Noble fish on Polish tables

It is impossible to imagine a traditional Polish Christmas Eve without carp in jelly and fish in Greek style. Just like a vacation at the Baltic Sea without fish from our sea for dinner. Which of these will be the best? As many people, as many opinions. This Latin adage perfectly fits the definition of fine fish. What are we guided by, considering some species more valuable than others? Price and taste? The content of omega-3 and 6 fatty acids? Selenium?

For centuries, the noblest species for anglers have been the most ferocious and suspicious, so the most difficult to catch. All the more so if they required the right equipment and skills (e.g.: fly fishing), often expeditions high in the mountains, so grayling, trout, salmon, and in some places, also steelhead. Professional fishermen considered naturally rare fish to be noble, especially large fish capable of jumping out of the net or breaking it, possibly fish found only in the cleanest and deepest lakes. The giants of our waters, namely catfish and Baltic sturgeon, are defined in this way. Inhabitants of exceptional bodies of water were whitefish, especially Miedwienska and Wigierska. Cooks and gourmets also awarded the title of noble to other species, smaller and more common, as long as they stood out for their excellent taste or could be stored for a long time without the risk of poisoning. Certain breeds of carp were highly valued, and of the ubiquitous, common fish of the Polish lowlands – piscorz [1, 4, 6].

Nobleman for nobility about noble fish

All these reasons were already taken into account by 19th-century founders of Polish ichthyology, such as Maksymilian Nowicki. He considered the species listed below to be more valuable to the fish culture of Galicia, although he did not give reasons. I add them:

• Salmon, trout, grayling, steelhead – as salmonids difficult to catch, delicious in taste, and at the same time ferocious, requiring special conditions like nobility among men;
• Carp, carp, carp, tench, bream – as carps with the highest flavor and the greatest economic role;
• asp, barbel, wyrozub, chub, ide, mumps – as carp typical of fast-flowing, cleanest rivers, churning on stones, gravel or sand;
• pikeperch, sudak, pike – as apex predators were less numerous, but also clearly larger than their prey;
• aterlet (chichuga) as a sturgeon attached to rivers with particularly swift currents, moreover, by its very shape associated with saber, chainmail and borderland chivalry.

And from them you can make a selection suitable for the water you dispose of. Inferior fish can serve as food for reared predatory fish and poor people. (…) Of greater importance for fishing in running waters are, in addition to pike, e.g.: in the Dniester, the chuchuga, wyrozub, sudak; in the Bug, the eel; in the Dunajec, the salmon and barbel; in the Vistula, the asp, zirta, chub, mumps, salmon; in lakes, the pikeperch; in mountain streams, the trout and grayling. Thus, such fish should be given an advantage over others because it is possible to [4].

The mysterious sudak is a bersh Sander volgensis, the eastern equivalent of our zander , little known to today’s chefs. At the time when Polish settlement reached further east, Black Sea-Caspian species played a greater role in the diet of our ancestors. A certain unconscious return to those traditions of bersh and pivot eating remains the mass import of perch and ruffe from Kazakhstan. This was pointed out by Polish researchers from the Inland Fisheries Institute in Olsztyn, but without going into details.

Rutilus frisii is a cousin of our roach from the Black Sea basins. It is not only larger (the most magnificent in the genus ergo simpler to gut), but also migratory. It undertakes migrations similar to salmon and sturgeon, that is, from the sea up rivers.

Beluga and blackfish

In the mountain streams, trout and grayling predate but without harming the fish state, while the loggerhead is harmful, because it devours trout several pounds before it gains a pound of meat itself [4].

Predators could be considered noble for many reasons. They were smaller in number and larger in size. They were distinguished by the color and taste of their meat. It is not without reason that the terms czarnoryb and whitetip functioned in the old Polish language. Blackfish were species with dark flesh, skin and scales, from catfish to burbot to whiting. White whales were essentially still-feeding carp, typical of standing waters, such as the krimp and bleak. This lifestyle made them more numerous, common, but also less tasty. Carp and crucian carp, which were deliberately raised in ponds, were the most popular to eat. In oxbows and ochabas proteges were tench and bream, undoubtedly darker in color than silvery roach or mumps. Therefore, these four were not counted as whitetails, although they too were digging food out of the silt [8, 10].

Powerful, and living out of no one knows what… Meaning nobleman

With their exquisite taste and sometimes sizeable size, some species of filter feeders stand out, feeding on plankton until late in life. Until the invention of the microscope, no one knew the nature of their food, nevertheless, this ecological group abounds in sought-after sorts of fish. Since the time of the first monarchies of the Piasts and the Griffins, the Polish elite have loved sturgeons. Also, less affluent people have the ambition to reach for these fish and their caviar at least a few times in their lives: at weddings, 50th wedding anniversaries or baptisms.

Some of the fish served at the tsar’s court came precisely from the Vistula, and even the Prussian Drwęca or Leba in the 19th century. No wonder the Panslavists wanted to annex those lands to the motherland as well, so that all the sturgeon fisheries of Eurasia would be in one country. For several years, Poland has been emerging as a regional and even world power in sturgeon production (Borne 1882, Seligo 1902, Cios 2007, Radtke et al. 2015).

