Riding over strange land, with its owner not knowing;
Whether summer or spring to go leaping and vaulting
Through field and forest, killing the fox when it's it’s moulting;
Or allowing a pregnant she-hare in the heath,
Or green rye, to be taken, or hounded, to death,
{{Cytat
| <poem>Pickled cabbage comes foremost, and properly chopped,
Which itself, is the saying, will in one's one’s mouth hop;
In the boiler enclosed, with its moist bosom shields
Choicest morsels of meat raised on greenest of fields;
}}
== Rascal's Rascal’s Bigos ==
[[File:Bigosowanie.jpg|thumb|Some cabbageheads chopping other cabbageheads for bigos]]
So when, how and why did sauerkraut become part of bigos? For example, to Henryk Sienkiewicz, a turn-of-the-20th-century writer and Nobel-Prize winner, sauerkraut in bigos was so obvious that he assumed it must have been just as obvious to Lord John Humphrey Zagłoba, a character from his trilogy of historical novels set in 17th-century Poland.
| <poem>
My servants have just dined. “Have you left any food?”
“There's “There’s veal bigos; and pork fat in sauerkraut stewed.”
So I ask for these dishes and I loudly shout out,
“I've “I’ve just dined with Italians; bring me bigos and kraut!”</poem>
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Potocki
{{Cytat
| In the early part of Augustus III's III’s reign, there weren't weren’t that many sumptuous dishes. There 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”…
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Kitowicz
{{ cytat
| This novel is a messy mixture of everything, {{…}} just a scaffold thrown to the wind, to hold images haphazardly hung thereupon {{…}} All bizarrely entangled and without any logic {{…}} Such will be this book, full of repetitions, chatter and descriptions that fell off the pen wherever they happened to be nudged by my imagination; this is why I've I’ve entitled it “Bigos Hultajski”, which is made from a variety of things. It's It’s a poor man's man’s dish, but a savoury one; and perhaps it will be said of this novel that it is a poor man's man’s roman and an unsavoury one.
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Blepoński
{{ cytat
| Even if our planet is graced by many sentient beings who are not unfamiliar with the pleasures of bigos, there are still (alas!) few mortals who have fathomed the art of preparing this stew. How, then, is it done? Thusly.<br />
On the first day, cook sauerkraut and meat separately. On the second day, combine the cooked sauerkraut with chopped meat; this is but a scaffold for a future bigos, which dilettantes consider to be true bigos already. On the third day, reheat the mixture, miscalled bigos, and douse it with grape juice. On the fourth day, reheat the substance and add some bouillon and a tiny bottle of steak sauce. On the fifth day, reheat the mixture and sprinkle it with pepper in a grenadier manner. By this point, we've we’ve got some juvenile, fledgling bigos. So, to make it mature and strong, on the sixth day, reheat it; on the seventh day, reheat it – and – on the eighth day, reheat it. But on the ninth day, you've you’ve got to eat it, because, on the tenth day, classical gods, attracted by the scent of bigos, may descend from the Olympus to snatch this delicacy away from the mouths of mortals!
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko r = Prus
{{ cytat
| Before they got to Żółtańce, Dub stopped the car twice and after the last stop he said doggedly to Biegler: “For lunch I had bigos cooked the Polish way. From the battalion I shall make a complaint by telegram to the brigade. The sauerkraut was bad and the pork was not fit for eating. The insolence of these cooks exceeds all bounds. Whoever doesn't doesn’t yet know me, will soon get to know me.”
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Hašek
{{Cytat
| In the meantime, Gaudentius, who hadn't hadn’t failed to provision himself for the journey with leftovers from the feast of Yasnohorod, was busy reheating and consuming bigos, generously seasoned with sausages and fatback, which he had retrieved from his coffer, and washing it down, in strictly calculated intervals, with ample doses of vodka, which he kept by his right-hand side in a large rectangular decanter. {{…}} Bigos, as is known, induces great thirst, which had to be quenched with a concoction of some kind; nearby, at Finke'sFinke’s, this and other “remedies” were at hand for savouring. This venture, undertaken with certain tact, yet amateurishly, took quite some time; it had been over an hour since the sun had hidden below the horizon, when Mr. Pius was still exorcising the effects of the greasy bigos with last drops from the last bottle.
