Gulyás

The Hungarian word gulyás means herdsman or cattle drover, and the dish is named for the men who tended cattle on the Great Hungarian Plain. It was cooked outdoors in a bogrács, a cauldron suspended over a fire, from beef, onions and whatever was to hand.

In Hungary gulyás is a soup — brothy, generous, eaten from a bowl. The thick stew served under the name goulash in much of the world corresponds more closely to a different Hungarian dish, pörkölt, and the confusion is a longstanding source of mild exasperation among Hungarian cooks.

The dish became a national symbol during the nineteenth century, when Hungarian identity was being asserted against Habsburg rule and peasant traditions took on patriotic significance.

Paprika arrived in Hungary via the Ottoman Empire and was slowly transformed from an ornamental curiosity into the defining spice of the national cuisine. Hungarian paprika is produced in several grades from sweet to hot, and the quality of the powder largely determines the quality of the dish.

The critical technique is that paprika must never be added to a scorching pan. Its sugars burn in seconds and turn irredeemably bitter. The pot is pulled from the heat, the paprika stirred into the softened onions and fat, and liquid added almost immediately.

The other foundation is onion, used in a quantity that surprises the uninitiated and cooked slowly until it collapses. Between the onion and the paprika, the soup gets both its body and its deep red colour without any thickener.

Beef shin or another gelatinous cut is simmered until tender with caraway, potato, carrot and pepper. Small pinched egg noodles called csipetke are often dropped in near the end.

It is served with bread, sometimes with a hot paprika paste on the side for those who want more heat, and traditionally with a pickled vegetable. Cooked over a wood fire in the open air, which is still a popular way to prepare it at gatherings, it picks up a faint smokiness that no kitchen version quite matches.