lubomirski and dedicated it to Princess Helena Tekla Lubomirska. The book contains more than 300 recipes, divided into three chapters of about 100 recipes each.
The chapters are devoted, respectively, to meat, fish and other dishes, and each concludes with a "master chef's secret". Czerniecki's cooking style, as is evident in his book, was typical for the luxuriant Polish Baroque cuisine, which still had a largely medieval outlook, but was gradually succumbing to novel culinary ideas coming from France. It was characterized by generous use of vinegar, sugar and exotic spices, as well as preference for spectacle over thrift.
The book was republished several times during the 18th and 19th centuries, sometimes under new titles, and had an important impact on the development of Polish cuisine. It also served as an inspiration for the portrayal of an Old Polish banquet in Pan Tadeusz, the Polish national epic.
Context
Czerniecki was an ennobled burgher who served three generations of the magnate house of Princes Lubomirski as property manager and head chef. He began his service in ca. 1645, initially under Stanisław Lubomirski until 1649, then under the latter's eldest son, Aleksander Michał Lubomirski, and his grandson, Józef Karol Lubomirski. Although Czerniecki's book was first published in 1682, it must have been completed before Aleksander Michał Lubomirski's death in 1677.
The original publication of Compendium ferculorum came three decades after the French cookbook entitled (The French [male] Cook, 1651), by François Pierre de La Varenne, started a culinary revolution that spread across Europe in the second half of the 17th century. In this new wave of French gastronomy, exotic spices were largely replaced with domestic herbs with the aim of highlighting the natural flavours of foods. Polish magnates often hired French chefs at their courts and some also held copies of in their libraries (including King John III Sobieski who was married to the French Marie Casimire d'Arquien). Compendium ferculorum, written in Polish and promoting traditional domestic cuisine, which maintained a largely medieval outlook, may be seen as Czerniecki's response to the onslaught of culinary cosmopolitanism.
Content
Title and dedication
Although the book is written entirely in Polish, it has a bilingual, Latin and Polish, title. Compendium ferculorum and both mean "a collection of dishes", in Latin and Polish, respectively; these are joined by the Polish conjunction albo, "or".
The work opens with Czerniecki's dedication to his "most charitable lady and benefactress", Princess née , recalling a famed banquet given to Pope Urban VIII by her father, Prince , during his diplomatic mission to Rome in 1633. Ossoliński's legation was famous for its ostentatious sumptuousness designed to show off the grandeur and prosperity of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, even to the point of deliberately fitting his mount with loose golden horseshoes, only to lose them while ceremoniously entering the Eternal City. The dedication, in which Czerniecki pointed out he had already served the house of Lubomirski for 32 years, also mentions Lubomirska's husband, , and their son, , wishing the whole family good health and good fortune.
The author was well aware that his was the first cookbook in the Polish vernacular, which he made clear in the dedication. "As no one before me has yet wished to present to the world such useful knowledge in our Polish language," he wrote in his opening line, "I have dared, ... despite my ineptitude, to offer the Polish world my compendium ferculorum, or collection of dishes." Polish bibliographer maintained that Compendium ferculorum was preceded by Kuchmistrzostwo (Cooking Mastery), a 16th-century Polish translation of the Czech cookbook (Cookery) written by in 1535. However, no copies of this supposed translation have survived, except for facsimiles of two folios, published in 1891, of uncertain authenticity. Whatever the case, Czerniecki's work is without a doubt the oldest known cookbook published originally in Polish.