The 16th century: an evolution on the plates of Vilnius residents

In the Middle Ages, Lithuanians ate with their hands, spoons, and knives until Bona Sforza, wife of Sigismund the Old, arrived at the court and changed Lithuanian eating habits forever. She brought a fork in her dowry chest. Although in the Middle Ages the clergy referred to forks as the devil’s tools because they symbolised horns, in the 16th century, when the Renaissance was in full swing, fruit, pasta, and meat were eaten with forks in Italy. In the Palace of the Grand Dukes, you will see one of the first forks in Lithuania, which then had only two tines (prongs). So the visiting queen set the fashions of the court, and soon you could see nobles using forks at the table too. Imagine the reaction nowadays if you took your own fork with you to a party! In the 16th century, cutlery was expensive, and many noblemen would carry their cutlery with them everywhere in special leather cases lined with velvet. Only the most distinguished guests would have a fork on the table. The forks also became a decoration for the table, crafted by craftsmen and decorated with family crests, patterns, or monograms. The art of using forks was also introduced to the Swedes by Catherine, the sister of Sigismund Augustus, who married the brother of the King of Sweden, the Prince of Finland. Incidentally, their wedding took place at the Palace of the Grand Dukes in Vilnius.

The gardens of the Vilnius nobility were not inferior to royal gardens. Instead of the buildings we can see there today, the Radziwiłł family manor and gardens stood next to what is now Tilto Street. It was not only traditional fruit trees that grew here: figs, walnuts and even mulberries, which are nowadays known as superfoods, were grown in the wooden orangery in the garden of Elisabeth Sophia Hohenzollern-Radziwiłł. Written records show that these berries had not been cultivated in Lithuania prior to that time. Exotic fruit trees were very expensive, and in the 16th century the fine for destroying a grafted tree was equivalent to the price of 12 cows or 24,000 cabbages. The garden was not just fruit and berries: there was also a vegetable garden with so-called Italian vegetables, artichokes, asparagus, rucola, chicory, spices; the description of what was grown in the garden mentioned, perhaps for the first time, potatoes – still widely grown in Lithuania. Thus, the cooks serving the nobility could show all their ingenuity in the kitchen. Later, exotic flowers were also grown in the conservatories. The most impressive exotic fruit garden in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which bloomed in Biała Podlaska, belonged to the Radziwiłł family. It was home to orange trees, pomegranate trees, fig trees, passion fruit trees – in total 1675 different trees.

Did the nobles in Vilnius really eat only gourmet masterpieces every day? There is evidence that one dish reigned supreme on the table of all the nobility, and was enjoyed by bishops, nobles, and even Barbara Radziwiłł herself. This is the beetroot soup that Lithuanians are so familiar with. But have we really tasted this kind of soup? The earliest recipes for beetroot soup were written in Lithuanian in the 17th century and found in the Radziwiłł family cook’s notebook, which reveals that this soup was enjoyed during times of fasting. The recipe says: ‘Put beet greens, almond or poppy milk, and a little flour in the water, and boil it…’ However, this soup was not made from the beetroot roots we are familiar with nowadays, but from the local hogweeds, or batviniai, which was fermented specially. The soup was so popular that the Poles used to mock the Lithuanians by calling them ‘batvininkai’. Batviniai soup was also believed to have healing properties and could be eaten both hot and cold. However, if you were to taste the old-world equivalent of the cold beetroot soup so prevalent today, you would be surprised to see its precursor and how it was served: the sour cream-covered batviniai soup was garnished with crayfish necks, pieces of veal or turkey, sliced green cucumbers, and a hard boiled egg.

What did medieval people do when they were stricken with illness? Before there were pharmacies, only a doctor could help. The first pharmacy in Lithuania, in Vilnius, was founded in 1506 by Aleksandras Balinskis, but no information about its location has survived. Meanwhile, another pharmacist, Franciscus Radicibus, who came at the invitation of Bona Sforza, settled in Pilies Street and was popular among the nobility and the gentry. However, only a small minority visited the pharmacy to buy medicines. The pharmacies of the time resembled the realm of sorcerers and wizards: dried animals, snake venom, and even powdered mummies were available. Pharmacies sold highly exotic and luxurious foods, soaps, perfumes, herbal tinctures (known as ‘nalewka’), liqueurs, and even precious stones. Today, it would be unusual to go to a pharmacy to buy sugar or rice, but in the days of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, only the apothecary traded these precious commodities. Apothecaries used sugar to make sucking candy pastilles and the marzipan so beloved of Bona Sforza.

