The one-time king is sick and tired of eating chicken with paprika, pâté, cakes, cakes, cakes, other jannamannas. So he commanded that a meal should be served to him such as he had never eaten before.
Well, thought the chef, now he's going all out for you! One after the other he brought the better and better dishes, eggs with honey, roast piglet rolled in sugar, nuts boiled in milk. In vain! The king was grumpily pushing everything away.
Then, when the startled cook put the thirteenth plate in front of him, he cried out angrily:
- Enough! I'm sick of all these! If you don't bring me something I haven't eaten before, I'll have your head!
The cook waddled sadly into the kitchen. He wondered what to cook, but couldn't think of anything clever. He could almost feel the hangman's noose around his neck. Well, that's not half a joke! He put a loaf of bread under his hone, said goodbye to the gatekeeper and went out into the world.
The next day, when the del is gone, the king sits down at the head of the table, and the lunch is nowhere to be found! This has never happened before. He immediately gave the order that the cook should be led to him with an iron rod.
They would have taken him, why not, if the King had ordered it! But where was the cook then! The chief steward came forward:
- My lord king, I report to you that the cook has escaped.
The king turned red with anger.
- So no lunch and no cook now? Is he the last man in the country not to have lunch?
He immediately had me saddled. Mount a platoon of soldiers! He rode in front, angry and hungry. They hunted, but only found his trail, and on the third day they came to a large wood.
But they lost the trail, because everything was covered by the many fallen leaves. They wandered through the trees. They kept on until they saw the cook on top of a big oak tree.
The king shouted at him:
- Come down, ebadta, or I'll shoot you!
The cook didn't move, he made it look dead, as if the branches were holding it up so it wouldn't fall. The king wanted to take him alive. He thought that perhaps he was not dead, but asleep, or had fallen asleep from fatigue. He ordered the tree to be cut down.
The soldiers got to work, but cutting wood is not a soldier's job, and they didn't try very hard, they felt sorry for the cook. The king will surely shake his head, and then he can't give them anything, they can't eat the soda, the goose legs, the sausages with the bread.
The king saw how hard his soldiers worked. He picked up an axe, spat into his palm, and then he chopped the roots with all his might, the shavings flying to pieces. Once the branch snapped under the cook, he thought the tree was falling, he was so frightened he put his hands together and started to pray.
But as soon as he put his hands together, he forgot about the bread, and slipped it out from under his arm and under the tree. The king was amazed:
- What's that?
- "It is only bread," said the soldiers, "It is not for a king, but only for the poor man.
The king took out his knife, cut it and tasted it. He ate until half of it was gone. He says then:
- Now, that's the best meal I've had since I was untied from the sling. 'You never told me, you geezer,' he shouted to the shivering cook, 'that you could make such a tasty meal! Come down, hey, I'll have mercy on you, you deserve to continue as the King's cook!
The chef was encouraged. He climbed down and went before the king. He vowed to bake bread for him that no man in the world had ever tasted before. The king immediately sent one of his soldiers to a nearby town to buy the cook a horse. He had him mounted and rode home with him.
The servants at court stared in amazement, not knowing what the cook had done to atone for the king, what he had done to deserve his mercy, and how he had come to be so highly esteemed. But they wondered still more when the king said:
- I order you in the strictest of terms, from now on, whatever you put on my table, don't leave the bread out.
The cook obeyed strict orders, baking bread in a big oven every week. If he hadn't, my story would have lasted longer.