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Ejsmont
What do the French think? Will the new president
Be any good? Seen better popes in my life.
The Austrian emperor's emperor’s visiting Trent.Where's Where’s my cane and hat? You're You’re ready, lady wife?</poem>
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Norwid
{{ cytat
| As you can see, the constitution is as unbalanced and vague, its language as sloppy, as sloppy are the minds of the MPs. On a general note, I've I’ve got to tell you that this sloppy language makes our constitution somewhat akin to paltry bigos made from rotten ham, half-rotten fatback and half-cured sauerkraut; so that each paragraph and article may and should be read completely on its own, without linking it with any other article. Naturally, the rotten ham is for the president, the half-rotten fatback is for the cabinet, and the parliament is left with the half-cured sauerkraut. As you can see, there's there’s nothing their stomachs can do about it and what comes out is stench, so that it reeks all along Country Street [ulica Wiejska, where the Polish parliament is located]. And the only way out of this chaos is to rewrite the constitution in a decent way. What's What’s more, nobody has the right to interpret the constitution. Interpretation is forbidden – so the government is left with nothing but bigos.
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko = Piłsudski
{{ cytat
| So far, I've I’ve been under the false impression that the Polish national dish was bigos, an exquisite stew of cabbageheads, bitter hearts and virulent liver, a dish full of sourness and pungent smells. Someone would always “cook bigos” [i.e., make a mess] for someone else, then they would slap one another in the face, in a newspaper or in a café, and life, replete with rosy cheeks, temperament and fulsomeness, was beautiful. It saddens me, though, to see that tradition is fading away, as is the noble dish of bigos, and it is the Polish-style beef tongue that now reigns supreme on the Polish menu. Bigos was an exuberant dish, announcing itself through its scent from afar, juicy and vigorous. Tongue in the Polish style is more intricate, sweetened with almonds and raisins; it is, indeed, the dumbest part of a thoughtless beast, but the sweetness of its seasoning is ineffably appetizing.
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko r = Makuszyński
[[File:Bigośnica z Ćmielowa.jpg|thumb|A faience bigos pot made at Ćmielów ca. 1860–1880]]
{{ Cytat
| Hunter's Hunter’s bigos was served at hunts, as well as bigos with a cheer (pre-cooked bigos was reheated in a pot whose cover was tightly sealed with dough; a loud “explosion” of the lid due to pressure was a sign that the bigos was ready).
| źródło = {{Cyt
| nazwisko r = Kasprzyk-Chevriaux
{{ Cytat
| Old Polish cuisine, especially at hunts, knew bigos with a cheer, in which the pre-cooked dish was reheated in a pot with its cover tightly sealed with dough. A loud "explosion" “explosion” of the cover caused by the pressure meant that the dish was ready for consumption.
| źródło = {{Cyt
| tytuł = Wikipedia: wolna encyklopedia
| adres rozdziału = https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bigos&oldid=5477053
}}, own translation
| oryg = W kuchni staropolskiej, zwłasza na polowaniach, znany był bigos z wiwatem, polegający na ogrzewaniu przygotowanej wcześniej potrawy w garnku z pokrywką szczelnie przylepioną ciastem. Głośne "wystrzelenie" „wystrzelenie” pokrywki, pod wpływem ciśnienia, oznaczało gotowość potrawy do spożycia.
}}
Brass thunders and smoke belches, like camphor to fade,
Only in depths of cauldrons, there still writhes there later
Steam, as if from a dormant volcano's volcano’s deep crater.</poem>
| źródło = Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verses 846–850
| oryg = <poem>Bigos już gotów. Strzelcy z trzykrotnym wiwatem,