Polish Cuisine - Holiday Meals - Fat Thursday

Fat Thursday

"Tłusty Czwartek" (Fat Thursday) is a Catholic feast celebrated on the last Thursday before the Lent, which is also the last day of carnival. Traditionally it is an occasion to enjoy fair amounts of sweets and cakes which afterwards are technically forbidden until Easter. "Tłusty Czwartek" belongs to moveable feasts, as it is connected with the date of Easter and beginning of the Lent. The next Thursday falls already after Ash Wednesday that is the period of the Lent when the Catholics should refrain from overeating.

The most popular sweets during Fat Thursday are pączki (Polish donuts) or faworki called also in some regions of Poland "chrust". The traditional donuts are fill with rose petal jam (plum jam or apple)and cover with thin layer of icing or powdered sugar, sprinkled with orange peel.

However, Fat Thursday used to mark the beginning of Fat Week the period of great gluttony during which Polish ancestors consumed dishes served with smalec (lard), bacon and all the kinds of meat. Nowadays Fat Thursday is associated especially with donuts, therefore on that day confectioneries are besieged by Poles who wish to purchase pączki (Polish donuts) to celebrate the feast. One of the old superstitions says that the one who does not eat any donuts on Fat Thursday will not succeed afterwards. But the Poles do not feel endangered with this superstition an average Pole eats on Fat Thursday 2,5 donuts while the whole country eats almost 100 million of them altogether. Polish donuts baked in Poland are smaller in size than their American version and they taste more like apple fritter than a donut.

The first donuts did not remind those that we know nowadays. Those made of the same dough as bread, filled with pork fat and fried on smalec were popular until 16th century. Only afterwards they were made in a sweet way. The most important secret is that the confectioneries do not make them in advance every respectful cake shop makes pączki the night before the Poles reach the shops to buy them. Polish pączki are still different than so called donuts or similar sweets made in other countries. Their dough is made of yeast, flour and eggs. Polish pączki are fried in oil or smalec only for several dozen of seconds so that the fat would not soak inside. They taste the best when still warm. Some people used to fill few of them with almond or nut instead of marmalade while encountering this exquisite filling was supposed to bring good luck.

Although many housewives make pączki and faworki at home, one can still see crowds of people standing in the line at confectioneries to buy this Fat Thursday’s specialities.