Hungarian Books

Culinaria Hungary (Culinaria) (Culinaria)

Aniko Gergely

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Editorial Review:

Food and culture are inexorably tied together. The Culinaria series reports on every aspect of the cuisine of a country within the context of the people who created it. One of the most successful series in cook book history, these new editions are updated with the guidance of first-class chefs, and come in a durable flexi-cover format to withstand abuse while spending time in the kitchen.

The teams behind each Culinaria volume spend months in the region they are working on, allowing them time to fully absorb all of the food and drink a country can offer. Profusely illustrated with spectacular photography and abundantly peppered with authentic recipes, these volumes are a treat for both the mind and the palate.


Learn about the history behind the dishes, their cultural significance, and how to prepare them.
Beautiful photographs take you on a tour from the local villages to inside the kitchen where you will find the final product.
Enormous variety of magnificent photographs and tempting recipes together with knowledgeable text that is easy for readers and cooks of all skill levels to understand.

George Lang's Cuisine of Hungary

George Lang

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Fascinating reading... but who has that kind of time? 4 out of 5 stars.
13 of 15 people found this review helpful.

This is a wonderful book, full of quirky facts and Hungarian cooking history. The author is opinionated in the most delightfully Hungarian way.

Did you know, for example, that just as "the secret of the abundance of good Hungarian string instrumentalists is that they have a well developed "sound sense", it is most probable that Hungarian housewives and cooks are either born with or develop a keen "soup sense"? No?

Or what about this gem: "it wouldn't be too farfetched to say that Hungary specialises in winning international culinary battles and losing revolutions". Hmm. The French and Italians might have a thing or two to say about that.

To use it as a cookbook, you pretty much need to be an experienced cook. How about the soup recipe that begins, "first mince some meat"? Or the one that half way through instructs you to "make a roux" with no further hints?

I've made about 10 recipes from this book. With the exception of simple dumplings, none has taken less than an hour, most upwards of two.

Oh yes, the result is worth it. Yummm. It's just not for the fainthearted.

Buy the book for the history and other reading. For example, a list of actions Hungarian farmers were required to perform each month in 1674.

A sample:
February - Every fifth day you have to give kiln-dried beans to peacocks to make sure that they will lay eggs speedily enough.

March - Put three goose eggs under the stork and when they hatch take them away from the stork. You can catch crabs with frog's legs, and fish with your hands if you smear your feet and legs with a mixture of melted game grease and honey.

April - buy salt for the summer and put carp into the lake.

No explanation for why the eggs go under the stork! And where do you get the carp from?

There are examples of original recipes from an 1826 cookbook (cut out the bone from a piece of good beef...); a New Year's Day menu for a Count in 1603 - consisting of two 18 course meals; and a detailed account of different regions' traditions.

It's wonderful stuff.

Editorial Review:

A definitive compilation of authentic Hungarian dishes features more than three hundred delectable, fully tested recipes for traditional Hungarian fare, along with entertaining information on Hungarian culinary traditions.

The Hungarian Cookbook

Susan Derecskey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Excellent Presentation of Distinctive National Cuisine 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 18 people found this review helpful.

`The Hungarian Cookbook' by Susan Derecskey may be one of the easiest cookbooks I have yet reviewed, as this is quite literally exactly the food I grew up on. My comfort food, as a kid, was goulash, dumplings, Hungarian crepes, strudel, cabbage and noodles, and chocolate walnut cake, each and every one of these dishes made in exactly the same way as described in this book. All of these dishes came to by from my paternal grandmother who emigrated to the United States just before World War I, from a small town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, forty miles east of Vienna, which is now in Hungary. From this background, I can say with certainty that this is an exceptionally good evocation of Hungarian cuisine.

This is also an exceptionally good evocation of a national cuisine in general, even when compared to some of the leading treatments I have seen recently of the cuisines of Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, and Armenia. It is also as good as many treatments of French and Italian regional cuisines, although it may not be quite as good as the best of these, and it is certainly not as good as Paula Wolfert's classic work on Moroccan cuisine. It is also just a bit less than the classics on national cuisines such as Diana Kochilas on Greece or Penelope Casas on Spain. But, it is exactly all you need to recreate the great Hungarian dishes I remember from my childhood.

Aside from finding recipes for my long lost chocolate nut birthday cake, the first thing which impressed me about the book was the care in which the author pointed out that some recipes were simply difficult to get right the first time. This fact is probably obvious for strudel dough, but it is less obvious with recipes for potato dumplings.

For those of you who may be totally ignorant of Hungarian cooking, its most distinctive characteristics are noodles, dumplings, and soup. Egg noodles and dumplings essentially serve for Hungarians the role of pasta and risotto has for Italians. This is really carb central in that in addition to the white flour, potatoes are also an important ingredient for many dumpling recipes. And, these dumplings are real gut grenades. They are guaranteed to spike your blood sugar in record time.

