A cookbooks author’s passion for food and his need to fit in the cultural and political expectation of his times allow us to peek into the material culture of later 1950s and early 1960s socialist Poland, where class differences were a touchy topic.
How could a gay man who loved food express his passion for cooking and eating in socialist Poland? Easy: he creates a fictional straight couple and have them write a cookbook meant to help singles (and the soon-to-be-married) improve their quality of life, at least in the kitchen. In a previous post I discussed how musicologist Tadeusz Żakiej, who wrote about food under the pseudonym Maria Lemnis and Henryk Vitry, negotiated gender, masculinity, and socially sanctioned heteronormativity in 1958 Książka kucharska dla samotnych i zakochanych (A cookbook for those alone and those in love). The volume, however, is also interesting as an example of how a member of the urban intelligentsia, overall better off than the general population, illustrated his class habits while trying not to appear elitist and out of touch.
The authors (Żakiej) do not agree with men who consider cooking as a degrading and shameful activity, an “unnecessary waste of time,” and who follow the saying “I’d rather not eat than cook myself.” For Żakiej, this attitude is only partly a result of snobbism, as in reality men often look down on cooking because they don’t have the faintest idea about it. Although these men may be able to brew a cup of tea or slice some sausage on a piece of bread, they consider the rest unreachable and enormously time consuming, including the need to go shopping (also considering the long lines at the time). Moreover, as the authors suggests that apartments for singles did not have full kitchens, where would these single men store what they buy and the necessary tools?
Żakiej explains that the problem with cookbooks is that they were not written for individuals, with most recipes meant for 3-4 people, which made using ingredients in the right proportion difficult. Also, the author imagines kitchens as often dominated by mother-in-laws (a discrete jab to the strictures of traditional domesticity and family structures). It is, perhaps, the slow rise in independent urban living as the urbanization of Poland progressed, that is reflected in Zakiej’s book. And then there was the issue of grocery shopping: “recipes are implacable,” as they always require a spoon of this and a pinch of that, which makes buying ingredients for specific recipes very complicated. And as it is necessary to purchase in certain quantities, waste was inevitable. This seems to be an urgent issue for the author, one that was particularly hard to accept in the lean times of socialism. “Every day, garbage bins get filled with huge quantity of dry bread and stale rolls, rancid butter, rotten sausage… which are the usual leftovers from the household of a single person.’
Class, although never directly addressed, looms large in the cookbook. After all, the author belonged to the relatively well-off urban intelligentsia who could at least aspire to the lifestyle presented in the book, unlike most Poles. By underlining that their revenues were meager, the fictional couple was trying to avoid that readers perceive them as elites and could not identify with them and try the recipes they proposed. Moreover, not everybody had easy access to many of the ingredients listed in the book, as shortages and kinks in the distribution system often made shopping for groceries time consuming and frustrating. There is a whole section on how to organize a good, basic pantry, specifically to avoid long lines at busy moments (after work hours, pre-holiday periods) that cause all sorts of fights among people.
Żakiej seems bent on gently concealing the hard realities of the period, maybe to remain in the good graces or publishers and authorities. Here and there, he hints at the problems that had plagued the Polish food system before socialism, but it turns them into positives: “The forced diet during the war years became simply beneficial for many materially privileged gluttons (obżartuch), as it deprived them of many ‘luxurious’ ailments and suffering.” In the section about food history, he criticizes the excesses of the Polish gentry from the past, depicted as insensitive to the plights of their people. However, the author stops short of extolling any positive aspect in the recurrent insufficiency of basic ingredients he witnesses, which he admits could cause havoc, especially among the poorest segments of the population.
Nevertheless, Żakiej does not not agree at all with the perception that food and cooking are bourgeois habits, as “everybody among us likes to eat well and to one’s heart’s content, both the ‘fair sex’ (or women) and the ‘worldly gentlemen’ (you know – men!)” Also women like to eat and don’t nourish themselves only “with ice cream and … flowers.” “Food is not just a sad necessity, but it can also be pleasure… a pleasure that is available to us not only during our whole life, but even… three times a day.” However, eating well is not only about pleasure, but also helps avoiding malnourishment, which the author describes as a problem for young single professionals. “Self-reliance requires greater responsibility concerning our behaviors towards our organism and our health.”
Żakiej wrote for a segment of the Polish population that could afford three full meals a day, perhaps having one of them in a subsidized workplace canteen, had easier access to shopping (with only the most discreet hints to economizing), and even practiced sports. They wore ties, nice outfits, and clip earrings, to which they dedicated attention (and so they should pay attention to what they ate, in the same measure). In fact, the satisfaction of hunger was not everything. The author recommends that his readers take their time to eat, starting from breakfast, and follow a regular meal pattern (but with variations within the meals to improve appetite and ensure better nutrition). These are busy people that come back home after work tired and “mentally exhausted,” with “upset nerves.” Their professional activities always sound very draining. What a busy life these imagined readers lead! Actually marriage could save many of these hardworking men, as future wives had to be not only “reasonable but also strong enough to convince their husbands to embrace a ‘rational way of life’.” Żakiej also jokingly points to the tendency of men to put on a little belly in their forties.
Evoking the zeitgeist of years following the turbulent and violent Stalinist era, a more relaxed present that the poet Tadeusz Różewicz would later call “our little stabilization,” Żakiej imagines his readers coming back home, changing clothes, freshening up, setting down a clean tablecloth, putting a flower in a vase, and playing quiet music on the radio… This is single life coziness, which also allows for a good production of gastric juices (fundamental for a healthy digestion). Readers are mostly assumed to be living in one room, but it is still a shelter against the accidents and worries of life. For that reason, that one room needs to be tidy and in order. One has to wash dishes before going to bed, to wake up to a well-arranged environment. A messy room makes men feel even more lonely, and makes them want to run away from it. Then again, nothing calms the nerves as the contact with nature, so a walk outdoors or, better, in a park, is always a good idea.
Although Żakiej repeatedly pointed out that his goal was not moralizing, judgments are passed quite often on habits he knew his society criticized. For instance, he asserted that while both reason and feelings are necessary when shopping, as our instincts guide us in diversifying our diet (which is necessary not only for pleasure but also for health), those same instincts are also responsible for the consumption of vodka and cigarettes. Actually, if one has to economize, one should do it on cigarettes, alcohol, coffee, and tea, but not on milk, vegetables, fruit, cottage cheese (twaróg) and cod.
I am just starting to delve into the deceptively simplicity of Żakiej’s cookbook. It provides a great entryway into the material life of socialist Poland. I have already secured a copy of his W staropolskiej kuchni i przy polskim stole (later translated into English in 1996 as Old Polish Traditions in the Kitchen and at the Table). I am curious to see what sorts of filters his passion for food and his need to fit in the social and political expectation of his times created in assessing the history of Polish food.
Mateusz Halawa contributed information and analysis to this post.