Venice has it. Rio has it. New Orleans is determined to carry on with it as usual this year. Whether you call it carnival, Mardi Gras, Shrovetide or Masopust, it's the time of feasting and merriment before the 40-day Lenten period leading up to Easter. The Masopust season officially starts with the Feast of the Epiphany (Den tří králů) Jan. 6, then tops off with the blowout known as Fat Tuesday.

While few people in the largely secular Czech Republic hold on to the Christian tradition of giving up meat and fasting during Lent, there is a strong determination to keep the country's folk traditions, including food and libations, alive.

While there's plenty of drinking at the Masopust celebration in Žižkov, you can sample some culinary treats there as well. The price of a concert ticket at Palác Akropolis on Saturday, Feb. 25, includes a serving of liver sausage known as jitrnice. The squeamish shouldn't inquire about the ingredients, but I can confirm that it can be quite tasty — and at least they remove the eyeballs. Along the parade route on the afternoon of Fat Tuesday, you can sample Masopust fare like carnival doughnuts (Masopustní koblihy) and bread that comes spread with pork cracklings-laced lard (Škvarky).

Despite its revival in Prague and other cities, Masopust has always been celebrated most heartily in the countryside. Traditions hold strong in places such as the Moravian-Silesian region in the northeast of the country. The Wallachian Open-Air Museum (Valašské muzeum v přírodě) in the town of Rožnov pod Radhoštěm is one of the premier institutions focusing on the preservation of folk customs. At the museum's Masopust festivities, which culminated Feb. 18, an array of seasonal foods and drinks were available.

Among them was zhřívanica, an alcoholic drink served warm (its name derives from the word zahřát, which means to heat up) that is believed to be fortifying. So much so, says Milena Habustová from the museum's documentation department, that it's drunk not only as an elixir in bitterly cold winters, but in the past was used by women in the six-week period following the birth of a child.

The basic components are režná, a rye-based liquor infused with herbs and spices, which is diluted with water and spices simmered and mixed with caramel. To top it all off, a piece of fat floats on the surface, usually a knob of butter. Though bacon can also be the floater, Habustová notes that people generally prefer the butter.

For anyone who wants to replicate this seasonal cordial at home, Daniel Drapala, an ethnologist at the Wallachian Open-Air Museum, offers the following recipe: Cook 1 tablespoon of sugar in 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter until it darkens into a caramel. Meanwhile, simmer a piece of cinnamon stick, several cloves, a few allspice berries and three black peppercorns in 1 deciliter (about 3.5 ounces) of water for 10 minutes. Pour the spiced water over the caramel and simmer together until the caramel melts, then pour in 0.5 liter (1 pint) of režná. Heat the mixture, but do not let it boil, and finally add a piece of butter to mellow it. It should be served warm.

Režná is made by a number of Czech distilleries, including Herba Alko of Opava and Starorežná in Prostějov, and can be found in bigger retail outlets. It is generally 35 percent alcohol by volume, but the drink can also be made using an alcohol base of výčepní lihovina or bílá kořalka, which has less of a kick at 20 percent — a dilution once considered appropriate for recuperating new mothers, Habustová says.

Carnival doughnuts are also a key part of Masopust. Made from yeast-risen dough, they're usually filled with the plum butter known as povidla, then fried in butter. In the past, flax-seed and beechnut oils have also been used for frying.

Another item that appears during Masopust is Boží milosti, or celestial crusts. Made from a simple pastry dough flavored with the Czech sugar-beet liquor called tuzemák, the dough is worked up, rested, rolled out, turned in upon itself several times, rolled out again until it thins, and cut with a pastry wheel into small shapes including rectangles, rhomboids, and triangles. The crusts are then fried in butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.