Monasteries across Europe were not only concerned with shepherding souls – some of today’s most famous beers and wines originated in monasteries. So what was the situation concerning monasteries and vineyards in Vilnius? Although there were no vineyards in the city, the monks’ daily diet did not lack wine. According to the instructions of Bishop Jerzy Radziwiłł at the end of the 16th century, the usual daily ration for a nun in a convent was 1 kg of bread, half a litre of wine to be drunk with water, and when it was not the fasting period, 5 eggs a day, and almost 1 kg of meat. Incidentally, beer and cider were not considered alcoholic beverages; in fact, they were purported to be healthier than water and were therefore used to wash down food. Meanwhile, types of alcoholic herbal tincture (nalewka) and fruit or berry infusions were used as medicines. Monks grew vegetables and herbs in their gardens and used them to flavour their food. In convents, it was customary to serve three courses for lunch and two for dinner. So there was a lot of cooking to be done, and rather often. Although it is now common practice in monasteries to practice moderation, this was not always the case in the 16th century: there is evidence that the senior Bernardine nuns of Vilnius, having taken food from the common food supply, kept it in their cells, cooked their own meals there; they were far from being the epitome of modesty. Later complaints mention that the male Bernardine monks reduced the daily rations for the convent, while they themselves enjoyed coffee and Hungarian wine.

One of the greatest travellers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania who explored overseas was Mikołai Krzysztof Radziwiłł who was nicknamed ‘The Orphan’. A map of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania commissioned by him can be seen in Vilnius Literatų Street. The nobleman spent two years travelling around the Middle East and collecting his impressions, which he later described in his memoirs ‘Journey to Jerusalem’. The book proved so popular that it was published not only in Lithuanian, but also in Latin, German, Polish, and Russian, it was distributed and read throughout Europe for several centuries. During his visits to foreign lands, Mikołai Krzysztof Radziwiłł the Orphan documented not only unusual customs but also food traditions. It is from him that we learn that the Syrians believed that  in Paradise, Adam and Eve did not eat an apple but… a banana; he writes, “When the fruit is cut into circles, the letters T appear, in the shape of a cross.” Radziwiłł the Orphan was not convinced by this. It seems from his description that back then, the bananas we take for granted in every grocery store today had not yet reached Vilnius, although cucumbers were already common to Lithuanians: “The fruit looks like our cucumber, but a little longer, thicker and slightly more curved. “The traveller also tasted ‘avgotaracho’ (bottarga – roe salted caviar of large-headed mullet with a bees wax coating), which is now included in the EU’s Protected Designation of Origin database.

Nowadays, the Radziwiłł Family would undoubtedly be known as the life and soul of the party, and their gatherings would gain a lot of media coverage. In the 16th century, the Radziwiłł Palace was the scene of banquets that would today astonish even those who have seen it all before. The dishes were elaborate; for instance, fish – one part fried, one part boiled, and one part stewed. But what impressed the guests most were the mountains of sugar. The nobility quickly took a liking to the precious sugar, which was used to flavour both wine and meat. Was it tasty? Not necessarily. But unforgettable. The English envoy John Horsey described a feast hosted by Radziwiłł the Orphan: “Strange sculptures of lions, unicorns, eagles, swans, and other animals were made of sugar, and wine and spices poured into the guests’ bellies. It would be tiresome to list the various dishes and rarities”. Baked goods were used to make rocks, build almond palaces, and even mould crusader armies. Even today, we would rush to immortalise and share photos of such decorations, and the feast would be one to remember for a long time. It is difficult to identify which of the Radziwiłł family’s palaces their contemporaries refer to in their accounts of the feasts, but it could also be the Cardinal’s Palace (Pilies g. 23), where the Soviets constructed a new building after the Second World War.

Today, receiving a box of sweets as a gift is a pleasure, but it is far from the same feeling as in the 16th century, when a box of marzipan was an expensive rarity, usually given as a courtship gift to a fiancée. Marzipan is also linked to an extraordinary story that happened in Vilnius. At the end of the 16th century, the Chodkiewicz Palace was home to Sophia Olekovich Radziwiłł, the richest bride in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. When Sophia was still young, due to some outstanding debts, Yuri Chodkiewicz agreed with Piorun Radziwiłł to marry Sophia off to Janusz Radziwiłł, who would receive a huge marriage settlement in lieu of the old debts. However, as Sophie approached adulthood, the Chodkiewicz family changed their minds; instead, thousands of troops of both nobles arrived in Vilnius. To avoid civil war, Janusz Radziwiłł made several trips to Sophia with boxes of marzipan. The town laughed that “no amount of marzipan in the world will help in such a situation“. This saying lasted longer than the lifetime of Sophia and Janusz, and could be heard as late as the beginning of the 20th century. The wedding did go ahead in the end, but we will never know whether it was thanks to the marzipan or not; the marriage did not last long, however, as Sophia died soon after in childbirth.