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| tytuł = Pan Tadeusz, or The Last Foray in Lithuania: A Tale of the Gentry during 1811-18121811–1812

| miejsce = Lwów-Warszawa-KrakówLwów–Warszawa–Kraków

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",<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verses 820--821820–821</ref> Judge Soplica "opened a box full of flagons" of Goldwasser<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 821</ref> (a herbal liqueur from Danzig, or Gdańsk, famous for the gold flakes added to every bottle), while "in the pots warmed the bigos."<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 831</ref> ''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 quote know how to describe what bigos actually tastes like.

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 be at best a side dish rather than an actual ingredient of the bigos! Let's take, for instance, an 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 the had been treated to grass in the summer, then he would be fed hay in the winter.<ref>{{Cyt

| tytuł = Dzieje obyczajów w dawnej Polsce: wiek XVI--XVIIIXVI–XVIII

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 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 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 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--17631734–1763).

| rok = 1958--19691958–1969

''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 for Triflers'' (''Bigos hultajski, czyli szkoła trzpiotów'').

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

Is, just as true bigos, so messy and jumbled. {{small|[...]}}

| strony = 215--217215–217

| This novel is a messy mixture of everything, {{small|[...]}} just a scaffold thrown to the wind, to hold images haphazardly hung thereupon {{small|[...]}} All bizarrely entangled and without any logic {{small|[...]}} Such will be this book, full of repetitions, chatter and descriptions that fell off the pen wherever they happened to be nugded by my imagination; this why I've entitled it Bigos Hultajski, wich 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.

| strony = XVII--XVIIIXVII–XVIII

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 hypothesized 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."<ref>Gloger, ''op. cit.''</ref> And so even today we can find explanations, as in [https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bigos&oldid=54979769 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 when Mickiewicz wrote ''Pan Tadeusz'', or the early 1830s, ''bigos hultajski'' must had become so popular that it supplanted all other, older, kinds of bigos. Then it could finally drop the disparaging epithet and become, simply, bigos. Every self-respecting Polish cookbook writer of the 19th century could not neglect to include a few recipes for sauerkraut bigos in her works -- – including the great (both figuratively and literally) Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa. Below, I quote a recipe written doen by one of here most loyal fans -- – Bolesław Prus (today remembered as a great novelist and somewhat less remembered as a columinst).

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!

[[File:Bigośnica z Baranówki.jpg|thumb|Porcelanowa A porcelain ''bigośnica wykonana w Baranówce w ok'', or bigos pot, made at Baranówka ca. 1830 r.]]

| 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. {{small|[...]}} 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.

| strony = 305--306305–306

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 the 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!

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.

[[File:Bigośnica z Baranówki 2.jpg|thumb|Porcelanowa bigośnica wykonana w Baranówce w A porcelain bigos pot made at Baranówka ca. 1828 r.]]

| tytuł = Co o bigosie pisać? -- – odpowiedź czytelniczce

[[File:Bigośnica z Ćmielowa.jpg|thumb|A faience bigos pot made in at Ćmielów, in the years 1860--1880ca. 1860–1880]]

}}</ref> But still no sight of bigos cooked in a sealed pot, let alone a recipe where an ejected a cover falling from the pot would be a desired effect rather than accident. Nor was I able to find the phrase ''bigos z wiwatem'' anywhere I looked.

For the end, let's return to ''Pan Tadeusz'' one more time, because I've also come across the argument that "bigos with a cheer" is mention 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 bigos (due to pressure) or the hunters raiding the pot (cheering out of joy that the bigos is ready)? I will let you read and decide for yourself.

[[File:Bigos zwwk.jpg|thumb|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.]]