Epic Cooking: The Wondrous Taste of Bigos

This post is part of the series:
Epic Cooking
Food and Drink in “Pan Tadeusz”,
the Polish National Epic

Breakfast at Judge Soplica’s
The Wondrous Taste of Bigos
Supper in the Castle
The Perfect Cook
The Last Old Polish Feast
The Decorous Rite of the Mushroom Hunt

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Bigos is yum! Sleigh ride is fun!

— Przypowieści pana Wełdysza, in: Wincenty Pol: Dzieła Wincentego Pola wierszem i prozą, Lwów: F.H. Richter, 1876, p. 360, own translation Original text: Bigos – to potrawa! Kulig – to zabawa!

In this post I’m going to continue telling the history of bigos, the Polish national dish, and also return to Pan Tadeusz, the Polish national epic. We’ve already discussed what the protagonists of Pan Tadeusz used to have for breakfast, but what we omitted back then was the hunters’ breakfast from Book IV of the poem. That one took the form of a picnic, out in the woods, shared by a group of hunters who had just successfully concluded a bear hunt (although the bear itself was shot by Father Worm, who mysteriously disappeared a moment later).

Hunter’s Bigos

The Polish word bigos is often rendered into English as “hunter’s stew”, but in fact, hunter’s bigos, or bigos myśliwski^🔊, is just one of its many varieties. Whether it’s a kind of bigos made from game meats or simply bigos eaten by hunters, but made from any kind of meat, is open to debate. As for me, I’ve never really understood why anyone would enjoy shooting terrified animals, but if Poland’s national bard himself (even if he admitted to be “a wretched marksman”) wrote so much about hunting in his epic, then let’s at least quote a short excerpt, which is still quite up-to-date and may not be appreciated by the pro-hunting lobby in Poland.

The Tribune playing a horn, a hunting scene from Pan Tadeusz illustrated by Michał Elwiro Andriolli (1881)

The Count is well versed in the lore of the chase, Often speaks he of hunting: its right time and place. The Count was raised from childhood among foreign nations, And says that we are lacking in civilization To hunt without us giving due consideration To articles, to by-laws, to state regulations; Trampling mounds, balks of others without respect owing, 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 moulting; Or allowing a pregnant she-hare in the heath, Or green rye, to be taken, or hounded, to death, With great harm to game numbers. The Count thus complains That more civilization in Russia obtains…

— Adam Mickiewicz: Pan Tadeusz, or The Last Foray in Lithuania: A Tale of the Gentry during 1811–1812, translated by Marcel Weyland, Book II, verses 578–591 Original text: Hrabia na polowaniu bardzo dobrze zna się, Nieraz gadał o łowów i miejscu, i czasie; Hrabia chował się w obcych krajach od dzieciństwa I powiada, że to jest znakiem barbarzyństwa Polować tak jak u nas, bez żadnego względu Na artykuły ustaw, przepisy urzędu, Nie szanując niczyich kopców ani miedzy, Jeździć po cudzym gruncie bez dziedzica wiedzy; Wiosną równie jak latem zbiegać pola, knieje, Zabijać nieraz lisa, właśnie gdy linieje, Albo cierpieć, iż kotną samicę zajęczą Charty w runi uszczują, a raczej zamęczą, Z wielką szkodą źwierzyny. Stąd się Hrabia żali, Że cywilizacyja większa u Moskali… — Adam Mickiewicz: Pan Tadeusz, czyli Ostatni zajazd na Litwie: Historia szlachecka z roku 1811 i 1812 we dwunastu księgach wierszem, Lwów–Warszawa–Kraków: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1921, księga II, wersy 578–591

Anyway, after the hunt was over, the hunters (who had left home early in the morning with empty stomachs) treated themselves to a feast in the midst of the forest. Fires were built, “meats, vegetables, flour” and bread “were brought from the wagons”, Judge Soplica “opened a box full of flagons” of Goldwasser (a herbal liqueur from Danzig, or Gdańsk, famous for the gold flakes added to every bottle), while “in the pots warmed the bigos.” Pan Tadeusz contains what is without a doubt the most beautiful literary monument to this Polish national dish. Or maybe bigos is considered a national dish because it is mentioned in Pan Tadeusz? Whatever the case, Mickiewicz himself admitted that he didn’t quite know how to describe what bigos actually tastes like.

