Czernina. Love that arrives in a deep plate

„Hawks are not for turtle doves, and magnates’ daughters are not for the petty gentry” The ingredient of czernina is memory. The smell of home, the patience of women standing at the kitchen table, the sound of a ladle knocking against the rim of the pot, and that particular feeling of safety born when someone, without asking, set a hot plate of food in front of us. Czernina is a dish dark, sweet-and-sour, spiced, unruly, present for centuries in Kuyavia, Kashubia, Greater Poland, Krajna and Masuria, prepared from duck or goose blood, dried plums, pears and apples, vinegar, honey and spices whose proportions were not always written down, because they were kept by the hand, the palate and the experience of successive generations. Czernina is a Polish dish; it grows out of our land and our customs, and it joins the contradictions from which we have built our own sensibility for centuries. It harmoniously unites sweetness with tartness, hospitality with pride, tenderness with severity, warmth with the language of allusion. It is not one-dimensional. Even love does not speak directly, but takes the form of care, a second helping, a painstakingly tempered soup, and a question asked as if it were the most important question in the world: have you had enough to eat? The old black broth, czarna polewka, had a second face. In the customs of the nobility it meant a rekuza, a refusal of a young woman’s hand, delivered without words and yet understood by everyone gathered at the table. The rejected suitor received no letter, no official explanation, no chance to negotiate; he received a plate whose taste became a verdict. The custom entered the Polish imagination for good thanks to „Pan Tadeusz”, in which the black broth served to Jacek Soplica by the Horeszko family becomes the beginning of misfortune, wounded pride and a tragedy stretching across generations. The dish rises to the rank of a social, class and emotional sign; the table ceases to be a place of feasting and becomes a stage on which human fates are decided. Stanisław Czerniecki, in „Compendium ferculorum”, the first Polish cookbook, published in 1682, described a dish cooked black with juszyca, blood, proving that what seems to some today a culinary oddity once belonged to the high culture of the table and the art of Sarmatian cuisine. When I think of czernina, I see not only a pot and a recipe but the whole of Poland written in flavour. A domestic homeland, proud, sometimes painful, yet able to turn even a refusal into a ritual, and an ordinary meal into a story of love, origins and memory. Culture does not live in museums, libraries and anniversary speeches. It endures most faithfully where a plate is still steaming, someone is crumbling marjoram between their palms, and an old recipe passes from generation to generation not as a relic but as a tender duty towards those who came before us. I love Poland for dishes like this too. Demanding, unobvious and deeply human, because they teach that care can have a taste, memory can have a smell, and love needs no grand words when it can come to us in a deep plate. Take ducks and hens into your own claws. ## One soup, many names Czernina has as many names as the regions that love it. Czarnina, czarna polewka, in Kashubia czôrnina or czarwina, in Silesia szwarc. The names change, the colour stays. Several varieties have been entered on the List of Traditional Products. Kuyavian czarnina, listed in 2010, is thick and dense, smells of savory, and was a wedding and holiday dish. Nineteenth-century ethnographic records say it was served to wedding guests straight after their return from church. The Kashubian czôrnina, listed in 2006, is a czarwina with brzad, dried fruit, served with dumplings on the first day of Christmas. The Greater Poland czernina, also called czarna zalewajka, listed in 2008, has a dark brown colour, a stock of duck or goose giblets, honey, vinegar, dried fruit, and homemade noodles or łazanki. In Silesia it was sometimes cooked with pig’s or rabbit’s blood. Krajna and Masuria also hold it in their memory. The north and west of Poland agree on one thing: blood soup is not an oddity but a feast. The irony is obvious. The same soup with which Kuyavia welcomed the newlyweds could, in a noble manor, annul a wedding before it ever took place. ## A basket without words A marriage proposal in the old Commonwealth was not a matter for two people. It was a family transaction, often conducted by matchmakers. If the young woman’s family judged the suitor unworthy, because he was too poor, had a bad reputation or the wrong background, nobody told him so to his face. The black broth was served. The suitor and the matchmakers understood without translation. The delicacy of this form was only apparent. An awkward conversation was avoided, but the dishonour remained public. The rejected