Hacker News Reader

Comment by q3k | Hacker News Reader

Polish cuisine is very similar to German cuisine.

(This comment will make a lot of Polish people very upset.)

Sure, a common use of bread, potatoes, cabbage/other vegetables, hearty meat dishes etc but the Polish kitchen is closer to Ukrainian/Russian in technique/ingredients.

Barszcz, pierogi, fermented everything, pickles, sour rye, and many dishes built around wheat/rye, mushrooms, dairy, and Eastern-style fillings are much more like Ukrainian/Belarusian/Russian food.

The biggest German influences are probably the sausages and the beer culture.

It's also true for Belarus, Baltics, and some parts of Ukraine. Generally, we can speak about North-Eastern European cuisine with potatoes, secale flour breads, and various pickled things. And that name will make a lot of everybody upset, cause everybody in those lands pretend they are "Central". Americans would not believe how many "geographical centers of Europe" are claimed there.

I'm not sure how surprised Americans would be to learn that there are so many "centers of Europe". After all, we all know that Colorado is in "the west", Texas in the "southwest", and, clearly, "the South" is located in the geographical southeast :D

These American peculiarities are funny too, but they are mostly historical, and from that perspective have reasonable explanation. In turn "we are not Eastern, but Central" is relatively recent PR-born madness. Somebody decided that EE often associates with questionable things like alcohol consumption somehow, so the solution is to separate yourself from other drinkers by claiming being completely different "Central" kind. Nobody stops drinking meanwhile, because why would you? I simplify the story, of course, but the logic is exactly like that.

Also, I imagine that the expansion and reduction in size of the Soviet empire over the decades has played a part, not to mention a certain provincialism among (western) European powers in terms of what they consider to be "real" Europe.

When it was a poor backwater "somewhere over there", it wasn't part of Europe. When it was Soviet, it wasn't Europe. Now that it's a bulwark against a militaristic Russia and a convenient place to do lower-cost manufacturing: "Hello, my European compatriots!"

And my favorite -- you need to go north from Miami to be in "the South"

Miami is a latin American city that happens to be part of the US.

Here in Scotland, if you start at the famous Gretna Green on the west coast (it's on the estuary of the River Esk) and drive more-or-less dead north up the A7 (it's quite wiggly) until you hit the next beach, you're on the east coast at Portobello.

> Americans would not believe how many "geographical centers of Europe" are claimed there.

They have their own weirdnesses. How is Chicago "mid-west" when it is so far east? How is Virginia south?

How reasonably can German cuisine be described as a single unified thing? My mother was from East Prussia and my father from Swabia and their "home" cuisines were pretty dissimilar -- if for no other reason than climate.

Same is true for Croatia.. food from Slavonia (near Zagreb) is very different from the coastal regions (Istria and Dalmatia)

Cuisine in Europe is shaped by climate, soil and former political entities. You'll find similar cuisine in and around the alps, along the north sea coast and around the baltic sea. While the people eating the same food speak a dozen different languages.

Due to Partitions of Poland a lot of of territory was under Prussian influence for over a century - that had to have some culinary effect (other than forced germanization).

Lots of common main ingredients like potatoes, beets, cabbage, and sausages. It could also have a different reason, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Former_eastern_territories_of_...

I don't see why. A lot of Western Poland used to be German, and it's not like there's one German cuisine either. You don't get many Bavarians eating pickled herring with beets, but's it's classic cuisine in Berlin.

Western Poland used to be German, but all the Germans left/got expelled. After WW2 it was resettled with Poles from Eastern Poland, nowadays Ukraine and Belarus. Which makes traveling from Berlin to Poznan or Wroclaw an interesting experience. Directly at the German-Polish border, you'll enter Eastern Europe, then when you arrive in the mentioned cities, you're suddenly back in Central Europe.

Also, you'd be surprised at how widespread pickled herring is in Bavaria. Herring has been a trading good for millennia in Europe, was and is still consumed in the winter months in Bavaria. You can easily get a "Fischsemmel" at the Oktoberfest in Munich. Bavarians also used to pickle everything for the winter: cucumbers, beets, cabbage, beans.

You can also get jiaozi and tempura shrimp at the Oktoberfest, that doesn't make them traditional Alpine food.

> Directly at the German-Polish border, you'll enter Eastern Europe, then when you arrive in the mentioned cities, you're suddenly back in Central Europe.

I mean I get that impression even before crossing the border to Poland. It's just very rural and not exactly wealthy on either side of the border.

That about sums it up. If it weren't for the Oder river, it would be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. There are some places on the border where the only signs that you've changed countries are... the signs. (Specifically I'm thinking of Gorlitz/Zgorzelec.)

I know you can get herring in Bayern, and I know you can get a Weisswurst in Berlin. That doesn't change the fact that they're represented differently in the regional cuisines.

The cuisine up here in Berlin/Brandenburg is much closer to that of Poland than it is to that of Bavaria. I say that as a person who lives in Berlin with Polish roommate, and travels pretty regularly to visit friends in Munich.

Yes it's similar, but certainly not more than Ukrainian/Russian/Belarusian food.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com