Bigos from Pan Tadeusz.
A photo from the Ms. Aneta Talaga’s appetising blog.

Mere words cannot tell Of its wondrous taste, colour and marvellous smell. One can hear the words buzz, and the rhymes ebb and flow, But its content no city digestion can know.

— ibid., Book IV, verses 831–834 Original text: W słowach wydać trudno Bigosu smak przedziwny, kolor i woń cudną; Słów tylko brzęk usłyszy i rymów porządek, Ale treści ich miejski nie pojmie żołądek.

You may remember from my previous post that sauerkraut was merely optional, and usually absent, in Old Polish bigos. In Mickiewicz’s version, though, it was already an indispensable ingredient of the recipë.

Pickled cabbage comes foremost, and properly chopped, Which itself, is the saying, will in one’s mouth hop; In the boiler enclosed, with its moist bosom shields Choicest morsels of meat raised on greenest of fields; Then it simmers, till fire has extracted each drop Of live juice, and the liquid boils over the top, And the heady aroma wafts gently afar.

— ibid., Book IV, verses 839–845 Original text: Bierze się doń siekana, kwaszona kapusta, Która, wedle przysłowia, sama idzie w usta; Zamknięta w kotle, łonem wilgotnem okrywa Wyszukanego cząstki najlepsze mięsiwa; I praży się, aż ogień wszystkie z niej wyciśnie Soki żywne, aż z brzegów naczynia war pryśnie I powietrze dokoła zionie aromatem.

Rascal’s Bigos

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.

“How are you, old rogue? Why twist your nose as if you had found some unvirtuous odor?” “In the whole camp of Sapieha it smells of bigos.” “Why bigos? Tell me!” “Because the Swedes have cut up a great many cabbageheads!”

— Translation based on Henryk Sienkiewicz: The Deluge, translated by Jeremiah Curtin, vol. 2, Warszawa: Project Gutenberg, 2011 Original text: – Jak się masz, stary francie? Cóż to tak nosem kręcisz, jakbyś jakowy niecnotliwy zapach wietrzył? – W całym Sapieżyńskim wojsku bigos czuć! – Czemu to bigos? – powiadaj!… – Bo Szwedzi kapuścianych głów naszatkowali! — Henryk Sienkiewicz: Potop, vol. V, Warszawa: Gebethner i Wolff, 1888, p. 169

But if we moved back to the times closer to those of the trilogy’s characters, we would see that you could have eaten bigos with sauerkraut – but the kraut would have been at best a side dish rather than an actual ingredient of the bigos! Let’s take, for instance, a 17th-century epigram by Wacław Potocki about a Polish nobleman, who went empty-bellied to a banquet hosted by an Italian and returned home just as hungry. By the way, his misadventure is reminiscent of an old anecdote about a Pole who cut his stay in Italy short, because he was afraid that, if he had been treated to grass in the summer, then he would be fed hay in the winter. The nobleman in Potocki’s poem, after a feast of spinach, celery, asparagus and artichokes, craved to eat his full of meat at last.

My servants have just dined. “Have you left any food?” “There’s veal bigos; and pork fat in sauerkraut stewed.” So I ask for these dishes and I loudly shout out, “I’ve just dined with Italians; bring me bigos and kraut!”

— Bankiet włoski, in: Wacław Potocki: Ogród fraszek, Aleksander Brückner (red.), vol. I, Lwów: 1907, p. 35, own translation Original text: Już czeladź po obiedzie: Złodzieje, czemuście Zjedli? Jeszcze została słonina w kapuście, Jest i bigos cielęcy. A ja krzyknę głosem: Dawaj po włoskiej uczcie kapustę z bigosem.

