In homes adhering to French fashion, elegance was expressed above all by the variety of dishes. And so it was served: asparagus, seasons, salery, poultry, cold cuts, sausages, pates, fish, various types of meat. A variety of sauces began to be used, mortars, pickles, mustard. The art of baking cakes has been perfected. When, in the Sas, "you could hit the eye with a donut - as the chronicler testified - today the donut is so plump and so light, that when he grasped it in his hand, it stretches again and swells like a sponge to its volume, and the wind would blow him off the dish”.
The fashion for exquisite fruit has begun, chocolate, ice-cream. Vodka and honey meet the requirements of that time less and less often - on the other hand, wines with a refined taste are appreciated, and Italian among them, Spanish, German Rhenium, most of all, French, Burgundy and Champagne.
Coffee becomes the favorite drink, as well as cocoa and tea. Mineral water was also served.
The pride was the beautiful porcelain tableware, as well as table decoration, often in the form of various genre scenes constructed of sugars, cakes and ornamental porcelain figurines.
Butlers served at great feasts, dresser, servant. It was also appropriate to have several cooks, that everyone should represent their specialty.
Not only the noble noble ones dazzled with luxury. Very elegant parties were given by wealthy merchants and bankers, yes, they often outstripped the magnates with greatness.
But like everything that is sophisticated, it will soon become weary, and the slogans of returning to nature proclaimed by the French physiocrats will speak for themselves with their simplicity and idyllic nature. The turn to nature began in the second half of the 18th century. The first symptoms, is a fashion for sentimental parks, a little overgrown, a bit wild, full of romantic gazebos, ruins and temples of reflection. For these pleasures, the living room is abandoned, a lady dressed as a shepherdess eagerly sits next to a herd of sheep, and her loving lover will lead her to the hermit's hut, to the apiary, where the bees are buzzing. The old farmer will give them honey in an earthenware jar and freshly harvested raspberries…
You will, with the presentation of the nineteenth century - abandoning the chronology - we will start with … Melchiora Wańkowicza. It seems, with both lush temperament of this writer, as well as his likes, fascinations and animosities are deeply rooted in this very century.
Melchior Wańkowicz: Here and there:
….. When, a year before the war, diplomatic relations with Lithuania were restored, two months before its outbreak, a trip of Polish writers and journalists went to Lithuania. There were thirty of them, I invited thirty Lithuanians and welcomed sixty people in Jodańce. The main attraction was the competition - who will eat the most dumplings. It is because Iodan dumplings, without any idiotic cake ears, a full dummy to the brim, he was so big, that he took up a whole soup spoon.
Give more than five - the sixth will not be hot as you see it. Well, for every five dumplings, the guest received a piece of paper from a numbered block, on which he wrote his name. There could not be any deception. Many pulled to half a dozen, but then more and more it started to fall off. The Lithuanians were terribly hot, let them on their own land, in their own Lithuanian dumplings, these coroners did not die. They put a player - Goliath. Liudas Gira was the president of their writers. Five after five are looted and with a plate for new ones. Meanwhile, David was on our side. Tiny, quiet Stanisław Piasecki, editor of Prosto z mostu”. I look and I was dumbfounded: He presents fourteen cards and after the fifteenth he goes *
And here the Lithuanian Goliath has already turned to idle. I see her, three dumplings on his plate are lying on his plate and some thoughtful ones are sitting in his eye like a cow bloated on a clover.
- No wonder - Lithuanians explain - he has already stuffed seventy-two dumplings. We tell him, that he would stop - he is certainly already the king of koldunowy. That's how he breathes and waits for the message, what is the score with others.
- My God - I'm going to Piasecki, and he carries the seventy-second dummy to his mouth.
- Stop, Wait! - I shout - you will disturb the Polish-Lithuanian balance, in a different role we came here.
And he is also a man without understanding, to my screams, he swallowed that dummy, and for the seventy-third he takes it.
He grabbed her by the spoon, I argue.
- Not you anymore, tiny body, in this miserable tummy he had stuffed so many dumplings. Thread, only cheating comes out. The Lithuanians shouted, with a new contract in Suwałki.
- There is no such deception here - says Piasecki - my wife
Lidy, you can see in the dowry the cleverness she brought me to the dumplings.
"But how do you do it," I asked.
- Very simple: after every five dumplings, one glass of 'Trisz Divinis”.
He counted her quickly, that it has already been fourteen glasses, and indeed, his eyes became so tiny and butter.
- And eat those three more dumplings?
- What are three - he says - I'm going for another five.
- Don't think to do it - I say - Lithuanians won't get over it.
- And here I am - he says - what Lithuanians do? For me, the higher goal is how to go Gira. I have set up a bank to break down, that you mean, There were no more dumplings in pots. Ot, and I will put shame on you in all Lithuania.
I flew for help. People from his camp ran up, translator, he got emotional:
- And it was not my mind to spoil what Jagiełło started. Let it be my harm pro publico bono.
Skoczyli my do Giry, They forced the seventy-third dummy into him, and of course, ink music, Liudas klęknął, with a grunt, in front of the consul Mrs. Harwatowa, and from her hands he accepted the figurine of a Polish saint…”