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In this post I'm I’m going to continue telling the [[Genuine Old Polish Bigos|history of bigos]], the Polish national dish, and also return to ''Pan Tadeusz'', the Polish national epic. We've We’ve already discussed what the protagonists of ''Pan Tadeusz'' [[Epic Cooking: Breakfast at Judge Soplica's|used to have for breakfast]], but what we omitted back then was the hunters' 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).

The Polish word ''bigos'' is often rendered into English as "hunter's stew", but in fact, hunter's hunter’s bigos, or ''bigos myśliwski'' (pronounced: {{pron|bee|gawss}} {{pron|mish|leef|skee}}), is just one of its many varieties. Whether it's it’s a &nbsp;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 I’ve never really understood why anyone would enjoy shooting terrified animals, but if Poland's Poland’s national bard himself (even if he admitted to be "a wretched marksman"<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 43</ref>) wrote so much about hunting in his epic, then let's let’s at least quote a &nbsp;short excerpt, which is still quite up-to-date and may not be appreciated by the pro-hunting lobby in Poland.

Anyway, after the hunt was over, the hunters (who had left home early in the morning with empty stomachs) treated themselves to a &nbsp;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 820–821</ref> Judge Soplica "opened a box full of flagons" of Goldwasser<ref>Mickiewicz, ''op. cit.'', Book IV, verse 821</ref> (a &nbsp;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 &nbsp;doubt the most beautiful literary monument to this Polish national dish. Or maybe bigos is considered a &nbsp;national dish because it is mentioned in ''Pan Tadeusz''? Whatever the case, Mickiewicz himself admitted that he didn't didn’t quite know how to describe what bigos actually tastes like.

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

So when, how and why did sauerkraut become part of bigos? For example, to Henryk Sienkiewicz, a &nbsp;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 &nbsp;character from his trilogy of historical novels set in 17th-century Poland.

But if we moved back to the times closer to those of the trilogy's trilogy’s characters, we would see that you could have eaten bigos with sauerkraut – but the kraut would have been at best a &nbsp;side dish rather than an actual ingredient of the bigos! Let's Let’s take, for instance, a &nbsp;17th-century epigram by Wacław Potocki about a &nbsp;Polish nobleman, who went empty-bellied to a &nbsp;banquet hosted by an Italian and returned home just as hungry. By the way, his misadventure is reminiscent of an old anecdote about a &nbsp;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.<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> The nobleman in Potocki's Potocki’s poem, after a &nbsp;feast of spinach, celery, asparagus and artichokes, craved to eat his full of meat at last.

Why is this funny? Because the roles were reversed and lo, the lord is having leftovers from his own servants' servants’ table. Leftovers of what, exactly, do we have here? On the one hand, there's 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 wasn’t referred to as ''bigos''! On the other hand, we've 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 &nbsp;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' servants’ table, then? Perhaps as leavings from their lord's 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 &nbsp;separate dish that was served as a &nbsp;side to the veal bigos, or was everything mixed up together and reheated in a &nbsp;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?

}}</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 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 wouldn’t take long to discover that such sauerkraut bigos could be stored for a &nbsp;long time and reheated multiple times, which made it a &nbsp;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 &nbsp;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 &nbsp;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'').

''Bigos hultajski'' also makes an appearance in the title of a &nbsp;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 It’s not really a &nbsp;novel in the modern sense, but rather a &nbsp;loose collection of stories, drafts, digressions, polemics and sociological conjectures, arranged into a &nbsp;plot without a &nbsp;beginning or an ending. Apparently, the only thing the binds its four volumes together is a &nbsp;series of four forewords (and one "hindword"), which are incidentally considered the most interesting parts of the entire work.<ref>{{Cyt

With time, the word ''"hultaj"'' gained a &nbsp;negative connotation that it has today. In modern Polish, it's 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."<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 &nbsp;kind of bigos that is particularly heavy on meat and not – as in its original sense – a &nbsp;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 &nbsp;few recipës for sauerkraut bigos in her works – including the great (both figuratively and literally) Lucyna Ćwierczakiewiczowa. Below, I quote a &nbsp;recipë written by one of her most loyal fans – Bolesław Prus (today remembered as a &nbsp;great novelist and somewhat less remembered as a &nbsp;columnist).

