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Why is this funny? Because the roles were reversed and lo, the lord is having leftovers from his own servants' table. Leftovers of what, exactly, do we have here? On the one hand, there's the simple, rustic dish of pork fatback stewed in sauerkraut. As we can see, the idea stewing meat and animal fat in pickled cabbage was not entirely unknown -- only it wasn't referred to as ''bigos''! On the other hand, we've got something that wasdid, indeedin fact, called go by the name of ''bigos'' -- and it was chopped veal that was probably seasoned sour, spicy and sweet, in line with the culinary trends of the time. This one is was a more excquisite, and more expensive, dish; fit for the lordly table and known from cookbooks written at magnate courts. How did it end up on the servant's table, then? Perhaps as leavings from their lord's tableearlier meal. In this case, the hungry and humiliated protagonist would have been reduced to eating leftovers of leftovers! In the meal made of these scraps, was the sauerkraut still a separate dish that was served as a side to the veal bigos, or was everything mixed and reheated in a single pot? Potocki gives no answer to this question, but if it was the latter, then perhaps this is how bigos as we know it today was invented?

| In the early part of Augustus III's reign, there weren't that many sumptuous dishes. There were was ''rosół'' [meat broth], borscht [sour soup], boiled meat, and bigos with cabbage, made of assorted chunks of meat, sausages and fatback, chopped up finely and mixed with sauerkraut, and called ''bigos hultajski''...

It was called ''bigos hultajski'' (pronounced: ''{{small|BEE}}-gawss hool-{{small|TIE}}-skee''), or "poor man's bigos". Back then, the Polish word ''hultaj'' (''{{small|BEE}}-gawss {{small|HOOL}}-tie'') referred to an itinerant peasant who travelled from village to village or from town to town looking for various short-term jobs.<ref><!--{{Cyt

}}--></ref> ''Bigos hultajski'' was, then, something like real bigos, as it was made from chopped meat, but of the cheaper kinds, like sausages and fatback, and it was seasoned took its sour tang not with from expensive limes or lemons, nor even with from vinegar, but with from sauerkraut or pickled beetroot juice. The sauerkraut had the additional advantage of serving as both filler and preservative. It wouldn't take long to discover that such sauerkraut bigos could be stored for a long time and reheated multiple times, which made it a perfect food not only for itinerant peasants and domestic servants, but also for soldiers, hunters and travellers. Zygmunt Gloger, who liked to share his personal experiences in his turn-of-the-20th-century ''Old Polish Encyclopedia'', reminisced that "in the old way of travelling, it was a superbly practical invention of Polish cuisine, which I experienced myself in 1882, when Henryk Sienkiewicz and I travelled for a few days on horseback to the Białowieża Forest."<ref><!--{{Cyt

''Bigos hultajski'' made a stellar career not only in the culinary realm, but in literature as well -- as an ideal metaphor for any kind of messy mixture of scraps which somehow manages to remain appetizing. For instance, a two-act moralizing romantic comedy written by Jan Drozdowski in 1801, bears the title, ''Bigos hultajski, or The School of for Triflers''.  Bigos hultajski zrobił oszałamiającą karierę nie tylko kulinarną, ale także literacką -- jako idealna metafora wszelkiego rodzaju bezładnej mieszaniny resztek, która jednak, zaskakująco, jest nader smakowita. Na przykład dwuaktowa romantyczno-moralizatorska komedyjka Jana Drozdowskiego z 1801 r. nosi tytuł (''Bigos hultajski, czyli szkoła trzpiotów'' i kończy się następującym monologiem jednego z bohaterów:).

When all that you need is so some bitter and sour. {{small|[...]}}

''Bigos hultajski pojawia się też w tytule o cztery dekady późniejszej czterotomowej powieści Tytusa Szczeniowskiego '' also makes an appearance in the title of a four-decades-younger novel by Tytus Szczeniowski (wydanej pod pseudonimem published under the ''nom de plume'' Izasław Blepoński), ''Bigos Hultajski, or Social Poppycock'' (''Bigos hultajski: Bzdurstwa obyczajowe''). Nie jest to powieść w dzisiejszym tego słowa rozumieniuIt's really a novel in the modern sense, ale luźny zbiór opowiadańbut rather a loose collection of stories, szkicówdrafts, dygresjidigressions, polemik i rozważań socjologicznychpolemics and sociological conjectures, układających się w historię bez początku i bez zakończeniaarranged into a plot wihout a beginning or an ending. Bodaj jedynym, co spaja te cztery tomy ze sobąApparently, jest seria czterech przedmów the only thing the binds its four volumes together is a series of four forewords (oraz jednej and one "pomowyhindword"), które zresztą uważane są za najciekawszą część całego dzieławhich are incidentally considered the most interesting part of the entire work.<ref><!--{{Cyt

}}--></ref> Sam autor tak pisał o swojej powieści w przedmowie do tomu pierwszegoThis was the author wrote of his own novel in the foreword to the first volume:

| Romans ten jest nieporządną mieszaniną wszystkiegoThis novel is a messy mixture of everything, pod wpływem myśli po zakątkach społeczeństwa bujającej pisaną {{small|[...] Powieść moja jest tylko rusztowaniem na wiatr rzuconym}} just a scaffold thrown to the wind, aby mogło utrzymać obrazy bez ładu zawieszone to hold images haphazardly hung thereupon {{small|[...] Wszystko dziwacznie poplątane i bez związku }} All bizarrely entangled and without any logic {{small|[...] Taką będzie i książka niniejsza pełna powtarzań}} Such will be this book, gawęd i opisań spadających w nią tam gdzie wyobraźnia je z pióra strąciła i dla tego nazwałem ją Bigosem hultajskimfull of repetitions, który z różnych i rozmaitych rzeczy złożonym bywa. Jest to potrawa choć hultajska ale smacznachatter and descriptions that fell off the pen wherever they were nugded by my imagination; this why I've entitled it Bigos Hultajski, wich is made from a o tym romansie może powiedzą że jest hultajski variety of things. It's a niesmacznypoor man's dish, but tasty; and perhaps it will be said of this novel that it is poor man's and untasty.

Z czasem słowo With time, the word ''hultaj'' gained a negative connotation that it has today. In modern Polish, it's roughly equivalent to the English "hultajrascal" nabrało dzisiejszego pejoratywnego wydźwięku. The origin of the term ''bigos hultajsk'', a pochodzenie określenia now understood as "rascal's bigos hultajski" zapomnianowas largely forgotten. Gloger spekulował nawet, hypothesized that "że ponieważ w najlepszym bigosie jest najwięcej posiekanego mięsabecause the best bigos contains the greatest amount of chopped meat, zachodziła więc pewna analogia z hultajstwemthen there is a certain analogy with rascals, którym nazywano dawniej rozbójników i awanturnikówor brigands and highwaymen, napadających i siekających szablamiwho hacked their victims to pieces with their sabres."<ref>Gloger, ''op. cit.''</ref> I tak do dziś jeszcze można znaleźć wyjaśnieniaAnd so even today we can find explanations, jak choćby w as in [https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bigos&oldid=54979769 polskiej WikipediiPolish Wikipedia,] że the ''bigos hultajski to '' is a kind of bigos szczególnie obfitujący w mięso, a nie that is particularly meat-heavy and not -- jak w pierwotnym znaczeniu as in its original sense -- potrawa, w której niedobór mięsa maskowano kapustąa dish in which the scarcity of meat was masked with sauerkraut.