Pączki

The story

Pączki are round yeast doughnuts, fried and filled with jam, and in Poland they belong above all to Tłusty Czwartek, Fat Thursday, the last Thursday before Lent. The date moves with Easter and usually lands in February: in 2024 it fell on February 8, and Ash Wednesday that year coincided with February 14. National Geographic Polska puts the number eaten on that one day at about 100 million. Fried dough is old in Poland. The Polish history portal Dzieje.pl reports that the earlier pampuchy were denser, made without yeast, fried in lard and eaten with cracklings, and that the Fat Thursday custom settled in towns and manor houses in the 17th century before reaching villages around 1900. The eighteenth-century writer Jędrzej Kitowicz credited French cooks at the court of Augustus III with making the dough lighter and spongier. Rose petal jam is the classic filling, with powidła, a thick plum butter, close behind, and a spoonful of spirit in the dough helps keep the oil out. In the United States, Polish-American communities keep Pączki Day on Fat Tuesday instead; Hamtramck, Michigan, holds a parade, and the day is marked in Chicago, Buffalo and Cleveland. Fill them the afternoon you fry them and set them out with coffee after dinner.