On 2013-12-10 9:37 AM, James Silverton wrote:
> On 12/9/2013 11:44 PM, gregz wrote:
>> Victor Sack > wrote:
>>> Julie Bove > wrote:
>>>
>>>> "Victor Sack" > wrote:
>>>>> Janet Wilder > wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Julie Bove wrote:
>>>>>>> And who puts sour
>>>>>>> cream in stew?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hungarian goulash?
>>>>>
>>>>> Never! However, sour cream does belong in a paprikás. Quoth George
>>>>> Lang (The Cuisine of Hungary):
>>>>> "The chief difference between pörkölt and paprikás is that paprikás is
>>>>> usually finished with sweet or sour cream, sometimes mixed with a
>>>>> little
>>>>> flour, but always stirred in just before serving. You may never use
>>>>> cream of any kind for gulyás or pörkölt! Also beef, mutton, game,
>>>>> goose, duck and pork are more popular for pörkölt; veal and chicken
>>>>> for
>>>>> paprikás."
>>>>
>>>> What is in goulash then? I had it many years ago.
>>>
>>> I've posted all about this many times before. "Goulash", "gulasch"
>>> etc., so-spelt, is a generic stew found in many countries, especially in
>>> Germany, Austria and Eastern-European countries. It is usually made
>>> with meat of some kind, there are few other commonalities across the
>>> board. The German and Austrian varieties usually contain a nominal
>>> amount of paprika.
>>>
>>> Now "gulyás", so-spelt and pronounced "gooyash", is one of the true
>>> Hungarian traditional dish-groups usually prepared with considerable
>>> amounts of paprika. Gulyás is a soup-like dish, eaten usually with a
>>> spoon, and prepared with meat (usually beef), onions and paprika, and
>>> often contains cubed potatoes and small bits of dough (csipetke).
>>> Traditionally, gulyás was cooked outside in a bogrács (cauldron) over an
>>> open fire. This still happens often enough even today. The other
>>> traditional and somewhat similar dish-groups of this kind are pörkölt,
>>> paprikás, and tokány, all stews, eaten with knife and fork. Some of the
>>> differences between them are described in the George Lang quotation
>>> above. One of the typical Hungarian dishes which does not fit in the
>>> above four categories is Székelygulyás or Székelykáposzta, a pork
>>> pörkölt with sauerkraut. Here is what George Lang writes about it, in
>>> The Cuisine of Hungary:
>>> "NOTE: Hungary, in my student days, was still called a kingdom, with an
>>> admiral as its governor, even though it ceased to be a kingdom
>>> generations before that and had no ocean. Székelygulyás was named with
>>> the same approach to logic. It is a cabbage dish that is not
>>> Transylvanian and was not created by the inhabitants there, the
>>> Székelys, and it is not even a gulyás. According to the letter in the
>>> magazine of the Hungarian restaurateurs guild, it happened this way: In
>>> 1846 the librarian of Pest County came to late to a little restaurant,
>>> Zenélö Óra (the musical clock), to choose from the menu. The librarian,
>>> whose name was Székely (a rather common Hungarian name), asked the owner
>>> to serve the leftover sauerkraut and pork pörkölt together on the very
>>> same plate.
>>> The improvisation was so good that the great poet Petöfi, who was nearby
>>> within hearing distance, the following day asked the restaurateur to
>>> give him Székely's gulyás, meaning the same mixture Mr. Székely got the
>>> previous day. This time the owner topped it with sour cream and the
>>> dish, together with its name, became part of the everyday repertoire.
>>> By now even the Transylvanians think the dish is their invention."
>>> In Germany, this dish is very popular and is always called "Szegediner
>>> Gulasch", even though it has nothing whatever to do with the city of
>>> Szeged, either.
>>>
>>> Victor
>>
>
> I've not been to Hungary but I've had Goulash both as soup and stew in
> Europe. I must admit I've seen it specifically labelled Goulashsuppe
> (spelling in doubt) in Germany.
>

Don't worry about the spelling. The first time I was in Germany the
English version of the menu tended to have soap rather than soup. It
surprised me because they tended to speak excellent English over there.