The traditional dish is not turkey or duck; instead taking center stage on most Polish tables is this freshwater fish.
For many, it is hard to imagine a Christmas without carp. Although the number of its fans and opponents is similar, this species still reigns supreme on the menu. Some love it, others hate it, and still others eat it only on Christmas Eve, because tradition dictates it.
The Wigilia meal is the biggest culinary event in the Polish calendar. After sharing the opłatek wafer, all are seated for the dinner, which consists of dishes defined by regional and family traditions. Some recognize that 12 dishes should be served, because that is the number of months in a year and represent the disciples of Jesus – the Apostles. In other homes, an odd number of dishes of 5, 7, 9 or 11 are prepared. It should be remembered that due to fasting, meat dishes are not allowed. Some 80 years ago, not only every region, but almost every village had its own local dishes.
The question of the menu depends on the region, as well as each separate house, as each family has its own customs, traditions, and favorite recipes. An important element of the menu is fish – mainly freshwater varieties. Fish dishes made their appearance much later than those from grains, vegetables, mushrooms, and fruits. At first, fish was served only at courts and in wealthy monasteries. Fishermen could afford to eat them.
Fish has long been a symbol of Christ and Christianity, and of health and abundance. The tradition of eating carp for Christmas is alive and well in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. But some families in Hungary, Austria, Germany, and Croatia celebrate and indulge in the delicacy during the Vigil. Southern Italy originated the now Italian-American “Feast of the Seven Fishes” tradition in the United States, this sumptuous meal is a seafood-heavy dinner, known as la cena della vigilia — the midnight vigil.
Carp on Christmas Eve is inscribed in Polish tradition, but where did this custom come from?
Carp in Old Polish cuisine
The history of carp is full of surprises. The first information about carp originating from Asia in ancient times, comes from Aristotle and Pliny. It was a farmed fish, which in the 7th century BC was domesticated in Asia. The ancient Romans had artificial piscina ponds, in which they cultivated carp, which were to go to their tables. After the fall of the Roman Empire, carp breeding was handled by religious orders.
Strong Catholic traditions in Eastern European countries brought about the carp tradition. It was a solution for the numerous fasting days in the Catholic calendar – 180 to 200 days a year were banned from eating meat; non-compliance was severely punished.
The division of animals into “hot-blooded” and “cold-blooded” is derived from ancient terminology that the Church borrowed. Cold-blooded animals that can be eaten included primarily fish, but also animals associated with water: beavers, turtles, snails, and sometimes certain species of birds.
Because of the medieval calendar, carp was brought to Poland in the 12th century by Czech Cistercian monks, who were engaged in fish farming. Their monastery breeding ponds were in the Barycz valley of the Dolny Śląsk castellany of Milicz in southwestern Poland.
At the end of the 13th century, carp breeding was established in Zator, on the border of the Duchy of Opole and the Kraków district – in the land of the Cieszyn Prince Mieszko. Both farms still exist and most of the carp on Polish tables come from them.
At that time, fish became popular for Christmas Eve as a fasting food, as it was the last day of the Advent fast. “Carp was one of the many freshwater fish from which to make a dish,” wrote Poland’s first historian, Jan Długosz wrote in his “Chronicles” from 1466.
The Republic of the Golden Age in the late 15th century was already famous for a large number of ponds, as well as for the high level of fishery management. Ponds were established on wastelands, therefore in the villages of Śląsk and western Małopolska carp breeding was almost as popular as grain cultivation.
From the Middle Ages to the 17th century, as wars ravaged Poland, breeding ponds sprouted throughout Poland. Carp was gaining in popularity, and specialists from Czechia stocked more economic ponds.
In the oldest preserved Polish cookbook from 1682, Compendium Ferculorum – albo Zebranie Potraw (a collection of dishes) by Stanisław Czerniecki, the chef of Prince Lubomirski, you can find eight recipes for carp. It was not a rarity at that time and was served on noble and landed gentry tables. According to Czerniecki, black carp was cooked with the addition of jam dissolved with vinegar, cherry juice, spices.
We have an idea what the kings of Poland ate during Christmas from the steward’s books. These were lists, which were issued by the szafarnia (pantry) of the court kitchen. The palace book from King Jan III Sobieski, under the date of December 24, 1695, details that snails, and a very long list of fish – including very fatty, migratory carp were served. It was the fat that was desirable after a long Advent fast. At the Wigilia table in Wilanów, a bowl of salmon, nine platters – pike, a bowl of perch, two bowls – bream, five bowls – tench, two bowls of “salt fish,” a bowl – stockfish (dried cod), three bowls – czeczugi (from the sturgeon family), two bowls – herring, two bowls and additionally seven platters of carp were served. To accompany this was rice, almonds, olive oil and onions. There was no barszcz or kapusta on the menu.
