Hungarian Cuisine

Hungarian cuisine is defined by paprika, a spice ground from dried sweet or hot peppers that reached Hungary through Ottoman-era trade and became a defining national ingredient by the nineteenth century. Its best known dish, goulash, is a paprika-seasoned beef and vegetable stew that originated as food cooked by cattle-herding peasants on the Hungarian plain. Sour cream, lard-based cooking, and hearty stews and soups reflect a continental climate and a peasant agricultural tradition, while Habsburg-era Viennese influence brought pastries such as strudel into urban Hungarian cooking. Hungarian cuisine also carries older layers, from the fermented and pickled vegetables common across Central Europe to freshwater fish dishes drawn from the Danube and Lake Balaton.