A Polish recipe reads unlike anything in English, and the difference is grammatical, not just culinary. Where English commands you ("Chop the onion, add the water"), a Polish recipe typically uses the bare infinitive as its instruction: Pokroić cebulę, dodać wodę — literally "to chop the onion, to add the water." This impersonal infinitive-command is the default voice of cookbooks, instruction leaflets, and assembly manuals. Layered on top of it are two more recipe-defining patterns: ingredients measured by a quantity word + genitive (szklanka mąki — a cup of flour), and the choice of perfective aspect for each step that must be carried through to completion. The recipe below is original — a simplified żurek, Poland's beloved sour rye soup — written in exactly the register you'd find in a Polish kitchen booklet.
The recipe: Żurek (sour rye soup)
Składniki: pół litra zakwasu na żurek, kostka białej kiełbasy, dwa ząbki czosnku, łyżka majeranku i cztery jajka.
Ingredients: half a litre of rye sourdough starter, a length of white sausage, two cloves of garlic, a tablespoon of marjoram and four eggs.
Najpierw zagotować litr wody z liściem laurowym i kilkoma ziarnami ziela angielskiego.
First, boil a litre of water with a bay leaf and a few grains of allspice.
Pokroić kiełbasę w plasterki i wrzucić ją do gotującego się wywaru.
Cut the sausage into slices and toss it into the simmering stock.
Gotować na małym ogniu przez około piętnaście minut.
Cook over low heat for about fifteen minutes.
Następnie dodać zakwas, ciągle mieszając, żeby się nie zważył.
Next add the sourdough starter, stirring constantly so it doesn't curdle.
Przecisnąć czosnek przez praskę i wmieszać go do zupy razem z majerankiem.
Press the garlic through a crusher and stir it into the soup together with the marjoram.
Doprawić solą i pieprzem do smaku, a na koniec zagotować całość jeszcze raz.
Season with salt and pepper to taste, and at the end bring the whole thing to the boil once more.
Jajka ugotować na twardo, obrać i przekroić na połówki.
Hard-boil the eggs, peel them and cut them into halves.
Żurek podawać gorący, z połówką jajka i kawałkami kiełbasy w każdym talerzu.
Serve the żurek hot, with half an egg and pieces of sausage in each bowl.
Smacznego!
Enjoy your meal! (lit. 'tasty!')
Grammar in this text
The instructional infinitive: Pokroić, dodać, gotować
Look at the verb that opens almost every step: zagotować (to boil), pokroić (to cut), wrzucić (to toss), dodać (to add), doprawić (to season), podawać (to serve). These are all bare infinitives, and that is the signature of the Polish recipe. The infinitive issues an impersonal, addressee-free instruction — it doesn't say "you, chop" or "let's chop," it simply names the action to be done. This is the same impersonal-instruction register you meet in news-style instructions, and it contrasts sharply with English, which has no infinitive-command at all and must use the imperative ("Chop!"). For the form itself see the infinitive.
Cebulę pokroić w drobną kostkę i podsmażyć na maśle.
Dice the onion finely and fry it in butter.
Both pokroić and podsmażyć are infinitives doing the work of commands. Notice the recipe stays perfectly impersonal: nobody is addressed, the steps just stand as a sequence of named actions.
The imperative does exist as an alternative and you'll see it in chattier, blog-style recipes: Pokrój cebulę, dodaj wodę (informal ty) or Pokrójcie (to several people). But the canonical printed-recipe voice is the infinitive, and recognising it is essential to reading Polish food writing.
Aspect in steps: perfective for done, imperfective for sustained
Each instruction picks its aspect by the same logic as the rest of Polish. Steps that must be completed to move on are perfective: zagotować (bring fully to the boil), pokroić (cut up), dodać (add), przecisnąć (press through), obrać (peel). Steps describing a sustained process are imperfective: gotować na małym ogniu (keep cooking on low heat), mieszając (stirring — the adverbial participle), podawać (serve, as a general standing instruction).
Wszystko gotować na wolnym ogniu, aż warzywa zmiękną.
Cook everything on a low heat until the vegetables soften.
Here gotować is imperfective (an ongoing, open-ended simmer) but zmiękną is perfective (the point at which they have become soft). The duration is imperfective; the endpoint that closes it is perfective — the same background/event split that drives all Polish narration. For the verb family itself, see gotować.
Mięso dusić pod przykryciem, a od czasu do czasu zamieszać.
Braise the meat covered, and stir occasionally.
Dusić (imperfective, the long braise) sits beside zamieszać (perfective, a single quick stir): the prefix za- makes the stir a brief, bounded action. Polish can pack "keep braising / give it one stir" into the aspect of two verbs.
Quantities: measure word + genitive
Polish never says "a cup flour"; it says szklanka mąki — "a cup of flour" — where mąki is the genitive doing the work of English "of." This is the partitive genitive: a quantity word names the portion and the substance follows in the genitive. The recipe is full of it: pół litra zakwasu (half a litre of starter), łyżka majeranku (a tablespoon of marjoram), kostka kiełbasy (a length of sausage). See the partitive genitive.
