Siemieniotka
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| Kind | Dish |
|---|---|
| Part of the plant | Seed |
| Also called | Siemieniatka Konopiotka Siemieniucha |
| Language | Polish |
Siemieniotka is a soup of hemp seed eaten at the Christmas Eve supper, Wigilia, in Silesia and neighbouring regions of Poland.[2][3] It is also called siemieniatka, konopiotka and siemieniucha.[3][1][4] The seed is boiled, pounded and rinsed into a milky broth, which is thickened with millet or served with groats.[2][3]
At the Christmas Eve supper
In 1888 the ethnographer Michał Federowski described the Christmas Eve supper in the villages around Żarki, Siewierz and Pilica, in the Kingdom of Poland on the border with Prussian Silesia. Poorer households served three dishes and richer ones seven. The first was barley groats with siemianka, milk pressed from hemp seed, followed by groats with mushrooms and buckwheat noodles with poppy seed.[5]: 1, 149
An unsigned article on Christmas in Upper Silesia, printed in the Bytom paper Dziennik Śląski on Christmas Day 1919, put a soup of hemp, called siemieniucha or siemieniatka, first on the Upper Silesian Christmas Eve table. Fish in sauce came next, then makówki and last the nuts, apples and gingerbread that the housewife shared out.[1]
A page of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on Christmas food in Greater Poland quotes Oskar Kolberg's 19th-century account of the region, in which village people made do with siemieniucha, a soup of hemp seed, with millet groats, cabbage with mushrooms, mushrooms fried in oil and noodles with poppy seed. The page adds that the soup is still made around Wieruszów.[6] In the Łódź region the soup began to disappear from the Christmas Eve table as early as the years between the world wars.[4] The ministry's Opole entry says that it is still served at the Christmas Eve supper in Silesian homes and that the recipe passes from one generation to the next.[2]
The ministry entered the soup on its List of Traditional Products twice: as siemieniatka, siemieniotka or konopiotka for the Silesian Voivodeship on 21 August 2006 and as siemieniotka for the Opole Voivodeship on 14 May 2007.[3][2]
Making siemieniotka
The Opole entry quotes the Silesian food writer Wera Sztabowa, from her book Krupnioki i moczka, on how the soup was made in the past. On the day before Christmas Eve the housewives ground millet into flour on hand querns. The hemp grains were boiled in salted and sweetened water until they split. The water was poured off and kept. The grains were pounded to a pulp with a pestle in an iron or stone pot. Boiling water was poured over the pulp, which was rinsed until the water ran white and was strained through a sieve into the pot that collected the hemp broth. The rinsing was repeated, up to five times, until only small lumps of hemp were left. The broth was set on the stove, the ground millet was stirred in and it was boiled for a short time, with salt and sugar added before it went to the table. Sztabowa adds that grains of millet, buckwheat and hemp met on one plate, grains that old beliefs credited with magic power and a promise of good fortune.[2]
The two entries describe the finished soup differently. The Opole soup is grey, flecked with dark specks of ground hemp seed. It tastes velvety, sweet and salty with a faint taste of milk.[2] The Silesian Voivodeship soup is pale greenish-beige, with pieces of roasted barley groats, slippery to the touch and slightly bitter.[3]
A dish of a similar name was made of linseed. The Opole entry quotes Z. Szrobra's study of the diet of rural Upper Silesia on siemioniotka, linseed pounded in a mortar or ground in an earthenware bowl, which held a similar place on the Christmas Eve table.[2]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Gwiazdka górnośląska". Dziennik Śląski (in polski). No. 293. Bytom. 25 December 1919. p. 1.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 "Siemieniotka". Lista produktów tradycyjnych (in polski). Ministerstwo Rolnictwa i Rozwoju Wsi. 3 June 2018. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Siemieniatka / siemieniotka / konopiotka". Lista produktów tradycyjnych (in polski). Ministerstwo Rolnictwa i Rozwoju Wsi. 3 June 2018. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Woj. łódzkie". Potrawy i tradycje bożonarodzeniowe (in polski). Ministerstwo Rolnictwa i Rozwoju Wsi. 2 May 2018. Retrieved 29 October 2026.
- ↑ Federowski, Michał (1888). Lud okolic Żarek, Siewierza i Pilicy: jego zwyczaje, sposób życia, obrzędy, podania, gusła, zabobony, pieśni, zabawy, przysłowia, zagadki i właściwości mowy. Biblioteka „Wisły” (in polski). Vol. 1. Warszawa: M. Arct.
- ↑ "Woj. wielkopolskie". Potrawy i tradycje bożonarodzeniowe (in polski). Ministerstwo Rolnictwa i Rozwoju Wsi. 2 May 2018. Retrieved 29 October 2026.