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 of 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 did, in fact, 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 was a more exquisite, and more expensive, dish; fit for the lordly table and known from cookbooks written at magnate courts. How did it end up on the servants’ table, then? Perhaps as leavings from their lord’s earlier meal. In this case, the hungry and humiliated protagonist would have been reduced to eating leftovers from leftovers! In the meal made from these scraps, was the sauerkraut still a separate dish that was served as a side to the veal bigos, or was everything mixed up together 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?

This is the kind of bigos that the Rev. Jędrzej Kitowicz wrote about while describing Polish alimentary habits during the reign of King Augustus III (r. 1734–1763).

In the early part of Augustus III’s reign, there 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”…

— O stołach i bankietach pańskich, in: Jędrzej Kitowicz: Opis obyczajów i zwyczajów za panowania Augusta III, vol. 7, Poznań: Edward Raczyński, 1840, p. 146, own translation Original text: W pierwszym zwyczaju staroświeckim na początku panowania Augusta III jeszcze trwającym, nie było zbyt wykwintnych potraw. Rosół, barszcz, sztuka mięsa, bigos z kapustą, z różnego mięsiwa kawalcami, kiełbasą i słoniną, drobno pokrajanymi i z kapustą kwaśną pomieszanymi, i nazywano to bigosem hultajskim…

It was called bigos hultajski^🔊, or “poor man’s bigos”. Back then, the Polish word “hultaj”^🔊 referred to an itinerant peasant who travelled from village to village or from town to town looking for various short-term jobs. 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 took its sour tang not from expensive limes or lemons, nor even from vinegar, but 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.”

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 appetising. For instance, a two-act moralising romantic comedy written by Jan Drozdowski in 1801, bears the title, Bigos hultajski, or The School for Triflers (Bigos hultajski, czyli szkoła trzpiotów).

Hunter’s bigos as painted by Alfred Wierusz Kowalski (1877)

As in food, so in life, there must come the hour When the flavours you need are bitter and sour. […] The change of fate on which today we all stumbled Is, just as true bigos, so messy and jumbled. […] Let this truth be confirmed by anyone who Found taste in this moral, which hides in the stew.

— Jan Drozdowski: Bigos hultajski, czyli szkoła trzpiotów, Kraków: Jan Maj, 1803, p. 60, own translation Original text: Jak w pokarmie, tak w życiu są czasy, Gdzie potrzebną przyprawą jest gorycz i kwasy. […] Oto dzisiejszych odmian zbiór, postać i mina Jest to czysty hultajski bigos, mieszanina. […] Tej prawdzie ten poświadczy w łaskawym odgłosie, Kto smak znalazł w morale, a morał w Bigosie.

Bigos hultajski also makes an appearance in the title of a four-decades-younger novel by Tytus Szczeniowski (published under the nom de plume Izasław Blepoński), Bigos Hultajski, or Social Poppycock (Bigos hultajski: Bzdurstwa obyczajowe). It’s not really a novel in the modern sense, but rather a loose collection of stories, drafts, digressions, polemics and sociological conjectures, arranged into a plot without a beginning or an ending. Apparently, the only thing the binds its four volumes together is a series of four forewords (and one “hindword”), which are incidentally considered the most interesting parts of the entire work. This is what the author wrote of his own novel in the foreword to the first volume:

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 entitled it “Bigos Hultajski”, which is made from a variety of things. It’s a poor man’s dish, but a savoury one; and perhaps it will be said of this novel that it is a poor man’s roman and an unsavoury one.