Dodać szklankę mąki, dwie łyżki cukru i szczyptę soli.
Add a cup of flour, two tablespoons of sugar and a pinch of salt.
Every substance here is genitive: mąki (of flour), cukru (of sugar), soli (of salt). The measure words szklankę, łyżki, szczyptę take whatever case the sentence assigns them (here accusative as the object of dodać), but the substance behind them is locked in the genitive.
When the measure is itself a number above one, the counting rules from genitive after numbers apply. Dwie łyżki (two spoonfuls) keeps the 2–4 nominative-style form, but pięć łyżek (five spoonfuls) forces the genitive plural łyżek.
Wlać dwie szklanki bulionu i pięć łyżek śmietany.
Pour in two cups of broth and five tablespoons of cream.
Contrast dwie szklanki (the 2–4 form) with pięć łyżek (genitive plural after 5). The substances bulionu and śmietany meanwhile stay partitive-genitive throughout.
Sequence adverbs and the recipe's skeleton
Recipes hang their steps on time adverbs: najpierw (first), następnie (next/then), potem (then), na koniec (at the end), jeszcze raz (once more). These keep the order transparent even though every verb is a tenseless infinitive — the adverbs, not the verb forms, carry the sequence.
Najpierw podsmażyć warzywa, potem zalać je wodą, a na koniec doprawić.
First fry the vegetables, then cover them with water, and at the end season them.
The three steps are ordered purely by najpierw … potem … na koniec; the infinitives themselves are timeless. This is why a learner can read a recipe fluently with only the infinitive and a handful of sequence words.
Common Mistakes
❌ Dodać szklankę mąka i łyżkę cukier.
Incorrect — substances left in the nominative
✅ Dodać szklankę mąki i łyżkę cukru.
Add a cup of flour and a spoon of sugar.
After a measure word the substance must be genitive: mąki (of flour), cukru (of sugar). Leaving the dictionary forms mąka, cukier is the single most common recipe error for English speakers, because English has no case on "flour."
❌ Gotować zupę i potem dodać zakwas, aż się gotuje.
Incorrect — imperfective for the completed 'add' / muddled endpoint
✅ Gotować zupę, a potem dodać zakwas, gdy się zagotuje.
Cook the soup, then add the starter once it comes to the boil.
Dodać (perfective, a one-off completed addition) is right for the step; and the endpoint "once it boils" needs perfective zagotuje się, not the imperfective gotuje się ("while it is boiling").
❌ Pokrojić cebulę w kostkę.
Incorrect — wrong infinitive stem
✅ Pokroić cebulę w kostkę.
Dice the onion.
The perfective infinitive of "cut" is pokroić (from kroić), not pokrojić. The -oić ending is a frequent spelling slip; there is no j in this form.
❌ Dwie łyżek śmietany.
Incorrect — genitive plural with the numeral 2
✅ Dwie łyżki śmietany.
Two tablespoons of cream.
With 2, 3, 4 the measure noun takes the nominative-style plural łyżki; the genitive plural łyżek appears only from 5 upward (pięć łyżek). The substance śmietany stays genitive regardless.
❌ Pół litr zakwasu.
Incorrect — measure noun not in the genitive after pół
✅ Pół litra zakwasu.
Half a litre of starter.
Pół ("half") governs the genitive, so it's pół litra (half of a litre), and the substance zakwasu is genitive too — a double genitive that learners often miss on the unit.
Key Takeaways
- The default voice of a printed Polish recipe is the instructional infinitive: pokroić, dodać, gotować — impersonal, person-free commands. The imperative (pokrój!) is the chattier alternative.
- Pick aspect per step: perfective for actions carried to completion (zagotować, dodać, obrać), imperfective for sustained processes (gotować, dusić, mieszając).
- Quantities use a measure word + partitive genitive: szklanka mąki, łyżka cukru, pół litra zakwasu — the substance is always genitive.
- Numeric measures follow the counting rules: dwie łyżki (2–4) versus pięć łyżek (5+ genitive plural).
- Sequence adverbs (najpierw, następnie, na koniec) carry the order, since the infinitives are tenseless.
Now practice Polish
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Polish→Related Topics
- The Infinitive (-ć / -c)A1 — The dictionary form of the Polish verb — ending in -ć or rarely -c — its uses after modals and impersonals, and why it carries no 'to' but does carry aspect.
- Annotated Text: Instructions and NoticesB2 — A recipe, a public sign and an official notice annotated to reveal the special grammar of Polish instructions — the bare infinitive, należy and impersonal się, and zakaz/zabrania się + genitive.
- The Partitive GenitiveB1 — How Polish uses the genitive instead of the accusative to mean 'some' of a substance — chleba (some bread) vs chleb (the bread).
- Genitive After Numbers and Quantity WordsA2 — Why numbers from five up — and most quantity words like dużo, mało, kilka — put the counted noun into the genitive plural, and how this differs from 2-4.
- gotować / ugotować — to cookA2 — Full conjugation of gotować/ugotować 'to cook', a clean -ować→-uję verb, with how Polish splits cooking by method and the reflexive gotować się 'to boil'.