Bigos and Better

[kaitou]

I'm reading a book on the history of salt, which alternates between really interesting and really boring. I hit an interesting bit at lunch today. twigcollins talks about Polish love of food, and I must believe her because I have found proof! Bigos (I now know) is sauerkraut with meat, bacon, pickled plums and other fruit. The making of it is mentioned in the Pan Tadeusz, the Polish national poem.



The bigos is being cooked. No words can tell
The wonder of its color, taste, and smell.
Mere words and rhymes are jingling sounds, whose sense
No city stomach really comprehends.
For Lithuanian food and song, you ought
To have good health and country life and sport.

But bigos e'en without sauce is good,
of vegetables curiously brewed.
The basis of it is sliced sauerkraut,
Which, as they say, just walks into the mouth;

Enclosed within a cauldron, its moist breast
Lies on the choicest meat, in slices pressed.
There it is parboiled till the heat draws out
The living juices from the cauldron's spout,
and all the air is fragrant with the smell.

*Lithuania here doesn't mean the country, but the Grand Duchy.