Hungary tourist information

Cuisine ^*

Hungarian or Magyar cuisine is the cuisine characteristic to Hungary and the Magyars. Hungarian food is often spicy. It frequently uses paprika, black pepper and onions. Potatoes are also commonly used in many dishes. Hungarians are passionate about their soups, desserts and stuffed pancakes, with fierce rivalries between regional variations of the same dish, e.g. the fish soups cooked differently on the banks of Hungary's two main rivers: the Danube (Duna) and the Tisza.

Hungarian cuisine is influenced both by the history of the Magyar people and by the environment found in the Carpathian basin when the Magyars settled in the late 800s. The importance of livestock is apparent in the prominence of meat in Hungarian food. The nomadic lifestyle of the Magyars may be reflected in the many dishes cooked over the fire, from goulash in a bogracs (or cauldron) to pogacsa pastries.

In the 15th century, King Matthias Corvinus and his Neopolitan wife Beatrice were influenced by Renaissance culture and helped introduce ingredients like garlic and onions to Hungarian cuisine. Elements of Turkish cuisine were adopted by Hungarians during the Ottoman era, mainly in the form of vegetable dishes, but the influence is not as pronounced as in the Balkans. Cakes and sweets in Hungary show a strong German/Austrian influence. Hungarian cuisine uses a large variety of cheeses, but the most common are turo (a fresh curd cheese) and trappista.

In Hungary, breakfast may consist of fresh bread, fruit, vegetables, cereal, or a meat (such as kolbasz). Lunch is the major meal of the day, usually with several courses: soup is followed by a main dish including meat, which precedes a dessert. Fruit may follow. Dinner is a far less significant meal than lunch. It may be similar to breakfast, with bread and vegetables, or perhaps a bowl of soup, and usually consists of only one course.

Soups

• Gulyasleves (goulash - in Hungary goulash is a soup, not a stew!)
• Halaszle (Hungarian fish soup with paprika)
• Husleves (meat soup)
• Hideg meggyleves (chilled sour cherry soup)
• Jokai bableves (a bean soup named after Mor Jokai; bab means bean)

Main courses

• Turos csusza (noodles baked with turo - served savoury with bacon or sweet with sugar)
• Pecsenye (thin pork steak served with cabbage)
• Toltott kaposzta (stuffed cabbage)
• Ciganypecsenye (Gypsy roast)
• Porkolt (meat stew - this dish resembles the goulash eaten in other countries)
• Csirkepaprikas (Chicken Paprikash, a porkolt/stew with tejfol/sour cream)
• Lecso (Hungarian vegetable stew)
• Kolbasz (sausage similar to kielbasa, but seasoned with paprika)
• Hurka (2 types--"majas" hurka made with liver and rice, and "veres" hurka which is blood sausage)
• Galuska (Hungarian noodles)
• Hortobagyi palacsinta (pancake filled with veal)
• Paprikas krumpli (Paprika based stew with spicy sausage and potatoes)

Sweets

• Dobos torta (sponge cake layered with chocolate paste and glazed with caramel and nuts)
• Palacsinta (stuffed pancake)
• Vanilias kifli (vanilla croissant)
• Retes (strudel)
• Turo Rudi (turo filled chocolate bar)
• Szaloncukor (flavoured candies eaten at Christmas)
• Bejgli (Similar to retes, eaten at Christmas and Easter.)

Other

• Langos (flat fried bread)
• Pogacsa (round puffed pastry, traditionally cooked on the fire)
• Kifli (small crescent shaped pastry)

Drinks
Hungarian wine has a history dating back to at least Roman times, and that history reflects the country's position between the Slavs and the Germanic peoples. The best-known wines are the white dessert wine Tokay (Tokaji) and Bull's Blood (Egri Bikaver), a full-bodied red wine. Though not as famous as the country's wines, Hungarian beer has a long history as well. Hungary's most notable liquors are undoubtably Unicum, an herbal bitters, and Palinka, a fruit brandy. Also of note is Traubi or Traubisoda, a Hungarian soft drink produced in Balatonvilagos.

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Culture ^*

The Music of Hungary consists mainly of traditional Hungarian folk music and music by prominent composers such as Franz Liszt, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. Hungarian traditional music tends to have a strong dactylic rhythm, just as the language is invariably stressed on the first syllable of each word.

Hungarian cuisine is also a prominent feature of Hungarian culture, with traditional dishes such as goulash a main feature of the Hungarian diet. Dishes are often flavoured with paprika (also Hungarian for pepper). Stews are often to be found with typical elements such as pork or beef, for example as used in pörkölt.

Hungary is famous for its excellent mathematics education which trained a lot of outstanding scientists. Famous Hungarian mathematicians include Paul Erdos who is famous for publishing in over forty languages and whose Erdos numbers are still tracked, János Bolyai designer of non-Euclidian geometry, John von Neumann one of the pioneers in digital computing, Eugene Wigner, and many others. Erdos, von Neumann, and Wigner, like other Hungarian Jewish scientists, fled rising anti-Semitism in Europe, and made their most famous contributions in the United States.

Hungarians are very proud of their inventions. These include the noiseless match, Rubik's cube and the aforementioned non-Euclidian geometry. A number of other important inventions, including holography, the ballpoint pen (invented by Bíró, who gave his name to the invention), the theory of the hydrogen bomb, and the BASIC programming language, were invented by Hungarians who fled the country prior to World War II.

Hungarian literature has recently gained some renown outside the borders of Hungary (mostly through translations into German, French and English). Some modern Hungarian authors became increasingly popular in Germany and Italy especially Sándor Márai, Péter Esterházy, Péter Nádas and Imre Kertész. The later is a contemporary Jewish writer who survived the Holocaust and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002.

The older classics of Hungarian literature and Hungarian poetry remained almost totally unknown outside Hungary. János Arany, a famous 19th century Hungarian poet is still much loved in Hungary (especially his collection of Ballads), among several other "true classics" like Sándor Petofi, the poet of the Revolution of 1848, Endre Ady, Mihály Babits, Dezso Kosztolányi, Attila József and János Pilinszky.

Other well-known Hungarian authors are Zsigmond Móricz, Gyula Illyés, Albert Wass and Magda Szabó. Hungarians are also known for their prowess at water sports, mainly swimming, water polo and canoeing; this can be said to be surprising at first, due to Hungary being landlocked. On the other hand, the presence of two major rivers (Duna/Tisza) and a major lake (Balaton) gives excellent opportunities to practice those sports.