[Sca-cooks] Question to the group....

[Kayah]

I'm sure I've seen a 16th century Polish politician, possibly Mikolaj Rej -
write about the goodness and simplicity of bigos, and even then I remember
reading that the basic recipe was old.(although I may be mistaken) .. Even
without that, I would say it's an old food by logically looking at the
customs of peasants and different foods which *are* documented from that
period, but are still the same today. eg: Cwikla - a Polish condiment.. has
been served on peasant tables for well over 400 years now - the recipe
remains mainly unchanged to this day. Cabbage as well as pork fat has been
around before even sourdough bread started making an appearance in Poland
(9th - 10th centuries). The recipe for Bigos is very simple - boil cabbage
or sauerkraut, add some leftover meat, and you're done - for me it's hard to
believe that some peasant *wouldn't* come up with something like that.
It may not have been in writing till the 1800's, but consider that Peasant
customs changed very little over the last 500 years (if not more) till the
beginning of this century. The biggest change was potatoes which started to
be eaten instead of grain, but that is as far as I know the only difference.
They still followed their customs they way their fathers did. Peasant
customs change very little as a whole, so why should food be any much
different?
I would consider that as enough indirect evidence to say that certain food
recipes with ingredients that were available before the reign of Queen Bona
are pretty old, although perhaps changed a little bit over time.
That's my reasoning on it, and I feel that it's a pretty good case, however
if you expect a fully written recipe for bigos... I can tell you that even
today if you go to different parts of Poland, they will show you how to make
bigos.. more or less the same.. but still different. :)
Polish food recipes weren't documented well until the baroque period (pity
:/)- although there are accounts of feasts as early as 1000. - I would love
to get my hands on those.. but I wouldn't even know where to start looking -
even when visiting Poland. :(

Kay


> > I've been making pierogis by hand with the old recipies of both my
> > grandmothers.. and just got onto wondering.. are pierogis period
anyway? -
> > in Polish cuisine that is... I know Bigos is cause that's been around
for
> > ages, but..
>
> Just out of curiosity, how do we know bigos is period? I believe there's
> a written recipe in the works of Careme, c. 1800 C.E., but is there
> really any hard evidence for its being significantly older than that?
>
> > The most traditional ones like sauerkraut and mushrooms or just mushroom
or
> > minced meat, or the ones that are usually prepared in the summer with
fruit
> > filling like plum, strawberry or wild blueberry..
> > I don't expect the Russian spicy potato pierogis to be period though! :P
>
> We've actually had several discussions on this list on the differences
> between pirogs, pieroshki and pierogen, and which types were probably
> period. I know the baked Russian turnovers are mentioned in the
> Domestroi, for example, but typical fillings would likely include kasha
> or meat.
>
> Adamantius
>
> --
> Phil & Susan Troy
>
> troy at asan.com
>
> "It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
> things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
> let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98