— Izasław Blepoński: Bigos hultajski: Bzdurstwa obyczajowe, Wilno: Teofil Glücksberg, 1844, p. XVII–XVIII Original text: Romans ten jest nieporządną mieszaniną wszystkiego, […] jest tylko rusztowaniem na wiatr rzuconym, aby mogło utrzymać obrazy bez ładu zawieszone […] Wszystko dziwacznie poplątane i bez związku […] Taką będzie i książka niniejsza pełna powtarzań, gawęd i opisań spadających w nią tam, gdzie wyobraźnia je z pióra strąciła, i dla tego nazwałem ją Bigosem hultajskim, który z różnych i rozmaitych rzeczy złożonym bywa. Jest to potrawa, choć hultajska, ale smaczna, a o tym romansie może powiedzą, że jest hultajski a niesmaczny.

With time, the word “hultaj” gained a negative connotation that it has today. In modern Polish, it’s roughly equivalent to the English “rascal”. The origin of the term “bigos hultajski”, now understood as “rascal’s bigos”, was largely forgotten. Gloger hypothesised that “because the best bigos contains the greatest amount of chopped meat, then there is a certain analogy with rascals, or brigands and highwaymen, who used to hack their victims to pieces with their sabres.” And so even today we can find explanations, as in Polish Wikipedia, that bigos hultajski is a kind of bigos that is particularly heavy on meat and not – as in its original sense – a dish in which the scarcity of meat was masked with sauerkraut.

By the time Mickiewicz wrote Pan Tadeusz, which was in the early 1830s, bigos hultajski must have become so popular that it supplanted all other, older, kinds of bigos. Then it could finally drop the disparaging epithet and become, simply, bigos. No self-respecting Polish cookbook writer of the 19th century could neglect to include a few recipës for sauerkraut bigos in her works – including the great (both figuratively and literally) Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa. Below, I quote a recipë written by one of her most loyal fans – Bolesław Prus (today remembered as a great novelist and somewhat less remembered as a columnist).

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. 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 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 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!

— Bolesław Prus: Kronika tygodniowa, in: Kurier Warszawski, 285, 1879, own translation Original text: Jeżeli jednak planetę naszą ozdabia bardzo wiele istot rozumnych, którym nieobce są rozkosze bigosowe, za to (niestety!) niewielu jest śmiertelników, którzy zgłębili sztukę przyrządzania bigosu. Jakże się to robi? Oto tak. Pierwszego dnia gotuje się kapusta oddzielnie i mięso oddzielnie. Drugiego dnia łączy się ugotowana kapusta z pokrajanym mięsem, co stanowi ruszto­wanie bigosu, uważane przez dyletantów za rzeczywisty bigos. Trzeciego dnia odgrzewa się mieszaninę, niesłusznie zwaną bigosem, i – skrapia się butelką soku winnej jagody. Czwartego dnia odgrzewa się substancję, dodaje się do niej bulionu w płynie i ma­lutką flaszeczkę bifsztyk-sosu. Piątego dnia odgrzewa się mieszaninę i obsypuje pieprzem na sposób grenadierski. Wówczas – mamy już bigos, ale młodociany, nieśmiało stawiający pierwsze kroki. Więc aby wzmocnił się i dojrzał – szóstego dnia odgrzewa się, siódmego dnia odgrzewa się – i – ósmego dnia odgrzewa się. Ale dziewiątego dnia zjeść go należy, gdyż w dniu dziesiątym klasyczni bogowie, znęce­ni wonią bigosu, gotowi ze szczytów Olimpu zejść na ziemię i wydrzeć specjał śmiertel­nym ustom!

In the end, this whole elaborate and gripping recipë turns out to be just a lengthy introduction to a piece on a totally mundane and non-culinary topic.

To reheat, toast and reheat again is a method which adds splendid characteristics to things of this world. One of such things that may be reheated over and over, forever, is the question of Warsaw’s sewer system.

— ibid. Original text: Odgrzewać, przygrzewać i jeszcze raz odgrzewać, oto metoda, dzięki której rzeczy tego świata nabierają nieocenionych przymiotów. Jedną zaś z takich bez końca odgrzewanych kwestii jest – kanalizacja Warszawy.

