A few years ago, when I was a guide on culinary tours in Warsaw, this was the first thing we did to evoke as much Polishness as possible: we sat down in a traditional restaurant, talked about culinary history, drank a shot of vodka and ate smalec. Or at least some of us did, since this famous Polish delicacy can be controversial.
Basically, smalec is lard – semi-solid pork fat, obtained by rendering the fatty tissues of a pig. It has been an important source of calories for Slavic and Germanic peoples – and basically all cultures where pork is a vital part of the daily diet – since times immemorial. In Poland, combined with fried onions and cracklings, spiced with marjoram and pepper, served with sourdough bread and dill pickles, it has become a staple. It’s served as a zakąska accompanying vodka at parties and weddings, as an appetizer in old-school inns and as a snack at markets and fairs.
Smalec, szmalec, schmaltz
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Smalec sandwiches sold at the XXI Jarmark św. Dominikańskiego, Choroszcz, photo: Jędrzej Wojnar/AG
The term smalec derives from the German word schmelzen – ‘to melt’. English speakers may know the Yiddish word schmaltz meaning poultry fat, which is an important ingredient in Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine. Central European Jews could not eat non-kosher pork, were forbidden to cook meat in butter due to kosher laws, and had no access to sesame or olive oil used in the Mediterranean, so instead they used the same technique to render chicken or goose fat that their neighbours used for pork.
The etymological connection of the word smalec to szmal (which could be translated as ‘dough’ or gelt, i.e. a bribe or money not rightfully obtained) and consequently to the word szmalcownik – a slang expression which originated during the Holocaust and referred to a person who blackmailed Jews and people who helped them during the German Nazi occupation – is pretty fascinating. Szmalcownik could be literally translated as ‘greasy-palmer’, which indicates that the blackmailer had financial motives – the victim was supposed to pay him a bribe, or szmal. The association of szmal and smalec was due to the Polish usage of the verb smarować (‘to spread’ or ‘to grease’) as ‘to bribe’.
From necessity to nostalgia
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Smalec production in the Warsaw meat plants, 1959, photo: Lucjan Fogiel/Forum
Amongst peasants and – since the 19th century – amongst industry workers, smalec was a relatively accessible source of calories and fat, which was often used as a substitute for meat. In his book Oko w Oko z Kryzysem (Eye to Eye with Crisis) published in 1933, one of Poland’s most distinguished reporters of his time, Konrad Wrzos, travelled all around the country during the economic recession of the early 1930s and wrote about labourers from Łódź:
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The first one in the morning drinks tea and eats bread. He has blood sausage and tea for lunch, and then borscht and tea for supper. The second one brings bread and smalec from home; it’s his breakfast and lunch, to which he adds a soup as well. The third one eats the same as the second. All three of them eat meat once a week, on Sundays.
Author
Oko w Oko z Kryzysem: Reportaże z Podróży po Polsce, Warsaw 1985, pg. 128
For a long time peasants and people from the working class presumed that eating lots of fat is good for you; miners in Silesia even believed that milk and fat would protect their lungs from the risk of pneumoconiosis. And since butter was much pricier and harder to obtain, they used tallow and lard. Also after the war, in the hardest times of shortage, smalec remained pretty accessible and quite cheap. Yet it wasn’t as desirable as before: in the cities people wanted butter, as smalec was considered a peasant delicacy – something nostalgic, but less and less modern.
A spread for the 21st century
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Smalec stand, Kraków Main Square, photo: Krzysztof Wojcik/Forum
A slice of crusted sourdough spread with lard, spiced with lots of marjoram, with the addition of fried onions, crispy crackling and – quite often – bits of apple and a dill pickle on the side is the epitome of ‘the rustic table’, an intrinsic element of traditional wedding celebrations, village fairs and roadside karczmy. A karczma is a restaurant concept, where words such as ‘traditional’, ‘rural’ and ‘Old-Polish’ are used liberally in the menus and mountains of meat are served, evoking an idea of richness and bounty, though this was never a reality in rural Poland.
People often like smalec, but they now know they shouldn’t really eat much of it; it has also become pricier than vegetable oil. And so whilst it is still the canonical fat to use when frying schabowe cutlets as well as sweets such as pączki and faworki (angel wings) during carnivals, it’s not used as often anymore. Another thing is that more and more people – not just vegetarians – for various reasons do not accept pork-fried desserts. Years of anti-animal fat campaigns, accusing it of causing heart diseases, high blood pressure and high levels of cholesterol, have taken their toll, removing smalec from daily menus of most city folk and instead categorising it with ‘traditional village celebrations’.
Unless it is… vegetarian. Yes, you heard me right: one of the most popular Polish vegan recipes is a plant-based smalec, made either (in the less nourishing version) with coconut oil or some kind of margarine, or (when taking a healthier approach) with white beans, which are mashed and mixed with fried onions, heavily spiced with marjoram, juniper, pepper and cloves and served, as it should be, on sourdough with pickles.
Whether you’re game for the traditional and indulgent version, or prefer a more modern, health-conscious approach, remember that smalec has been an important part of Polish cuisine for centuries, and that the way we perceive it nowadays says a lot about how we as a society and our lifestyle changed over time.
Written by Natalia Mętrak-Ruda, April 2021