[Sca-cooks] Peasant food// bigos and cabbage

[johnna holloway]

Philip & Susan Troy wrote:
> For example, it seems like what we absolutely, honest-to-gosh,
> take-it-to-the-bank _know_ is that, say, bigos is old, at least 200
> years, probably more.>
> We believe, either from archaeological finds, old written recipes from
> other cultures like, say, the Romans, that it's a really safe bet the
> Poles have been eating cabbage for the last 1000 years or more.>
> At risk of dropping a logical link or two, but cutting to the chase, we
> can therefore speculate that it's to some degree likely that the Poles
> have been eating bigos for some mumbledy-hundred years. And it _is_
> likely. > Adamantius
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There is quite a bit of material on consumption of cabbage and the
history of "bigos" within Maria Dembinska's Food and Drink in
Medieval Poland. The book sees "bigos" as a "cabbage and meat dish
of more recent adoption." (p.20) "still a part of the living food
culture of the country... Mikolaj Rej did not mention bigos specifically
in any of his writings during the sixteenth century, so the dish
must have assumed its more familiar name and form within the past
three hundred years." (pp 20-21). William Woys Weaver offers a version
in the recipe section but fails to correlate the recipe with the earlier
text. He does admit that he has taken what ingredients were available,
combined them with medieval preparation techniques and come up with
recipes for various dishes of a cuisine that has no surviving medieval
cookery texts. His various discussions are exactly akin to what has
been being discussed here regarding peasant cuisine and recreating
versions of dishes that have no recipes. See pages 141-146 and chapter
4.
Cabbage is covered on pages 123-125.

Johnnae llyn Lewis  Johnna Holloway