Hard-to-Digest Bigos

Unfortunately, not everything that tastes good is good for your health. Bigos happens to have a reputation for being an excessively high-fat dish that tends to sit heavy on the stomach. What’s more, it is usually made from leftovers, which has often aroused suspicions as to the freshness of its ingredients. You can see it, for example, in The Good Soldier Švejk by the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, where, on the one hand, one should be glad that “bikoš cooked in the Polish way” made a career as an important part of the Austro-Hungarian army’s diet on the Galician front, but, on the other hand, it was accused by Lieutenant Dub of giving him diarrhoea.

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 yet know me, will soon get to know me.”

— Jaroslav Hašek: The Good Soldier Švejk and His Fortunes in the World War, translated by Cecil Parrott, Penguin Books, 2005, p. 746 Original text: Než dojeli do Zóltance, dal poručík Dub ještě dvakrát zastavit a po poslední zastávce řekl urputně k Bieglerovi: „Měl jsem k obědu bikoš po Polsku. Od bataliónu telegrafuji stížnost na brigádu. Zkažené kyselé zelí a znehodnocené k požívání vepřové maso. Smělost kuchařů převyšuje všechny meze. Kdo mne ještě nezná, ten mne pozná.” — Jaroslav Hašek: Osudy dobreho vojaka Švejka za svetove valky, vol. II, Moskwa: T8RUGRAM, 2017, p. 268

The good thing is that, as the Poles discovered long ago, fine Polish vodka not only pairs ideally with the stew, but is also an indispensable antidote to bigos-induced indigestion.

A porcelain bigośnica, or bigos pot, made at Baranówka ca. 1830

One of the nobles brought bigos to share. This dish, though tasty, is hard to digest; Bigos sans vodka ne’er should one ingest. The other day, Paul with bigos broke fast To start his day, but – on vodka he passed. His stomach it gave such terrible pain, That they let him drink chamomile tisane!

— Jan Nepomucen Kamiński: Przypadek na odpuście, Lwów: Biblioteka Uniwersalna, 1881, p. 7, own translation Original text: Jeden ze szlachty miał jaszczyk bigosu. Ta rzecz, choć smaczna, jest bardzo niestrawna; Bigos bez wódki to choroba jawna. Niedawno Paweł, co się w pole kwapił, Podjadł bigosu, wódki się nie napił, Takiej żołądka dostąpił zgryzoty, Że mu rumianku dawano na poty.

And because, as mentioned above, bigos was often taken as provisions for a journey, it was just as important to take an adequate amount of vodka along as well. After all, health should always come first!

In the meantime, Gaudentius, who 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’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.

— Obrazek Jenjalnego Officjalisty, in: Franciszek Marian Ejsmont: Co Bóg dał, Kijów: Drukarnia Uniwersytecka, 1872, p. 305–306, own translation Original text: Tymczasem Gaudenty, który nie zaniedbał uprowidować się na drogę okruchami jasnohorodzkiej biesiady, odgrzewał i konsumował wydobyty z jaszczyka, i suto kiełbasami i słoniną przyprawiony bigos, skrapiając go w ściśle wyrachowanych interwałach sporą dozą szpagatówki, która się przy nim, na prawicy, w dużej czworogrannej flaszy znajdowała […] Bigos, jak wiadomo, wzbudza silne pragnienie, wypadało więc ugasić je jakąś miksturką; pod bokiem właśnie u Finkego było do skosztowania to i owo remedium. Próba ta z pewnym taktem, po amatorsku, odbywana zajęła niemało czasu; słońce już od godziny przeszło ziemski horyzont opuściło, kiedy p. Pius ostatnimi kroplami z ostatniej butelki egzorcyzmował afektacje tłustego bigosu.

So to sum up: there’s a dish that is tasty, yet hard to digest and made from ingredients of questionable quality. Let’s add significant potential for figurative use and an undeniable status as a national dish. What do we get? That’s right – bigos as a metaphor for Polish history, society, politics, and Polishness in general!

History is like bigos, an indigestible hodgepodge of scraps, not just from the whole week, but from thousands of years.

