16 Dec /15

Goulash

Goulash – Word of the day - EVS Translations
Goulash – Word of the day – EVS Translations

The word Hungary does not share its origin with the adjective hungry, though hearing the country’s name, often makes our mouths water and that thanks to the Hungarian most widely known dish – the goulash.

In Hungary, goulash, or gulyás, as the locals call it, is a dish with a consistency halfway between a soup and a stew, made with small cubes of meat (usually beef), flavoured with the “Holy Trinity” of the Hungarian kitchen – lard, onion and red paprika powder and served in a bowl to be eaten with a spoon.

 

Its origin traces back to the 9th century, to stews cooked by Hungarian herdsmen (cowboys) who while pasturing, would butcher the weaker cows and make stews based on ancient recipes passed down from their ancestor. Soon people started calling these dishes gulyáshús (goulash meat), from the Hungarian words gulyás (herdsman) and hús (meat).

Of course, back in time, the herdsmen’s stews and soups did not have the red colour that goulash is so famous for today. Hungarians did not even know the paprika until the Turkish invasion in the 16th century.

At first paprika was only considered as a decorative plant to cultivation starting in only the end of 18th century. In 1790, Count Jozsef Gvadanyi published a paper, titled A country notary’s travels to Budapest, in which he described the Hungarian Goulash Meat that was only made with onion and black pepper.

By the beginning of the 19th century paprika turned into one of the most popular spices in Hungary and made it to flavour the goulash as well and turn the dish into the most popular one in the country, as the first written record from a British source confirms.

In letters from the private correspondence of Queen Victoria and the Crown Princess of Prussia, in 1866, the Queen writes: “I have all their favourite dishes cooked..for them—goulash for the Hungarians, and polenta and macaroni for the Italians.“

With the rise of the Hungarian nationalism in the second half of the 19th century, the paprika-seasoned goulash moved from the farmhouses to the tables of the wealthy and towards the end of the century, during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, spread outside of the Hungarian borders, first to the Austrian Empire, Germany, and the Balkans, and finally around the world.

Germans and Austrians adapted the basic goulash recipe to their own tastes, producing the Gulaschsuppe (goulash soup), along with paprika-flavoured meat stews called Gulasch, which the Hungarians, however, would call a pörkölt, not a goulash.

At Christmas time, the preferred goulash serving is to have the stew served directly in a loaf of bread, which is common for Hungarian, Czech, Austrian and German Christmas markets. Jó étvágyat!