Due to wars, the popularity of carp decreased in the 17th century. At that time, water was drained from the ponds and fish were selected to feed the soldiers. Nobility and landed gentry were left with other fish such as salmon and pike.
The second half of the 18th century and the entire 19th century was a slow and arduous process of rebuilding the carp’s position on Polish tables. Farms damaged mainly by the Swedish deluge could not regain their glory for a long time.
The situation was changed by Adolf Gasch from Kaniów, who bred a new variety of carp, which had an arched back and a small head. The fish gained meat mass, and breeding became even more profitable. He received a gold medal for it at the agricultural exhibition in Berlin in 1880 – amazing breeders with the size and shape of his fish – which was titled as “Galician carp.” Known today as “Royal carp,” the fish stormed gastronomy in the 19th century and made it impossible to imagine a festive table without carp at the beginning of the 20th century.
On the Christmas Eve table, pike, considered the royal fish, continued to occupy the place of honor. Carp was not a gourmet fish, but an everyday, fasting, not solemn fish. Carp had the advantage that it grew quickly and was easy to breed.
It was very popular, especially among Polish Jews, who prepared it in many ways. Karp po Żydowsku (in the Jewish style), popular in Poland, is an exceptional dish. It is not found in any other Jewish cuisine. This recipe in sweet gelatin with raisins and almonds comes from Galicia.
Until World War II, the northern range of the dish’s popularity marked the border between the Jewish Galicians and the Lithuanian, who used a different dialect of Yiddish. It is the Jewish Poles who are noted for bringing the popularity of carp to the Christmas Eve table. With relation to the origins of Christmas, preparing “in the Jewish way” made sense.
Carp was only one of many freshwater fish served on noble, bourgeois and landed gentry tables.
In the 18th century, in Poland and neighboring countries, numerous ponds were created, built by rich princely families and magnates as peculiar family monuments of glory.
It was in the 19th century that carp took the place of pike on Wigilia tables. In the 16th century, a fashion for carp consumption was created as fish ceased to be only a fasting dish. Live carp became a delicatessen product, consumed during various celebrations and holidays. In the 19th century, the two kitchens – szlachetny (noble) and włościańska (peasant) began to merge together. Wealthy townspeople, in addition to the rich feudal lords living in the city, were the main recipients of the fish, but not the only ones, as the urban and rural population of land estates and farms willingly ate carp, as well.
“Carpe à la polonaise” appeared as an item of the Christmas Eve menu proposed by Antoni Teslar, the Potocki chef from Krzeszowice and the author of Kuchnia Polsko-Francuska (Polish-French Cuisine) from 1910.
In the 1914 cookbook – 366 Obiadów - Praktyczna książka kucharska, Kazimiera Krumłowska who used the pseudonym Maria Gruszecka listed carp among Christmas Eve delicacies. The popular book was reprinted in 1930.
The carp tradition became rooted during the interwar period (1919-1939), due to the favorable Sejm acts of 1919 and 1920 on agricultural land, many new carp ponds were created. In the weekly “Nowości Ilustrowane” No. 2, of January 8, 1921, in the Chronicle of the Week column, there is a description of the Christmas Eve of 1920 and the search for carp.
After the end of World War II, Poland lost part of its ponds in the eastern borderlands, but in return it obtained well-developed carp ponds in Dolny Śląsk.
“Carp on every Christmas Eve table”
After World War II, the fish industry did not exist. The ponds were destroyed by the devastation of war. Others found themselves no longer within Poland’s borders. The fishing fleet was in tragic condition with less than half of their trawlers, luggers, cutters, motorboats and row/sail boats remaining after the war. The reconstruction of the fleet did not find support from the authorities. But the mass popularity of carp in the times of the Polish People’s Republic increased. The centrally controlled economy was not able to supply the market, and in this situation the Minister of Industry and Trade and a Communist activist, Hilary Minc, threw out the slogan – “Karp na każdym Wigilijnym stole w Polsce” (a carp on every Christmas Eve table in Poland). Born into a middle-class Jewish family, he grew up knowing the taste of these fish dishes in Kazimierz Dolny.
Minc knew that this species was relatively easy to breed, and at his command, a mass restocking campaign was launched. Carp indeed appeared on Wigilia tables – influenced by its affordable price and the distribution of fish through workplaces as “bonuses.” Special cards were also awarded. At fish shops, long lines were started several days in advance of Christmas Eve – with no guarantee of garnering a carp.