— Kornel Makuszyński: Szatan z siódmej klasy, Warszawa: Instytut Wydawniczy Nasza Księgarnia, 1985, p. 7, own translation Original text: Historia jest bigosem, ciężkostrawną zbieraniną nie tylko z całego tygodnia, lecz z lat wielu tysięcy.

National Bigos

Cyprian Kamil Norwid, a great poet of the second half of the 19th century, was able, in just one short poem, to mock both the national stew and the parochial mindset of Polish gentry, whose minds – like bigos – were just messy mixtures of diced-up thoughts.

A porcelain bigos pot made at Baranówka ca. 1828

What you write of bigos, the national stew, Is quite right indeed, bigos is good for you… What do the French think? Will the new president Be any good? Seen better popes in my life. The Austrian emperor’s visiting Trent. Where’s my cane and hat? You’re ready, lady wife?

— Cyprian Kamil Norwid: Z listu do Henryka Prendowskiego, Wikiźródła: Wolne materiały źródłowe, own translation Original text: Co o bigosie piszesz narodowym, To rzecz zaiste słuszna – bardzo zdrowym Jest bigos… Francja co myśli? Prezydent Czy będzie dobry? Papież nie udał się pono. Austryjacki Cesarz zwiedza Trydent. Gdzie kij i czapka? kończ się guzdrać, Pani Żono.

Mr. Ernest Bryll, a 20th-century poet, gave an even more direct answer to the question of what to write of the national bigos. He thinks of it as a “dangerous, heavy dish, […], a mixture of everything, but also hacking people to pieces”. It’s the dark side of bigos, reflecting the dark side of Polish history.

What to write of bigos, the national stew? That it brings heavy dreams… The same old nightmares Which Forefather Piast the Wheelwright used to spew, Which this sick nation, over a thousand years, Was unable to retch, are pushing back up. Because on the Vistula, we have grown fat And it no longer reeks of corpses.

— Ernest Bryll: Co o bigosie pisać?, Oficjalna strona Ernesta Brylla, own translation Original text: Co o bigosie pisać narodowym? Że ciężkie sny przynosi… Stare zmory, które Piast palcem swym kołodziejowym z gardła wyrzucał, które naród chory przez tysiąc lat wyrzygać nie umiał, znów cisną, – Bo odpaśliśmy boki. Bo nad Wisłą prawie nie cuchnie trupem.

A less poetic, but no less colourful bigos metaphor was employed by Prime Minister and Minister of Military Affairs, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, when criticising the state of Polish interwar democracy. Once again, we’ve got here bigos of the smelly, unhealthy kind, cooked from unfresh ingredients…

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 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 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 more, nobody has the right to interpret the constitution. Interpretation is forbidden – so the government is left with nothing but bigos.

— I wywiad Miedzińskiego (26 sierpnia 1930 r.), in: Józef Piłsudski: Pisma zbiorowe, vol. IX, Warszawa: Instytut Józefa Piłsudskiego, 1937, p. 219-220, own translation Original text: Jak pan widzi, panie pośle, układ konstytucji jest tak chwiejny i nieokreślony, napisana jest tak niechlujnie, jak niechlujnym jest umysł panów posłów. W ogóle powiedzieć panu muszę, że ta niechlujna pisanina czyni z naszej konstytucji coś w rodzaju kiepskiego bigosu, w który obok zgniłej szynki pakują nadgniłą słoninkę i kładą to obok nie dokiszonej kapusty; tak, że można i należy każdy paragraf i artykuł brać zupełnie osobno, nie wiążąc go […] z żadnym innym artykułem. Naturalnie, zgniła szynka jest dla Pana Prezydenta, nadgniła słonina dla […] rządu, no a posłom zostaje nie dokiszona kapusta. Jak pan rozumie, żołądki wtedy nie mogą nic zrobić i wychodzi z tego smród, tak, że ulica Wiejska cała śmierdzi — proszę pana. I wyjście z tego chaosu jest możliwe tylko przez zmianę Konstytucji i napisanie jej w przyzwoity sposób. Dodam do tego, że nikt nie ma prawa interpretować konstytucji. Interpretacja jest zakazana — i wobec tego państwu pozostaje tylko bigos.

