The classics of Hungarian cuisine
As in many Central and Eastern European countries, soups are among the most popular starters, although some are hearty enough to constitute a meal in their own right. Among the best-known soups(leves), it's impossible not to mention gulyásleves, which resembles - as the name suggests - a goulash, only runnier. Originally used to describe the meat of the cowherd, it's made with beef, onion, paprika and vegetables. Other types of soup include the hearty bableves, a thick soup with red beans and sausages, or pacalleves, made with tripe. The lighter sóskaleves, made with sorrel, is garnished with hard-boiled eggs.
Other hot or cold starters include kőrözött, a fresh cheese paste with paprika, onion and caraway seeds spread on bread, or rántott sajt, breaded cheese croquettes, sometimes served as a main course with French fries. The term palacsinta refers to all types of pancake, savoury or sweet, topped with cheese, mushrooms or charcuterie as a starter, while the hearty hortobágyi palacsinta is filled with minced veal and topped with a sauce based on sour cream and paprika. If there's one snack you won't want to miss in Hungary, it's lángos. This flat doughnut, served piping hot and spread with sour cream, grated cheese and sometimes bacon, can be found almost everywhere in Budapest's popular markets.
Hungarian cuisine is renowned for its many dishes in sauce, such as the unmistakable goulash, halfway between stew and soup. It's often confused with pörkölt, a beef-based stew whose rich, dark-red color comes from the abundant use of paprika, while csirkepaprikás is a chicken-based dish in a creamy paprika sauce. The side dish is usually egg noodles called nokedli, which in German-speaking countries are known as spaetzle. The very popular rántott hús is simply the Hungarian version of the Viennese schnitzel. The stefánia szelet is a meatloaf topped with hard-boiled eggs and often served with potato salad. Cabbage is used extensively in Hungarian cuisine, as in töltött káposzta, a Transylvanian dish of cabbage stuffed with pork and rice, served with sour cream. But there are other - rare - vegetable dishes such as lecsó, a stew of peppers and tomatoes sometimes served with smoked bacon or sausage. It's also not uncommon to find game dishes in Budapest at quite reasonable prices. At the beginning of the 20th century, the city boasted one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe, a presence that probably predates the arrival of the Magyars. Hungarian Jewish dishes include Shabbat sólet, made with barley, kidney beans, meat (beef and goose) and hard-boiled eggs.
For a country without access to the sea, (freshwater) fish dishes are surprisingly plentiful. Prepared in breadcrumbs or cooked in court-bouillon or in the oven, it's perch(fogas), catfish(harcsa) and carp(ponty) that land most often on our plates. A must-try: halászlé is the Hungarian fish soup par excellence. Quite spicy and made from a variety of river fish, it is often presented in a small cauldron called a bogrács.
Between desserts and prestigious coffees
Hungary boasts a wide variety of desserts, thanks to its position at the crossroads of the Slavic and Germanic worlds, and to the legacy of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. All kinds of multi-layered cakes typical of Central Europe are baked here, the most famous of which is undoubtedly the dobos torta, with its layering of sponge cake filled with chocolate buttercream and covered with a deliciously crunchy caramel icing. Or theesterházy torta with layers of almond macaroon cookie topped with cognac buttercream and decorated with fondant. This cake takes its name from the princely Esterházy family. The gerbeaud or zserbó consists of several layers of cookies filled with walnuts and apricot compote, all covered in chocolate. Similar to our mille-feuille, krémes is a square cake with vanilla cream between two layers of puff pastry. In a similar vein, franciakrémes are topped with a layer of vanilla cream, followed by a second thick layer of whipped cream, all decorated with a coffee or caramel glaze. Another speciality inherited from Jewish tradition, flódni is like a three-layer mille-feuille, alternating walnuts, poppies and apples. Hungarians are big consumers of rétes, better known under the generic name of strudel. The latter is most often filled with apples(almás), poppies(mákos), walnuts(diós), fromage frais (túró) or morello cherries(meggy). Finally, beigli - known in Poland as makowiec - is a brioche rolled with poppy seeds, typical of Central European cuisine.
But there's a whole host of other desserts, including excellent pancakes(palacsinta), filled with apples, poppies, chestnuts or jam. The famous Gundel palacsinta contains a mixture of nuts, raisins and rum, topped with a rich chocolate sauce. More surprisingly, túrogomboc takes the form of small balls of fresh cheese poached and rolled in cookie crumbs, served warm with red fruit or apricot compote. In summer, Hungarians enjoy cold fruit soups (with cream), such as meggyleves, with Morello cherries. Conversely, in winter, kürtőskalács take center stage, especially at festivals and Christmas markets. This long cylinder of caramelized dough, sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon or walnuts, is a must-try. If you want to sample all these tempting treats, you can't miss one of the capital's many cafés. Proud of its Austro-Hungarian tradition, Budapest is brimming with cafés, each more sumptuous than the last. They were the meeting places of Hungarian high society, and reached their apogee at the beginning of the 20th century, when they were the HQs of the city's intellectuals, artists and other socialites. Among the most emblematic are the Gerbeaud Café, founded in 1858 after the Swiss chocolatier Émile Gerbeaud, and the Central Café, opened in 1887, with its unique Art Deco interiors. The New York Café, named after the New York Life Insurance Company, boasts breathtaking rococo decor. Last but not least, the café (Andrássy út 39) - formerly known as Alexandra Bookcafe - now closed and housed in an Art Deco building, delights visitors with its superb Renaissance decoration overflowing with gilded moldings. Thanks to the Ottomans, who imported this hot beverage to Europe, and the influence of Austria, coffee(kávé in Hungarian) became very popular in the country in the 19th century. It's usually served hot, so for a café au lait, order a tejeskávé. Alternatively, you can enjoy a forró csokoládé or hot chocolate, the taste of which was also popularized by the Austrians.
