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However, even without these sauces, bigos is no ordinary dish,

for it is artistically composed of good vegetables. The

foundation of it is sliced, sour cabbage, which, as the saying

is, goes into the mouth of itself; this, enclosed in a kettle,

covers with its moist bosom the best parts of selected meat, and

is parboiled, until the fire extracts from it all the living

juices, and until the fluid boils over the edge of the pot, and

the very air around is fragrant with the aroma.

The bigos was soon ready. The huntsmen with a thrice-repeated

vivat, armed with spoons, ran up and assailed the kettle; the

copper rang, the vapour burst forth, the bigos evaporated like

camphor, it vanished and flew away; only in the jaws of the

caldrons the steam still seethed, as in the craters of extinct

volcanoes.