For good or ill, bigos seems to fit the Polish soul and Polish history so well that you can feel Makuszyński’s disappointment when he realises that another dish will make a better metaphor of a phenomenon he just observed in Polish society.

So far, 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 appetising.

— Kornel Makuszyński: Ozór po polsku, in: Świat, 22 (7), Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Orgelbrandów, 12 February 1927, p. 3, own translation Original text: Dotąd mi się niesłusznie zdawało, że narodową potrawą polską jest bigos, wytworna potrawa z kapuścianych głów, gorzkich serc i jadowitej wątroby, potrawa pełna kwasów i przejmujących zapachów. Przecież ktoś komuś zawsze „narobił bigosu”, potem sobie dali po pysku albo w gazecie, albo w kawiarni i życie, pełne rumieńców, temperamentu i bujności, było piękne. Widzę jednak ze smutkiem, że tradycja wietrzeje i wietrzeje bigos, szlachecka potrawa, a na polskim jadłospisie pyszni się – ozór po polsku. Bigos był potrawą zamaszystą, wonią już zdaleka się oznajmiającą, pełną soków i wigoru; ozór po polsku jest już bardziej wymyślną, zaprawioną na słodko, z migdałami i rodzynkami; jest to wprawdzie najgłupsza część bezmyślnego bydlęcia, lecz słodycz przyprawy jest nad wyraz smakowita.

Three-Cheer Bigos

And now it’s time for a little curiosity. Have you ever heard of bigos z wiwatem^🔊, or “bigos with a cheer”?

A faience bigos pot made at Ćmielów ca. 1860–1880

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).

— Magdalena Kasprzyk-Chevriaux: Historie kuchenne: Nie od razu z kapustą bigos gotowano, in: Wyborcza.pl, Agora, 16 January 2016, own translation Original text: Na polowaniach podawano bigos myśliwski, a także bigos z wiwatem (ugotowany wcześniej podgrzewano w naczyniu z pokrywą oblepioną ciastem; „wystrzelenie” pokrywki pod wpływem ciśnienia oznaczało, że trzeba już jeść).

That would be some loud cheer! But an even greater curiosity is that, while you can find quite a few descriptions of this tradition on the Internet (mostly in Polish, though), they all sound quite similar (usually not longer than one or two sentences) and, what’s more, none of them cites any sources of this information. Surely, if it’s really a time-honoured tradition it is claimed to be, then it must have been mentioned in some old books, right?

However, I’ve been unable to find any mention of the “bigos with a cheer” in pre-Internet sources. You could say, of course, that I could have asked some of those people who wrote or talked about it. Well, I tried, but to no avail. It would turn out that either the source has escaped that person’s memory or that it’s simply a fact so obvious that no citations are necessary. Besides, you can find information about bigos with a cheer everywhere, I’ve been told; just grab any 19th-century cookbook that comes to hand. Well, it is true that old recipës do mention a method of cooking where the pot is sealed with dough. Ćwierczakiewiczowa advises to cook the “English meatloaf” in such a way, while Maria Gruszecka uses this method to prepare a “meat essence” for the sick. But still no sight of bigos cooked in a sealed pot, let alone a recipë where a lid blowing off the pot would be a desired effect rather than accident. Nor was I able to find the phrase “bigos z wiwatem” anywhere I looked.

What I did discover was that this peculiar kind of bigos not only doesn’t seem to be mentioned in pre-Internet sources, but it’s also absent in online sources that are older than 26 November 2006. So what happened on the particular day? This is when Tomasz Steifer, a painter and heraldist, added the following information to the “Bigos” article in Polish Wikipedia:

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” of the cover caused by the pressure meant that the dish was ready for consumption.