Since soup is such an important part of the Hungarian cuisine, I paid special attention to the recipes for stock in Ms. Derecskey's book and found them entirely to my liking. They are not long cooking, the vegetables are put into the simmering stock for just an hour, and the author is more careful than most in advising the cook to be very careful not to boil the stock and to skim off scum as quickly as it appears. I usually don't see as much care given to stock making in books on `minor' national cuisines.

Vegetable dishes are always a special interest of mine and this book has several especially good ones. Like most of central Europe, the king of the vegetables was the cabbage. There are several good asparagus and beet and cucumber recipes, but no sign of artichokes or rapini. This is cabbage country, partner. I was also more than modestly pleased with the recipes for salads. I never associated salads with Mitteleuropa, but there they are. Very nice vinaigrette recipes to be sure.

The only thing that puzzled me about the book and its recipes was the author's stating that Hungarians were not especially fond of mature beef. They preferred to cook veal, including braises and stews, which almost seems like a waste when you can let the cow mature a bit and get much more meat for stewing.

While Hungary does not have the great pastry tradition of its neighbor much did rub off while the two countries were joined at the hip up to 1918 under the Hapsburgs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In fact, Budapest was the empire's second city ahead of even Prague in esteem. The star of the Hungarian pastry is strudel, which has a lot of similarities with Greek filo, but it is not exactly the same. I have tried to make strudel with filo and the results are less than perfect.

If you have any Hungarian in your blood, you really need this book. If you are simply interested in reading of world cuisines, this one is a winner. The instructions on making strudel and dumplings alone are worth the price of admission.

Highly recommended.

Editorial Review:

"Our appetite for this interesting cuisine, a melding of Germanic, Slavic, Tartar, and Turkish influences, has been whetted by [this] excellent new work."--New York Times

Magdi's Quick & Easy Hungarian & Other Gourmet Recipes

Magdi Zold

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

WOW! So easy to follow great recipes and wonderful tastes! 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

This is one the greatest cookbooks I have. It's worth every penny. Very detailed, pictures for every step, easy to follow instructions.
I have tried several recipes from this book in the first week I got it. I just enjoyed surprising my family with easily and quickly prepared great tasting food. My whole family loved the tastes. Our favorite is the Hungarian Goulash. Great taste, easy to make, and finally I got the recipe!
What I really liked and helped me so much, that the author gives examples of where to shop for the ingredients, even have pictures of these products. The tip corner and the menu ideas are very helpful.

I truly recommend this cookbook for everyone who wants to try the true Hungarian taste with easy to understand recipes.

Editorial Review:

This unique cookbook is written with the today's busy lifestyle in mind introduces modern versions of recipes handed down for generations. The cookbook brings the true traditional taste of Hungary to your table by choosing among the easy-to-follow recipes. The book is packed full of practical tips,useful hints and step-by-step lavish color photography

A Taste of the Past: The Daily Life and Cooking of a Nineteenth-Century Hungarian-Jewish Homemaker

Andras Koerner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A Taste of the Past is an entertaining reconstruction of the daily life and household of Therese (Riza) Baruch (1851-1938), the great-grandmother of the author, Andras Koerner. Based on an unusually complete cache of letters, recipes, personal artifacts, and eyewitness testimony, Koerner describes in loving detail the domestic life of a nineteenth-century Hungarian Jewish woman, with special emphasis on the meals she served her family.

Based on Riza's letters, part one offers an imaginative sketch of growing up in a religious middle-class family in the 1860s and 70s in an industrial town in western Hungary. Part one also describes Riza's reactions to the dilemmas posed by the early signs of Jewish assimilation. In part two, the heart of the book, Riza has married, moved to a smaller town near the Austrian border, and become the central figure of a large household. Koerner recreates a typical day in the life of Riza and her family, peppering his narrative with recipes of the food she served for breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon coffee-and-cake, and the much more modest evening meal.

Riza's family was religious, and Koerner also describes the special foods (pike in sour aspic, cholent, apple-matzo kugel, and much more) she served to celebrate the Sabbath and the six major Jewish holidays. Short introductions to the recipes describe the evolution of the dishes through the centuries, their role in Jewish culture, and how cultural influences and religious traditions shaped Riza's cooking.

More than 125 evocative pen-and-ink illustrations bring Riza's story and her food to life. A Taste of the Past offers an enchanting look at Jewish daily life in western Hungary in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a time when middle-class Jews were increasingly assimilated into mainstream Hungarian life and culture. Such small-town Jewish life had completely disappeared due to the Holocaust. Koerner's book revives this lost world and invites the reader to be a guest in Riza's house to watch her caring for her family, shopping, cooking, and preparing for the holidays. By offering easy-to-follow updated versions of her recipes, the book also allows readers to savor Riza's dishes and desserts in their own kitchens, thus completing this experience of a visit to the past.

