On 9 February, the Polish Ethnological Society (PTL) marks the Day of Ethnography, Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology with a nationwide initiative entitled “Etno-Kitchen!”.
The initiative invites ethnographers, anthropologists, and cultural researchers to share culinary recipes rooted in ethnographic fieldwork, family notebooks, and private or archival collections. These recipes—often handwritten, annotated, and embedded in everyday cultural practice—are treated as valuable ethnographic sources reflecting memory, transmission, and material culture.
Participants are encouraged to:
- select a recipe originating from field research or family/archival sources,
- scan and describe it (dish name, type, place and time of preparation, social context, region),
- provide a transcription of the recipe,
- optionally prepare the dish and include a photograph.
Submitted materials will be published on the PTL website and its social media channels. The celebration takes place on 9 February, the anniversary of the founding of the Polish Ethnological Society in 1895 in Lviv, emphasizing the historical continuity of ethnographic and anthropological research in Poland.
Through Etno-Kitchen!, we collectively open notebooks, archives, handwritten cookbooks, and cupboards to highlight food as a key medium of cultural knowledge and anthropological reflection.