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

Unfortunately, not everything that tastes good is good for your health. Bigos happens to have a &nbsp;reputation for being an excessively high-fat dish that tends to sit heavy on the stomach. What's 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 &nbsp;career as an important part of the Austro-Hungarian army's army’s diet on the Galician front, but, on the other hand, it was accused by Lieutenant Dub of giving him diarrhoea.

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

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

Cyprian Kamil Norwid, a &nbsp;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.

Mr. Ernest Bryll, a &nbsp;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 &nbsp;"dangerous, heavy dish, {{…}}, a mixture of everything, but also hacking people to pieces".<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> It's It’s the dark side of bigos, reflecting the dark side of Polish history.

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 we’ve got here bigos of the smelly, unhealthy kind, cooked from unfresh ingredients…

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

And now it's it’s time for a &nbsp;little curiosity. Have you ever heard of ''bigos z wiwatem'' (pronounced: {{pron|bee|gawss}} {{pron|zvee|vah|tem}}), or "bigos with a cheer"?

That would be some loud cheer! But an even greater curiosity is that, while you can find quite a &nbsp;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 what’s more, none of them cites any sources of this information. Surely, if it's it’s really a &nbsp;time-honoured tradition it is claimed to be, then it must have been mentioned in some old books, right?

However, I've 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 person’s memory or that it's it’s simply a &nbsp;fact so obvious that no citations are necessary. Besides, you can find information about bigos with a &nbsp;cheer everywhere, I've I’ve been told; just grab any 19th-century cookbook that comes to hand. Well, it is true that old recipës do mention a &nbsp;method of cooking where the pot is sealed with dough. Ćwierczakiewiczowa advises to cook the "English meatloaf" in such a &nbsp;way,<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> while Maria Gruszecka uses this method to prepare a &nbsp;"meat essence" for the sick.<ref>{{Cyt

}}</ref> But still no sight of bigos cooked in a &nbsp;sealed pot, let alone a &nbsp;recipë where a &nbsp;lid blowing off the pot would be a &nbsp;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 doesn’t seem to be mentioned in pre-Internet sources, but it's 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 &nbsp;painter and heraldist, [https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bigos&diff=5477053&oldid=5246284 added the following information to the "Bigos" article] in Polish Wikipedia:

No citation here either and so it has been [https://pl.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bigos&oldid=55952526 to this day.] I can tell you, as a &nbsp;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 there’s no citation at all? Well, there you go. Yet Wikipedia's Wikipedia’s reputation is so good that this factoid has quickly spread through the Polish web. Did Mr. Steifer read it in a &nbsp;book I haven't haven’t been able to lay my hands on, did he describe an anecdote he had once heard, a &nbsp;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 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 &nbsp;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 I’m aware of that could be described as "bigos with a cheer" (although this appellation is not used in the source) is a &nbsp;hint, given by Castellan Adam Grodziecki in his 17th-century manuscript, for a &nbsp;rather bawdy and somewhat primitive prank. It's It’s bigos with a &nbsp;cheer that you can smell!

Whether it's it’s actual ant eggs or a &nbsp;folk name for the seeds of some carminative plant, is not certain. Prof. Jarosław Dumanowski suspects that "ant eggs" may refer to common knotgrass.<ref>Dumanowski, ''op. cit.''</ref>

Finally, let's let’s return to ''Pan Tadeusz'' one more time, because I've 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 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.

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 Here’s a &nbsp;video of them cooking bigos (which, for some reason, they pronounce "bigosh") in the midst of the same forest.