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Dish

Bigos

Stews, Braises and Sauced Dishes

Bigos is a Polish dish of assorted chopped meats stewed together with sauerkraut, shredded fresh cabbage and spices, originally from Poland and also traditional across the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It typically combines pork, beef, veal, poultry or game with precooked sauerkraut and fresh cabbage, seasoned with onions, dried mushrooms, salt, black pepper, allspice, juniper berries and bay leaves, braised together over several hours until the stew thickens through evaporation, sometimes helped along with flour or potato. Bigos is considered to improve with repeated refrigeration and reheating as its flavors meld, which has made it a traditional dish for major Catholic holidays such as Christmas and Easter.

Facts
Origin Period, From (Year)
from 1682 2
Sourced to the subject's own accountWikipedia states the word bigos is not attested before the 17th century; 1682 is the publication year of Compendium ferculorum, Stanislaw Czerniecki's cookbook, the oldest surviving printed Polish cookbook and the earliest source with actual bigos recipes, though an earlier, undated medieval layered dish called compositum is proposed as a root tradition.
Origin RegionSourced to the subject's own account
Poland (and the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) 2
Partially Attested
Origin Period, To (Year)
to 1900 2
Sourced to the subject's own accountMarks the approximate end of the 19th century, the period across which Wikipedia's own History section describes the cheaper sauerkraut-based rascal's bigos, first common under King Augustus III of Poland (reigned 1734-1763), gradually superseding the older meat-heavy versions to become the bigos known today; no source gives a precise year for when this was complete.
Classification
Course
Main Course 1
Dietary SuitabilitySourced to the subject's own account
Contains Meat or Poultry 2
Connections

In Cuisine

Polish Cuisine, Cuisines
Source Bigos (Wikipedia)

Uses Ingredient

Cabbage, Ingredients
Source Bigos (Wikidata)
In the Other Atlases
  • Also in Geography Atlas: Poland, originated there.
Sources
1. Bigos (Wikidata)
  • P31 (instance of): Main course
    Main course
  • Uses Ingredient: Cabbage, infobox main_ingredient field
    Various meats, sauerkraut, cabbage
View the Source
2. Bigos (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia
  • Wikipedia, Bigos, lead paragraph, last sentence
    Originally from Poland, the dish also became traditional in the areas of the vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
  • Wikipedia, Bigos, History section, Czerniecki and 1682 sentence
    Stanislaw Czerniecki, head chef to Prince Aleksander Michal Lubomirski, who consistently used the diminutive form bigosek, included several recipes for it in his Compendium ferculorum (A Collection of Dishes), the oldest surviving cookbook printed and published in Polish, in 1682.
  • Wikipedia, Bigos, History section, 19th-century sauerkraut sentence
    Over the course of the 19th century, its rise in popularity continued as the proportion of meat decreased in favor of sauerkraut, eventually superseding all other kinds of bigos and losing the disparaging epithet in the process.
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigos (dietary-suitability)
    Bigos, or hunter's stew, is a Polish dish of chopped meat of various kinds stewed with sauerkraut, shredded fresh cabbage and spices.
  • In Cuisine: Polish Cuisine, Wikipedia category list
View the Source
Wikidata: Bigos
Wikidata Q598222, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source
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