Goulash, lángos and paprika: Budapest on a plate

About Goulash, lángos and paprika: Budapest on a plate

By the ULTIMATE Budapest Editorial Team

Hungarian cooking is generous, warming and red with paprika: goulash and fish soup, chicken paprikash with dumplings, stuffed cabbage, lángos and sweet chimney cakes. Here is what to try, and where the dishes come from.

Goulash

Gulyás takes its name from the gulyás, the cattle herdsmen of the Hungarian plain, who cooked beef, onions and later paprika in a cauldron over an open fire. In Hungary it is a hearty soup; the thick stew that the world calls goulash is closer to pörkölt.

Paprika

Peppers came to Hungary from the Americas, and by the 19th century paprika had become the soul of Hungarian cooking. Szeged and Kalocsa are the famous paprika towns; at the Great Market Hall you can buy it sweet (édes) or hot (csípős).

In Hungary, goulash is a soup, not a stew.

The classics

Try csirkepaprikás, chicken in a paprika and sour-cream sauce with little dumplings; töltött káposzta, stuffed cabbage; halászlé, the fiery fisherman’s soup; and főzelék, thick vegetable stews served in simple eateries.

Lángos and chimney cake

Lángos is deep-fried dough topped with sour cream and grated cheese, sold at markets and beaches. Kürtőskalács, chimney cake, is sweet dough wound round a spit, baked over embers and rolled in sugar and cinnamon.

Cakes

Budapest’s cake shops serve Dobos torte, with layers of sponge and chocolate cream under a caramel top, created by the confectioner József Dobos in the 1880s, and somlói galuska, a rich trifle with chocolate sauce.

Our advice: eat goulash soup and chicken paprikash in a traditional bistro, have lángos at the Great Market Hall or by the river, and finish with Dobos torte in a grand café. Buy paprika to take home.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Goulash, lángos and paprika: Budapest on a plate before you go.