Midwestern Regional Cookery: Stability and Change in Midwestern Foodways

In this context of a highly diverse population and continued immigration, other ethnic foods are still being adopted as regional specialties in the early twenty-first century. Arab foods, for example, are quickly becoming regionalized in metropolitan Detroit, home of the largest Arab American community outside the Middle East. Polish food has become so ubiquitous in Midwestern cities with heavy Polish settlement, such as Chicago, Hamtramck (Detroit), Milwaukee, and Minneapolis, and even in rural areas with large Polish populations, that some elements of the Polish kitchen have become accepted by the surrounding general populace. No Polish food, however, has been more embraced by the general population than paczki, the Polish version of the jelly doughnut, which are eaten at Carnival before Lent. Paczki are made of a yeast dough rich with eggs and butter and best fried in lard (though vegetable oil is usually used). Traditionally, they were made to use up all the lard and eggs in the home before Lenten fasting. They are still made for the pre-Lenten season, but eating them no longer has anything to do with being either Polish or Catholic. Available until the 1980s only at Polish bakeries and church and community celebrations, paczki can be found at non-Polish bakeries and even at most chain supermarkets in the area. Traditionally prepared without filling or filled with prune butter, paczki are also made in the Midwest with a half-dozen different fruit jam fillings and custard. More frequently, paczki are becoming the focus of local annual festivals and parades on Shrove Tuesday, or Paczki Day.