Whitefish caught in Polish waters are traditionally classified as Coregonus lavaretus, while distinguishing a myriad of ecological forms, subspecies and minor species. The fish stock of our waters has been enriched by a number of exotic whitefish, starting with the globally extinct Coregonus fera (in 1858-62), and ending with the pelagic C. peled (1966) and the muksun C . muksun (1984).

The stocking of dam reservoirs as artificial flowing lakesplus artificial spawning of corregonids has intensified the hybridization of the remnants of native whitefish with pelugas. As a result, the pelagic whitefish is now encountered only in promotional materials of the region [5, 9]. We have already mentioned in Water Matters about the replacement of the Wigry whitefish with the Pejpus whitefish. We wonder if this means the expiration of the tsar’s privilege for net fishing of this noble fish. According to local fishermen and some lawyers, this permission continues to apply, after all, the October Revolution was illegal [7].

Precious fish also for the people

Siskorza was eaten by everyone: from serfs’ peasants starving in the pre-famine season, through the bourgeoisie and nobility, to kings and cardinals. The former is evidenced by the proverb: poor people everywhere can barely get piscorz, and the latter by the surviving accounts of the monarchical court of the Jagiellons [1, 2]. The strict protection of this small fish, which has been in force for years, does not seem to have caught on in the minds of tourists and cooks. After all, dishes made of piscatoria are still boasted by eateries serving regional specialties. Let’s hope it’s the invasive, alien piscivores from the Far East that are eradicated ex officio in the European Union, such as the Amur piscivores. This would not be the first such overlooked replacement of a native species with an invasive one. Suffice it to mention the Pennsylvania ash or Japanese hop, displacing their European cousins from the riverine riparian forests.

Kings of fasting

Herring and cod have for centuries competed for the title of the most important dishes of Lent and Advent. As early as the Middle Ages, they were imported on a massive scale into the depths of Europe, including the Polish lands. The numbers of both fluctuated over the centuries. Typically, herring years were poorer in cod, and vice versa. This is due to the antagonistic interactions of these two very tasty, easily transportable marine fish. Herring feed on cod eggs and then compete with their fry for food. Mature cod, on the other hand, have a taste for herring. Both reigned on Polish and Jewish tables in the Baltic basin.

Today, their Baltic subspecies are symbols of marine conservation and renaturalization. The European Commission allows only a small amount of by-catch (involuntary catch when fishing for other species) or angling for Baltic cod, and has also heavily reduced herring quotas. Atlantic herring (also overfished, by the way) and cod of other species, such as ogak, coalfish and haddock, have replaced them in coastal pubs for years [3].

The devil is in the details

Today’s lists of recommended and discouraged fish for consumption have less and less in common with traditional divisions between noble and inferior species. They represent a compromise between health values, current market availability and ethical considerations, such as concern for climate and biodiversity. We know that appeals to refrain from consuming such ichthyofaunal rarities as European eel or to limit the consumption of true burbot will not reach everyone. All the more so since these species are not included in lists protected by law.

That’s why we remind you that predators, especially top predators, accumulate not only beneficial fatty acids and micronutrients, but also live parasites, heavy metals, pesticide residues and warfare poisoning agents. Often the devil is in the details: one fish stock of a particular species, e.g.: herring or cod, is harvested in an environmentally friendly way, while other stocks of the same species are overfished. This applies, for example, to cod, pollock, mirin, hake, bluefin tuna, as well as many flatfish (sole, lemon sole, plaice, flounder).

Already Nowicki has compared aquaculture to agriculture. He called for giving the waters something from themselves, not just taking. He warned not to imprison migratory fish in ponds. He pointed out the terrible effects of water regulation, logging and infectious diseases on fish stocks, as well as the transformation of ichthyofauna after natural disasters. He considered not only migratory and predatory forms (albeit not all of them) to be desirable, noble, but also native to the basin.

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In the article, I used, among others:

1. Cios S. 2007. fish in the life of Poles from the 10th to the 19th century. Published by the Institute of Inland Fisheries, Olsztyn.
2. Garbatowska, A. 2011: the poor chickadee. Lednice Studies, 10, 161-167.
3. Horbowy J. 2025. Status of Baltic fish stocks and ICES advised allowable catches (TACs) in 2026. Fisheries News, 9/10(267), 9-13.
4. Nowicki M. 1880. Ryby i wody Galicyi: pod względem rybactwa krajowym. Nakładem hr. Artur Potocki, Kraków.
5. Polewacz A., Liszewski T., Kuciński M., …& Jankun-Woźnicka M. 2015. Whitefish in Polish waters-history of the mythical species Coregonus lavaretus (L. 1758). Annals of Fisheries, 5(148), 12-17.
6. Radtke G., Bernaś R., & Skóra M. 2015. Occurrence of migratory and rheophilous fish and lamprey species in rivers of northern Poland in the light of historical materials to the beginning of the 20th century. Rocz. Nauk. PZW, 28, 123-149.
7. Tarkowska E. 2014. The dispute over the right to fish in Lake Wigry – does the tsar’s law still apply? Legal Studies, 26, 307-325.
8. Walecki A. 1863 Review of Polish names of domestic fish. Warsaw Library IV, 534.
9. Witkowski A., Grabowska J. 2012. The non-indigenous freshwater fishes of Poland: Threats for native ichthyofauna and consequence for fishery: A review. Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria, 42(2), 77-87.
10. Ziolkowska https://media.sggw.pl/aktualnosci/338495/polskie-ryby-dochodza-do-glosu