Cieszyn Silesia has a cuisine that has for years been appearing on the ministry's List of Traditional Products. Below are four entries from that list that are easy to put together into one picture of the region: small Christmas Eve biscuits, a soup made with soured milk, the swede root and rapeseed honey. Smoked kita, beans and Cieszyn-style cabbage are described separately, in the article on the table of Cieszyn Silesia, and the list itself and its rules in the article on traditional products of the voivodeship.

Christmas Eve biscuits: small, crumbly and very numerous

According to a PAP report published on the dzieje.pl portal, the Christmas Eve table in Cieszyn Silesia is unimaginable without small, crumbly biscuits. The director of the Cieszyn Castle of Art and Enterprise said that nobody can name the exact date when this tradition began. In descriptions she found information that the biscuits appeared at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the trail leads to Vienna, because the region belonged to the empire at that time.

Most sources give precisely the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries and credit the Austrians, but some authors look for the beginnings as early as the Middle Ages, linking them with gingerbread recipes that were supposed to have come from Prague to Cieszyn in the time of Duke Przemysław I Noszak. These two versions have not been reconciled, so the safest thing is to speak of a tradition several centuries old, and not of a specific date.

How many kinds and what shapes

The biscuits come in very different forms: moons, balls, clovers, flowers, mushrooms, hearts, sausages, barrels, beehives, cubes and rhombuses. They are sandwiched with a filling or marmalade, and decorated with nuts, almonds, raisins or icing. They do not usually exceed 3 cm in size. On the Christmas Eve table there may be 20-30 kinds, and the more the better, so housewives start baking at least two weeks before the holidays. There are around a hundred recipes and they are often passed down from generation to generation.

The most popular are small gingerbreads with spices, honey, eggs and butter. The festive baking of the region also includes shortbread biscuits stuck together with jam and stacked in layers into a pyramid, ginger zozworki, which on St Barbara's Day were handed out by women dressed in white shirts, and amoniaczki, which are crisp thanks to the addition of food-grade ammonia. The rule is that enough biscuits must be baked to last until New Year, because this is supposed to bring good fortune. Some of the baking is packed into boxes and given to friends and family.

Chuda jewa: a soup with an ironic name

The soup chuda jewa was entered on the List of Traditional Products on 10 March 2011, in the category of ready meals and dishes. The product card describes it as a polewka made with soured milk or buttermilk, served with potatoes or with bread. It is seasoned with garlic, caraway, salt and pepper, and at the end fried diced smoked bacon and dill are added. It is creamy and fairly thick, with a buttery taste and a slight hint of garlic.

The card quotes a recollection that in the countryside all soups were called polywki, and chuda jewa with garlic or onion was popular, with szpyrki, that is pork crackling, floating on top, eaten with potatoes. It also quotes an ethnographer, according to whom the culinary inventiveness of the countryside tended towards combining few, simple products and giving dishes ironic names, such as chuda jewa ("lean fare") itself.

Kwaki, that is swede

In March 2011, according to a report by the wiadomosci.ox.pl portal, kwaki joined chuda jewa on the list. Kwaki, also called brukiew or karpiel, is a root vegetable that has been grown in the Żywiec region, in Cieszyn Silesia and around Bielsko-Biała since time immemorial. In the past it had an important place in the diet, because swede tubers, like potatoes, carrots, beetroot and parsnips, kept well over the winter.

According to this report, the swede is washed, peeled, diced, covered with hot water, salt and sugar are added, and it is boiled until soft. When the water has partly evaporated, a roux of lard and flour is added, and at the end raw butter. Prepared in this way, it serves as an accompaniment to meat. The same report also lists on the list the Cieszyn smoked kita, Cieszyn-style pumpkin marmalade, Cieszyn pieczoki and brutfanioka.

Rapeseed honey of the Cieszyn Land and the beekeeping tradition

Rapeseed honey of the Cieszyn Land was entered on the list on 5 May 2008, in the category of honeys. The card describes it as light yellow when liquid, and once crystallised fine-grained and creamy, similar to lard. The taste is sweet, slightly bland and mild.

In the section on tradition the card quotes a historian of beekeeping, according to whom the beginnings of beekeeping organisations in Cieszyn Silesia go back to 1872. In Cieszyn, a Horticultural and Beekeeping Section was then set up within the Agricultural Society, which had existed since 1869. In 1913 the independent Horticultural Society of the Duchy of Cieszyn was founded, which also brought together beekeepers, and in 1937 it had 1026 members in many local branches.