The fish were brought to stores alive and sold live to customers. Back then, they were not available gutted or frozen. The habit of storing live fish in domestic bathtubs was born out of necessity. Refrigerators were a commodity and the fresh water cleansed the meat and eliminated any silt aftertaste.
Under the Communist regime, the culinary traditions and old recipes for carp, especially those once widely used by noblemen and the aristocracy, were regarded as superfluous reactionary whimsy, and forgotten about. Instead, recipes for basic fried carp bells found their way into newspapers and cookbooks.
Although carp became an important political weapon, ensuring constant supplies to the stores of Centrala Rybna turned out to be unrealistic in practice. Despite the periodic mobilization of the supply, it was sometimes difficult to get fish for Wigilia.
Recently, there has been an engrained opinion that carp did not appear on the Christmas Eve table in Poland until only after World War II – as a Communist substitute for noble species of fish unavailable on the market at that time. This revisionist history found on TV stations, blogs, and internet media, calls carp – a “new secular tradition” introduced by a Jewish Communist to Catholic homes. It is difficult to guess where this infamous legend came from, but it does not have much to do with the truth. Even Polish Newsweek’s Bartek Wejman touted this sensationist theory in what can be deemed as ill-researched, sloppy journalism.
The popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia lists fish among the traditional Christmas Eve dishes, “with the most traditional carp fried and in jelly.” If you enter the set of words “carp communists” in a popular web browser, it will give you well over 100,000 results.
“The fact is this story, assigning a special role to Minc, is completely untrue,” writes historian and researcher of the history of Polish cuisine Prof. Janusz Dumanowski from the Nicolaus Copernicus University. “In the times of the Polish People’s Republic, sturgeon, perch, salmon, eels, pike and many other fish disappeared from Christmas Eve tables. This left only the lonely carp. Besides, should we be suspect of Zygmunt III Vasa or Jan Sobieski – both avid consumers of Christmas Eve carp?”
Carp = poor Poland?
Carp is not a cheap fish from the People’s Republic of Poland. A new propaganda tradition — along with animal rights activists — are attempting to emphasize that carp is a fish that has nothing to do with the Christmas tradition. Wealthier Poles even look with contempt at this “not very noble” fish.
Millennials are stating that carp is a tradition of a poor, Communist Poland. A symbol of a country where there were no refrigerators. One stated on an internet blog that: “young people are living in a completely different world, with a different mentality. Why should we duplicate the traditions of our parents and grandparents, who had no other choice?
Tradition is clear: there should be a fish on the table. A fish for the times in which we live. Let us not be stuck in a bygone era. We can afford better products. Let it be a sign that Poland is modern and does not mindlessly stick to habits that it cannot explain to itself.”
It is interesting to note that snails and frogs in France began to be a dish only when there was nothing else to eat during the war. Now they are considered not only a tradition, but also food for the rich.
From Bathtub to Table
Families buy carp alive a few days before Christmas and then put the fish in their bathtub. During that time, children often get attached to their upcoming meal and even give the carp a name. Seeing it swim in the bathtub has a lot to do with how popular this tradition has remained over the centuries and is highly appreciated by young ones – some of whom may have a change of heart at the idea of devouring their new pet.
Carp are bottom feeders. The idea is that a few days swimming in clean water helps to flush the fish’s digestive tract. The tub time was also a practical way to store fresh fish before refrigerators became common.
As magically as the fully decorated Christmas tree appears, the pet carp’s life not-so-magically ends. Carp crosses cultures — as does the bathtub ritual in Slovakia and Czechia. Some European Jews have a similar tradition, as carp is often the gefilte fish eaten at Passover.
These memories are so vivid that children’s storybooks have even been written on the topic. In most of them, the children are often conflicted on whether to eat their new pets, as per tradition, or rescue them.
Today, many families buy carp, already dead and gutted, and put them in the freezer until December 24.
Why Carp? It’s a Matter of Taste
Carp compete in quality and origin, so choose a good one. Today, it comes from clean waters, from organic farming, which makes sure that the slightest amount of silt does not remain. The carp is put to sleep in ice water before killing it.
Buy carp only from reliable sources, preferably directly from the breeder. Always ask for a certificate, because the fish with it has a guarantee of quality. The document testifies to the fact that carp was bred in ecological conditions, fed naturally, and handled humanely. Good quality fish should not have the smell of silt, and when pressed with a finger, the meat must be resilient. The gills of the fish are to be red, and the eyes are glassy, pronounced, and large. The scales should shine and adhere well to the carcass. The seller is obliged to tell you what age the fish is and where it comes from.
