At the table of the modest nobility and Polish émigrés, the meal is arranged not as starter-main-dessert, but around zupa (a sour or hot soup that opens the meal), followed by a danie (a single substantial dish based on cabbage, groats or braised meat), accompanied by ever-present black bread. The meal extends with honeyed sweets and often closes with a shared hot spiced drink. Fermentation (cabbage, rye) and honey are the two pillars of flavor.

Two absolute markers of this cuisine: the living acidity of rye sourdough (zakwas) and sauerkraut (kapusta kiszona), which preserves and enlivens dishes all winter, and the sweetness of wild honey from Lithuanian forests, which perfumes drinks and gingerbread. It is sour and sweet, never neutral.