Keith Chamberlin

2010 | No. 86

The Red Spice
Paprika, the Most Hungarian Ingredient

By Petra Tanos


Olga Rendek and her family have for four generations preserved the traditional farming life on a 20-hectare farm in Kiskunság, roughly 80 kilometers southeast of Budapest on the Puszta, or Great Hungarian Plain. Rendek, a short but sturdy, matter-of-fact woman in her forties, raises heritage breeds, including Mangalitsa pigs and Racka sheep, and keeps an extensive vegetable and herb garden. The original farmhouse stands complete with the traditional tools and furnishings. Visits begin with Olga’s animated tour and end with a generous taste of her own rich, smoky Mangalitsa sausage and salami. Like many Hungarian cured meats, these are spiked with a solid dose of paprika, bringing to each bite a bright color and a sweet, pungent flavor.

Paprika, the quintessential Hungarian ingredient, is sprinkled on zsíros kenyér, or “fatty bread,” a snack of thick slices of a crusty farmhouse loaf smeared with lard and topped with slivers of red onion. It seasons chunks of seared beef destined for a hearty bowl of gulyásleves, or goulash soup. And it livens up paprikás krumpli, or pan-fried potatoes. As Zoltán Halász wrote in his spirited history Hungarian Paprika Through the Ages, “It was in this country that such a high level and veritable cult of the growing, the processing and the use of paprika has been achieved, the like of which cannot be found anywhere else.” Though not native, paprika was welcomed by Hungarians like a missing ingredient. George Lang, the Hungarian restaurateur famous for running the former Café des Artistes in New York and giving a post-Communist new life to the famous Gundel in Budapest, wrote in his Cuisine of Hungary: “Paprika is to the Hungarian cuisine as wit is to its conversation — not just a superficial garnish, but an integral element… The marriage of paprika and Hungarian cooking was almost predestined.”

In Hungarian, paprika refers to both the bright red-orange spice and the fresh vegetable — to Capsicum annuum in all its round, oblong, and pointed shapes and red, yellow, green, and violet colors. Thus the word embraces chile peppers, the pale yellow Hungarian wax pepper, and the ubiquitous bell. Capsicums, along with potatoes, eggplant, and tomatoes, belong to the Solanaceae family, which originated in tropical South America. The spice is made from the longum group of C. annuum, whose long, narrow, pointed fruits at maturity are blood red. It contains primarily the outer, edible layer, or pericarp, but sometimes also the stems, seeds, and ribs.

The pepper plant, first brought to Europe at the end of the 15th century, was introduced to Hungary by the Turks when they invaded in the 1500s. By the end of that century, “Turkish red pepper” was a big hit with Hungarian farmers. “Herdsmen started to sprinkle tasty slices of bacon with paprika and season the savoury stews they cooked in cauldrons over an open fire with the red spice,” according to Halász. “They were followed by the fishermen of the Danube and the Tisza, who would render their fish-dishes more palatable with the red spice, and at last the Hungarian peasantry, consuming with great gusto the meat of fattened oxen and pigs and of tender poultry which were prepared in paprika-gravy, professed their irrevocable addiction to paprika.” By the late 1600s, the upper classes caught on. Cultivation spread from garden to garden, taking hold in what are now the leading paprika growing regions, the cities of Szeged and Kalocsa, in the sunniest and southernmost part of the Great Hungarian Plain, near the Serbian and Romanian borders. The sandy black soils and hot, sunny, dry climate are just right for producing high-quality fruit.

Traditionally, the paprika seeds were put in water to start germinating on March 12, St. Gregory’s Day, and the harvest began on September 8, the Feast of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin. Women picked the fruits and threaded them to form eight- to ten-foot garlands, which were hung under the eaves of their houses to cure for up to six weeks. You can still see garlands hanging from some houses in the countryside, and they line the stalls at the Central Market in Budapest. Historically, the drying was finished in the large earthenware ovens that were also used for baking and for heat. Then the peppers were crushed in a külü, a giant mortar operated by stepping on and off one end of a see-saw wooden beam at the other end of which was a pestle. The mortar was replaced by water mills and then steam-driven roller mills, precursors to the modern machines that wash, dry, crush, sort, and grind the paprika in a single continuous process. Olga Rendek no longer uses a külü but like many other Hungarian women she still dries her paprika in the sun, coaxing out the brilliant pigment.