The taste of carp is expressive. It is difficult to find a fish that is so silky and caresses the palate. Tender, slightly sweet, carp meat is second to none. This is the result of breeding, which can be called ecological. Though bred differently, carp can be found in exclusive fish shops in the United States.
The remnants of the carp custom can be heard in the annual song by the journalists of the Polish Radio 3 – Trójka. First recorded in 2000, subsequent versions of the special song Przyjaciele Karpia (Friends of the Carp), are very popular, especially as the revenue from sales is donated to charity.
Legend has it that the carp itself brings luck and prosperity – one of the reasons it became the Christmas meal of choice. Carp scales are sometimes tucked under dinner plates and carried around in wallets to attract wealth – based on the superstition that the scales resemble coins. Another custom calls for burying the fish bones under a tree on Christmas day, so that it bears fruit in the coming year.
Carp might not swim in many bathtubs anymore, but if you may be fortunate enough to see one at the dinner table, you might snag some of its scales to keep in your back pocket. You never know what blessings the carp might bring in the New Year.
Smacznej Wigilii i zdrowych, rodzinnych Świąt Bożego Narodzenia dla wszystkich!
How to Prepare Carp for Wigilia
The techniques of preparing Christmas Eve dishes have changed. Though we often consider the preparation of Wigilia to be extremely laborious, our efforts are incomparably smaller than those of our ancestors.
Carp was once prepared in many different ways: in dried cherries, blackened in carp blood and beer, in aspic, or in a variety of sauces — some sweet, others savory. It was breaded, fried, sliced or stuffed, and shaped as carp ham or fishmeat-balls.
There were carp soups depending on the region. From Wielkopolska there was a velvety, cream soup and from other areas the addition of beets, In addition to carp, Barszcz Rybny included a tomato paste, pickled beets, carrots, parsley, onions, dill, oil and cream..
Karp po Polsku w Szarym Sosie / Carp in Grey Sauce
This is a famous Old Polish Christmas Eve delicacy and a very old recipe.
Kill a finely bred carp of about 2 lbs. and collect the blood into a cup which contains the juice of a half lemon. (Substitute: use plum juice or plum butter)
Clean and wash fish, cut crosswise into portions, salt and leave in a cool place for 20 minutes.
Prepare a stock of of 1 medium celeriac root, sliced into strips, a large onion and one wine-glass of dry red wine (1 cup), a piece of thinly peeled lemon rind, several grains of pepper, 1/3 teaspoon ground ginger and the juice of 1/2 lemon.
Place the fish in a flat saucepan and cover with the stock (3/4 pint)
Transfer the cooked fish carefully onto a warm serving-dish and keep warm.
Strain the stock through a fine metal sieve, 7. Add the blood of the carp, a cup of dark beer, 2-3 cubes of sugar, a table spoon of plum butter, 2 oz. dried and ground gingerbread (baked with honey!), 2 oz. blanched almonds (cut lengthwise), 2 oz. raisins, and a heaped tablespoon of butter.
Simmer this sauce over low heat for 10-15 minutes and when slightly cooler, check the taste (add a little salt if desired).
Pour the hot sauce over the fish arranged on the platter. Serve.
Wigilijna zupa rybna z karpia
Christmas Vigil Carp Soup
A favorite from Wielkopolska
1 carp, cleaned and cut
12 1/2 cups of water
soup vegetables (celery, leek, parsley, carrots, onion)
2 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
3 allspice
salt and pepper
dill or parsley
Wash the greens, peel them and put them in a pot with water. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until tender.
After cooking the soup, strain the broth.
Add pieces of cut and cleaned carp to the stock. Simmer for 20-30 minutes. After cooking, strain the stock.
Grate the carrots, celery and leek on a large-mesh grater.
Add the grated vegetables to the pure fish stock.
Dilute the broth with cream mixed with flour.
Peel the pieces of carp from the bones.
Add the peeled fish meat and greens to the broth. Do not cook anymore, but season to taste.
Tastes best after a few hours, when the flavors congeal .
Karp po Źydowsku
Carp in the Jewish style
Gut, clean, and wash one carp
Season with salt and pepper
Place either whole or in sections in cold water, just enough to add 5 sliced carrots and 5 chopped onions,
1/2 cup raisins and 2 tablespoons butter
Cover and simmer.
The cooking liquid will gel when cooled. Optional: form in a mold.
Serve cold in gelatin with quartered lemons on side.
