Antoni Teslar – unknown facts from the renowned chef’s life

Antoni Teslar had been working in the kitchen of the Potocki Family in Krzeszowice for five years. Starting his professional career at the age of thirteen, as a kitchen boy, he could not have imagined that he would end up as one of the most famous Polish chefs of the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. Leaving the service, he wrote down the recipes he used, as if a will, which got published in 1910 as a book titled the Polish-French Cuisine. After his career as a chef ended, he settled down in Krakow, working in trade and selling land. Living a typically bourgeois life, he was soon forgotten as a cook, and today he is sometimes recalled of by the amateurs of culinary history as a French who used to cook for the Potocki Family.
During his service for the Potocki Family, Antoni Teslar did not confine oneself to work only for his employers. He was involved in the life of the culinary environment, used to participate in contests and win prizes at culinary exhibitions, take actions to professionalise and centralise the occupational group of chefs, organise it and initiated its activity, as well as bring up and teach the beginners.
His life, so little known today, is a combination of love for cooking, strong attachment to the Potocki Family, and fondness for social, political and business activity.

Key words: Antoni Teslar, Potoccy, culinary history, chef, Krzeszowice, Polish cuisine, cook book, culinary arts

Antoni Teslar had been working in the kitchen of the Potocki Family in Krzeszowice for five years. Starting his professional career at the age of thirteen, as a kitchen boy, he could not have imagined that he would end up as one of the most famous Polish chefs of the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. Leaving the service, he wrote down the recipes he used, as if a will, which got published in 1910 as a book titled the Polish-French Cuisine. After his career as a chef ended, he settled down in Krakow, working in trade and selling land. Living a typically bourgeois life, he was soon forgotten as a cook, and today he is sometimes recalled of by the amateurs of culinary history as a French who used to cook for the Potocki Family.
During his service for the Potocki Family, Antoni Teslar did not confine oneself to work only for his employers. He was involved in the life of the culinary environment, used to participate in contests and win prizes at culinary exhibitions, take actions to professionalise and centralise the occupational group of chefs, organise it and initiated its activity, as well as bring up and teach the beginners.
His life, so little known today, is a combination of love for cooking, strong attachment to the Potocki Family, and fondness for social, political and business activity.