Until the 1930s, paprika as made for only the Hungarian market, and only spicy pepper varieties were cultivated. Once the spice was accepted in Austria, Germany, and eventually the USA and beyond, breeders developed the nonpungent varieties now favored by Hungarian growers, although most continue to cultivate spicy varieties, too. The state recognizes numerous varieties, including Napfény ( “sunshine” ), Remény ( “hope” ), and Folklor ( “folklore” ); all of them with elongated, drooping fruit. The types of paprika vary in quality, the differences arising from the degree of ripeness when harvested, the thickness of the walls of the fruit, and the proportion of stems, ribs, and seeds. Though the ground-up seeds dilute the bright color, they can add a pleasant nuttiness. The Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development officially recognizes four grades. Különleges, or “special quality,” made from only the pericarps of flawless, fully ripe fruits, has a fire-red color and a mild, delicate flavor. Csemege, “delicate,” has a stronger paprika flavor and a lighter red or yellow-red color with brown undertones. Édesnemes, “noble sweet,” is still lighter, and Rózsa, “rose,” is pale red.

Though red, white, and green “Pride of Szeged” tins of paprika, proudly bearing the Hungarian coat of arms, line grocery store shelves and spice racks in many countries, Hungary accounts for only about 10 percent of global production. A large portion of the world’s paprika ends up as a coloring agent in everything from bologna to beef jerky to cheese to egg yolks (it’s added to poultry feed). Pigment determines paprika’s commercial value: the deeper the color, the more expensive the paprika. Seed companies breed proprietary varieties with highly pigmented, nonspicy fruit. The color comes from about 20 different carotenoids, some of them unique to capsicums.

In the Hungarian kitchen, color, flavor, and aroma are equally important. A good paprika, the kind that makes Hungarians proud, is complex, intense, and fresh, sometimes with hints of tomato, sometimes with a subtle nuttiness. Some paprikas are more sweet and vegetal, others more earthy. The color should be bright, and there should be no bitterness.

In Hungary, paprika is often used with onions and lard. Commonly referred to as the Holy Trinity, those are the foundation for many meat and vegetable stews. Gulyás, the delightful and filling beef soup, was originally prepared by cattle herders, also called gulyás, in large copper or cast-iron caldrons over an open fire. By the late 1600s, paprika was regularly added to the kettle, giving the dish its characteristic flavor and color. The cast-iron caldron Rendek uses to make gulyás on her farm is large enough to feed an army of cattle herders and gives the soup a delightful hint of smoke. A thicker, stewlike variation is pörkölt, the result of cooking meat in the same onion, lard, and paprika base. It’s served with nokedli (Hungarian spaetzle) or tarhonya, a couscous look-alike made from eggs, flour, and water.

For the dish paprikás — paprikash in English — usually made with chicken or fish, on occasion mushrooms, and served with nokedli, paprika is combined with a roux of sour cream and flour, the sweetness of the spice complementing the tang of sour cream. Paprika also appears as a garnish on kasinotojás (deviled eggs) and is the critical ingredient in körözött, a cold spread for bread made with sheep’s milk cheese, onions, and caraway seeds.

In October 2004, the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development submitted applications to the EU for Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status for both Szegedi fűszerpaprika őrlemény (paprika from Szeged) and Kalocsai fűszerpaprika őrlemény (paprika from Kalocsa). The application describes the Szegedi variety as having an aroma that is “intense, spicy and evocative of baked vegetables” and a taste that is “characteristically sweet, reminiscent of ripe and baked butternut squash and fresh garden plants.” The most important aspects of production, according to the application, have to do with controlling the moisture content. Although the peppers can be dried either “in small sacks hung under eaves, in drying chambers or with conveyor-belt dryers,” once the water content of the peppers has been reduced from 80 percent to 10 percent, the paprika must be “ground by passing it through a tightly set pair of millstones.” The friction created by the grinding warms the paprika and causes it to release oil and fat-soluble pigments, ensuring that the final product has an even color. A fraction of the moisture — 1.5 to 3 percent — is restored in the conditioning process, which involves “intensive mixing and the addition of potable-grade water.” Once approved, PDO labeling will help consumers in Hungary and abroad identify paprika that was grown, harvested, and processed according to these precise specifications in designated regions. Meanwhile, the best way to obtain the most flavorful, highest quality paprika is to buy it directly from small-scale growers like Rendek who use traditional drying methods.

The paprika of my childhood made its way to my mother’s pantry through the grapevine of friends and family who had direct connections to the growers. The spice defined the color and flavor of countless meals. I remember most the bright orange blush of a bowl of gulyásleves and halászlé — traditional fish soup we made during summer vacations on Lake Balaton — and the way that chunks of bread I used to clean my plate would absorb the rich pigment. It tempts me to replace my usual salt and pepper shaker with the Hungarian alternative: a wooden dish with not two but three compartments, allowing room for the most Hungarian spice of them all. ●

Here are the recipes for Olga Rendek’s Gulyas and Lesco.

From issue 86

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