page_title: Polish cuisine
section_title: Fat Thursday
hierarchical_section_title: Polish cuisine / Holiday meals / Fat Thursday
context_page_description: Polish cuisine is a style of cooking and food preparation originating in or widely popular in Poland. Polish cuisine has evolved over the centuries to become very eclectic due to Poland's history and it shares many similarities with neighbouring German, Czech, Slovak and Silesian culinary traditions. It has also been widely influenced by other Central European cuisines, namely Austrian and Hungarian as well as Jewish, French, Italian, and Turkish. Polish-styled cooking in other cultures is often referred to as à la polonaise.
  Polish cuisine is rich in meat, especially pork, chicken and beef, in addition to a wide range of vegetables, spices, and herbs. It is also characteristic in its use of various kinds of noodles as well as cereals and grains. In general, Polish cuisine is hearty and heavy in its use of butter, cream, eggs and extensive seasoning. The traditional dishes are often demanding in preparation. Many Poles allow themselves a generous amount of time to serve and enjoy their festive meals, especially Christmas Eve supper or Easter breakfast, which could take a number of days to prepare in their entirety.
context_section_description: Tłusty Czwartek or "Fat Thursday", is a Polish culinary custom on the last Thursday before Lent, it is equivalent to Pancake Day. Traditionally it is an occasion to enjoy sweets and cakes before the forty days of abstinence expected of Catholics until Easter Day. 
  The most popular sweetmeats on Fat Thursday are pączki, Polish doughnuts, "faworki", sometimes called, "chrust", equivalent to the French beignet. Traditional Polish doughnuts are filled with rose petal jam, plum jam or apple and covered with icing with orange peel or powdered with icing sugar. Fat Thursday used to mark the beginning of a "Fat Week", a period of great gluttony during which Polish ancestors consumed dishes served with smalec (lard), bacon and all kinds of meat.
  The original doughnuts, popular until the 16th century, were made of the same dough as bread, would be filled with pork and fried on smalec. Only later were they made as patisserie.
caption: Pączki or kreple, filled doughnut
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