— Bigos, in: Wikipedia: wolna encyklopedia, 26 November 2006, own translation Original text: 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” pokrywki, pod wpływem ciśnienia, oznaczało gotowość potrawy do spożycia.

No citation here either and so it has been to this day. I can tell you, as a long-time Wikipedian myself, that any information you find in Wikipedia is worth only as much as reliable is the source given in the citation. And if there’s no citation at all? Well, there you go. Yet Wikipedia’s reputation is so good that this factoid has quickly spread through the Polish web. Did Mr. Steifer read it in a book I haven’t been able to lay my hands on, did he describe an anecdote he had once heard, a family tradition, or did he take it simply out of his own head? This we may never know, as Tomasz Steifer died in 2015.

It’s possible, of course, that the source does exist and that this quaint method of cooking bigos was actually practised. So if you remember having read about it somewhere, then I will be very grateful for a bibliographic reference. Or maybe you prepare bigos in this way yourself and would like to share your personal experience with cheering bigos in the comment section below?

The only recipë I’m aware of that could be described as “bigos with a cheer” (although this appellation is not used in the source) is a hint, given by Castellan Adam Grodziecki in his 17th-century manuscript, for a rather bawdy and somewhat primitive prank. It’s bigos with a cheer that you can smell!

Mix some ant eggs […] into bigos […] or anything else, […] so whoever eats it, the bench underneath him will surely creak and it will go into your nose.

— Adam Grodziecki: Miscellanea De Omniscibili ex Observationibus, Biblioteka Kórnicka Polskiej Akademii Nauk, manuscript 711, f. 122; quoted in: Jarosław Dumanowski: Staropolskie przepisy kulinarne: Receptury rozproszone z XVI–XVIII w.: źródła rękopiśmienne, Warszawa: Muzeum Pałacu Króla Jana III w Wilanowie, 2017, p. 314, own translation Original text: Mrówczych jajec […] namieszać w bigos, […] albo w co inszego, […] kto będzie jadł tym, pewnie będzie ława trzeszczała pod nim, da się czuć, ale w nos.

Whether it’s actual ant eggs or a folk name for the seeds of some carminative plant, is not certain. Prof. Jarosław Dumanowski suspects that “ant eggs” may refer to common knotgrass.

Finally, let’s return to Pan Tadeusz one more time, because I’ve also come across the argument that “bigos with a cheer” is mentioned in this epic poem. Indeed, the words “bigos” and “wiwat” (“cheer” or “hurrah”, from Latin “vivat”, “long live”) even appear in the same verse. But who’s doing the cheering here – and three times at that? Is it the lid (loudly blowing off) or the hunters raiding the pot (cheering out of joy that the bigos is ready)? I will let you read and decide for yourself.

Now the bigos is ready. With triple hurrah Charge the huntsmen, spoon-armed, the hot vessel to raid, 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 deep crater.

— Mickiewicz, op. cit., Book IV, verses 846–850 Original text: Bigos już gotów. Strzelcy z trzykrotnym wiwatem, Zbrojni łyżkami, biegą i bodą naczynie, Miedź grzmi, dym bucha, bigos jak kamfora ginie, Zniknął, uleciał; tylko w czeluściach saganów Wre para jak w kraterze zagasłych wulkanów.

Recipë

And this is my own bigos – this time with sauerkraut, which I’ve seasoned with the following ingredients: onion, black pepper, allspice, bay leaves, marjoram, juniper, smoked chili pepper, cumin, cloves, saffron, dried bay boletes, prunes, honey, dry red wine, tomato paste.

As quoted above, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Zygmunt Gloger enjoyed bigos in 1882, while travelling to the vast primaeval Białowieża Forest in what is now eastern Poland. In 2015, two hairy Englishmen, David Myers and Simon King, relived this experience, except they rode motorbikes instead of horses. Here’s a video of them cooking bigos (which, for some reason, they pronounce “bigosh”) in the midst of the same forest.

Bigos preparation starts at 1:26.
Click here for their recipë.

References

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