Wines, beers and other beverages
Hungarian viticulture can look back on a thousand-year history. It blends the oriental traditions imported by the first Magyar settlers with the know-how of Roman viticulture. Indeed, winegrowing flourished in ancient Pannonia when the Danube was one of the borders of the Roman Empire, not to mention the techniques introduced from Italy and Burgundy during the Renaissance.
Since 1990, Hungary's vineyards have been divided into twenty-two regions, currently covering 150,000 ha and producing 4 million hectolitres. The country lies at the crossroads of continental and Mediterranean climates. Its soil is rich and diversified, and a large number of local grape varieties are grown here. The result is original, high-quality wines with subtle aromas. Tokaj-hegyalja is a unique wine-growing region along the Slovak border, producing the famous tokaj, celebrated by Louis XV as "the king of wines and the wine of kings". The pride of Hungarian viticulture, this sweet, syrupy wine is comparable to a highly aromatic Sauternes.
The wine-growing region around the old town of Eger is famous for its red wine, egri bikáver or "bull's blood". The name is said to have originated in the 15th century, when the powerful Turkish armies that attacked the city were repulsed by local troops encouraged by large glasses of egri bikavér poured by women. The Villány-Siklós region produces both fine red and white wines, while Somló is famous for its aromatic furmint and juhfark grapes, which grow on the fertile rocky slopes of an ancient volcano that has been happily extinct for millions of years, giving these wines all their character.
Lake Balaton - the largest in Central Europe - offers a microclimate along its shores, wetter in summer and milder in winter, enabling a singular, high-quality wine production. These include the badacsony, balatonfüred-csopak and dél-balaton grape varieties, used mainly for dry white and sparkling wines. Other wine-producing regions include kékfrankos, a light red wine from Sopron, near the Austrian border, and the fruity kékfrankos from Szekszárd. Other varieties include kadarka, kékoportó, kékburgundi, furmint, hárslevelű, zeusz, tramini, olaszrizling, szürkebarát and kéknyelű.
Unlike wine, beer is not really the country's specialty, although it is becoming increasingly popular especially among the younger generation. Local varieties include Dreher and Soproni. More full-bodied, the famous Unicum liqueur is made from over forty varieties of plant, giving it an inimitable taste. In a way, it's the national drink. As in the rest of Central Europe, there are of course numerous white brandies (apricot, pear, plum, etc.) known in Hungary as pálinka. Like Unicum, they have an alcohol content of around 40%. Last but not least, Traubi Szóda is a grape-flavored soft drink. Despite competition from other soft drinks such as Coca-Cola, it's a drink that's come back into fashion, particularly among nostalgic consumers who discovered Traubi Szóda in the 1970s when it first appeared in what was then Communist Hungary.
In the kingdom of paprika and kolbász
To talk about Hungarian cuisine without mentioning paprika in detail would almost be an offense to the country. This spice is used absolutely everywhere in Hungary and is used in countless recipes. This is all the more surprising given that paprika is made from different varieties of chili pepper, a plant native to tropical America, and that Hungary has never had a colonial empire or even any kind of maritime trade since the country does not even have a coastline. However, the facts are there, paprika is the favorite spice of Hungarians to the point that there are no less than two museums in the country, in Szeged and Kalocsa, localities known for their very hot summers, perfect for cultivating and drying the precious spice. In 1937, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to the Hungarian Albert Szent-Györgyi, who used chillies as a subject of study to isolate vitamin C compounds. This shows the importance of paprika in the country. There are obviously different qualities such as különleges (very mild), csípősmentes csemege (mild), csemege paprika (semi-mild), csípős csemege (strong) or erős (very strong), without forgetting of course smoked paprika or füstölt paprika. An ideal product to bring back in your luggage during a stay in Budapest.
Moreover, this spice is used in the composition of a large number of Hungarian sausages that are not very well known in France and yet of excellent quality, such as kolbász, which are a must for any Magyar table. More or less spicy(csípős meaning spicy), they can be presented as sausages to be cooked or as sausages. Among the best-known products are hurka, which comes in three types with májas hurka, made from pork liver, húsos hurka, made from lean meat and véres hurka, which is the equivalent of our black pudding. Teliszalámi (or winter salami) is made from spiced pork and smoked cold. The Szeged Teliszalámi obtained a European Union PDO in 2007, followed by the Budapest Teliszalámi which has had a PGI since 2009. Gyulai kolbász, flavored with paprika and caraway seeds, originates from the city of Gyula and has a PGI. Also protected by a PGI, csabai szalámi and csabai kolbász - produced around the town of Békéscsaba - are richly spiced. They are so popular that they have been the subject of an annual gastronomic festival since 1997. Debreceni kolbász - named after Debrecen, the country's second largest city - is the best known Hungarian sausage. Smoked and flavored with sweet paprika, it has crossed borders and is now found from Italy to Poland and south to Bulgaria and even North America. For the more curious, we mention disznósajt, a kind of spicy head cheese, or szalonna, a variety of bacon that contains almost no meat.
Finally, one would not necessarily think of associating Hungary and foie gras in the same sentence. However, if France is indeed the world's largest producer of this refined dish, it has long been produced in Hungary, and the country has a virtual monopoly on the production of goose liver(libamájpástétom in Hungarian), the production of which in France is often limited to Alsace.