man had to finish his meal in silence or ride away. In some parts, for instance in Podolia and Lithuania, the same role was played by a watermelon, a harbuz. Orzeszkowa, in „Nad Niemnem”, has Justyna Orzelska give Teofil Różyc the harbuz, and the two refusals, soup and fruit, always go together whenever the old art of turning down a suitor is discussed. Language has preserved the custom longer than the kitchen. „To get the black broth” today simply means to be sent away empty-handed, not necessarily in matters of the heart. „To treat someone to black broth” is to refuse their request. Małgorzata Musierowicz gave that title to the seventeenth volume of her Jeżycjada series, published in 2006. The soup of refusal has survived even in a novel for young readers. ## The hawk and the turtle dove The most famous black broth in Polish history was supposedly served to Tadeusz Kościuszko. The young, poor officer fell in love, and was loved in return, with Ludwika Sosnowska, daughter of the Lithuanian Field Hetman Józef Sosnowski, and dared to ask for her hand. The magnate refused, served the soup and added the remark about turtle doves and hawks. The rejection broke Kościuszko’s heart and is said to have been one of the reasons he left for America. If the anecdote is true, one plate of soup sent a hero across the ocean. Mickiewicz turned the same custom into the engine of an epic. The Stolnik Horeszko hosted Jacek Soplica, a poor but influential swashbuckler, because he needed his noble votes at the local assemblies, and he called him brother. When Jacek fell in love with Ewa, was loved in return, and meant to propose, the Horeszkos, wishing to avoid a misalliance, served him the black broth. Gerwazy recalls it in Book II from the viewpoint of a faithful servant, and Jacek himself in Book X, on his deathbed. Wounded pride, madness, an unhappy marriage, the killing of the Stolnik during the assault on the castle. The whole plot begins with one plate of soup. ## Blood, vinegar and patience In 1682 Czerniecki wrote of a dish cooked black with juszyca. Cooking meat in blood sauces was, in the Baroque, a prized technique of Sarmatian cuisine, not a rustic curiosity. Today’s czernina is the heir to that craft and demands the same attention. The whole art lies in balancing the sweetness of the dried fruit and honey with the sourness of the vinegar, and in keeping the blood from curdling. The blood must be protected with vinegar at the moment of slaughter. It is introduced into the soup slowly, after tempering, and after that the soup must not come to the boil. One moment of inattention and the velvet turns to lumps. Czernina, like the young woman’s family, does not forgive haste. ## Recipe **Ingredients:** - 1 fresh duck (approx. 1.5–2 kg, preferably free-range) or a duck soup pack with giblets (neck, wings, gizzard, heart, liver) - 1 bunch of soup vegetables (carrot, parsley root, celeriac, leek, an onion charred over a flame) - 3 bay leaves, 5 allspice berries, 5 black peppercorns, salt - 150 g dried fruit (plums, pears and apples, preferably smoked) - a few cloves, a pinch of cinnamon, 1–2 tablespoons marjoram, dried savory - 2–3 tablespoons sugar or honey - 150–200 ml fresh duck or goose blood, protected at slaughter with 2–3 tablespoons vinegar (10%, apple or wine) and a pinch of salt - 2–3 tablespoons wheat flour - to serve: homemade egg noodles (ribbons, łazanki) or potato dumplings (Kuyavian golce) **Method:** 1. At slaughter, drain the blood straight into a bowl with the vinegar and salt and stir vigorously so that it does not clot. 2. Cover the meat and giblets with cold water, bring to the boil and skim. Add the soup vegetables, bay leaves, allspice and pepper. Simmer over a low heat for about 1.5 hours, until the meat is tender. 3. Pour boiling water over the dried fruit and leave for 15 minutes. For the last 20–30 minutes of cooking, add it to the stock together with the cloves, cinnamon and sugar or honey. 4. Take the meat and vegetables out of the stock. Set aside some of the meat and fruit to serve in the plate. 5. In a small bowl, combine the chilled blood and vinegar with the flour and a few spoonfuls of cold water or cooled stock to a smooth slurry without lumps. 6. Turn the heat under the soup down to the minimum, so that it does not boil. Gradually add a ladle of hot stock to the bowl of blood, stirring vigorously. 7. Slowly pour the tempered blood into the pot, whisking all the time. Heat over a very low flame for 5–8 minutes, stirring constantly, until the soup thickens slightly and takes on a dark, velvety colour. Do not let it boil, or the blood will set. 8. Turn off the heat, add the marjoram rubbed between your palms and, if you like, the savory. Season with salt, pepper, vinegar or sugar to a distinct sweet-and-sour taste. 9. Serve with homemade egg noodles or Kuyavian golce, with the reserved meat and fruit.