"Nastawowac miod stary, wlasne stary", or 17th century Belarusian manuscript recipes of mead from the collections of Institute of Manuscript of V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine

The aim of work is to introduce for scholarly circulation scarcely known manuscript texts in Belarusian mead manufacturing of the 17th century, and thus facilitate the study of historical culinary heritage on the terrain of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Old Polish mead recipes of the 17th century, preserved in manuscript collections of the szlachta (nobility) are quite rare archaeographic sources that attract the studies of not only Ukrainian, but also Belarusian, Lithuanian, and Polish historians. The methodology is grounded on the principles of publication of old Polish manuscript historical sources of the 14th-19th centuries, as well as definition of the old Polish special terminology of the 17th-18th centuries. The scientific novelty of the work is in the first publication of two old Polish mead recipes of the 17th century from Belarusian lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and definition of their peculiarities in comparison to other mead recipes in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The publication of the Polish texts of the recipes provides the Ukrainian translation which has been done for the first time. In addition to the recipes, on the basis of professional and reference publications, the Glossary of the old Polish culinary, household, and metrological terms has been compiled, and the list of Latin words and phrases met in the text was supplemented. Conclusions. The informative value of the published recipes is in the fact that they represent the regional mead manufacturing traditions; they originate from the North-Western part of the Belarusian lands (from Mir and Khalopyenichy), and thus are essential for the research of the mead manufacturing history in the Great Duchy of Lithuania. The availability of the 17th century mead recipes might also demonstrate the practical interest of the nobleman Mykolai Mlechko who used the experience of local professional mead manufacturers in his own estate in Khalopyenichy.