The Cuisine of Hungary

George Lang

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

If you can find this, grab it and run 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 16 people found this review helpful.

I found an old copy in a library book sale. It is full of old recipes for authentic Hungarian food. In other words, it's a pretty rare bird in the US; no one cooks like this any more with the advent of fast food, takeout, and three-career families.

I have so far used two of the dessert recipes. They aren't difficult, just time consuming. One cake took me close to three hours, clean-up time included. A big stand mixer is almost required for several of the cakes in here; I would NOT recommend trying some of these by hand unless you have very strong arms and a copper egg bowl.

OTOH, the results are delicious, and vanish rapidly.

The Paprikas Weiss Hungarian Cookbook

Edward Weiss

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Excellent ethnic cookbook. The best in Hungarian cooking. 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 13 people found this review helpful.

This book is very practical. Easy to follow. More importantly its recepies are not experimental, invented Hungarian cerepies but rather REAL Hungarian cooking done in Hungary. It therefore reflects the traditional cooking of the Hungarian people. I would love to buy it for my children (daughters) to familiarize themselves with their ancestors cooking.

Jo etvagyot! 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book is a collection of standard Hungarian recipes that would be familiar to any Hungarian cook. It includes chapters on soups, main dishes, side dishes, and desserts. Each chapter begins with a brief description of the type of dish and its role in the food culture of Hungary, discussing, for instance, what were foods were readily available on the farm. The recipes are provided with both their English and Hungarian names. One helpful feature is that each recipe includes not only a list of ingredients, but also a list of utensils needed for the recipe. In keeping with Hungarian farm traditions, most of the recipes call for butter, sour cream, eggs, and one or more types of meat, especially pork. Virtually all the recipes call for fresh foods, not canned foods or convenience mixes, but there are few exotic ingredients needed.

This book would make a great reference for American cooks who want to create authentic-tasting Hungarian meals. There aren't many fancy recipes in the book for special occasions- -mainly the book is about basic home cooking down on the farm, Hungarian style.

Hungarian Cookbook: Old World Recipes for New World Cooks (Hippocrene Cookbook Library)

Yolanda Nagy Fintor

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Warm Collection of Hungarian Standard Dishes 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

"Hungarian Cookbook: Old World Recipes for New World Cooks" by Yolanda Nagy Fintor has a long title. It should. There is a lot packed in it.

As cookbooks go, this is among the most accessible I have read. While many tend to err with a tone too haute cuisine, Fintor realizes she's suggesting ordinary people cook these dishes.

To many Americans asking themselves what Hungarian food is, I can say it is a good, good thing. It will challenge your arteries, but delight your soul. Your stomach will be happy too. Here, you will find recipes proving that.

Fintor explains in a brief introduction a history of Hungarian cuisine. She writes how, despite its present unique place in the culinary world, it began as an amalgamation of French, Italian, Turkish, German and Transylvanian food.

While not exactly useful to the American cook, she has a section on Hungarian language. Now, you can pronounce the dish names when your Hungarian date comes over for dinner. If things work out, you will impress your spouse's family too.

More practical to most readers is her section on how to interpret the recipes, and what ingredients you will need handy. The difference this makes is important, like that vinegar to be used is distilled white, and that butter should be the salted kind.

Keyed into the needs of beginning cooks, Fintor provides some useful tips, a glossary of basic cooking terns (like dredge, dice, trussing, and what roux is).

Recipes are the bulk of the book, with some black and white pictures of dishes. The layout is easy on the eyes. Directions are straightforward. Occasionally, she gives ideas to adapt the recipe to an American context, in case the ingredients are somewhat different. The only significant drawback is the hardcover design, which makes keeping it open while cooking difficult.

The recipe sections are as follows, each with an introduction:

Appetizers, relishes, and sauces
Salads
Soups
Biscuits, dumplings, and noodles
Poultry
Meats
Vegetables
Desserts
Breads
Wines (no recipes, just an introduction).

I fully recommend "Hungarian Cookbook: Old World Recipes for New World Cooks" by Yolanda Nagy Fintor. Jó Étvágyat! (May you have a good appetite!)

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

Editorial Review:

These Old World recipes were brought to America by the author's grandparents, but they have been updated to accommodate today's faster-paced lifestyles. In many cases, the author presents a New World version of the recipe, in which low-fat and more readily available ingredients are substituted without compromising flavour. The new chapter on breads focuses on yeast breads, with a short section on quick breads. This is more than just a collection of 142 enticing Hungarian recipes. The author offers culinary tips, explains characteristics of the Hungarian language, and includes a glossary of terms used throughout the book.

Food Wine Budapest (The Terroir Guides)

Carolyn Banfalvi

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Despite its vast repertoire, variety, and recipes bursting with flavor, Hungarian cuisine is one of the most underappreciated and unknown European cuisines. There are few Hungarian restaurants outside the country so those who are interested in discovering Hungarian cuisine (and any food lover should be!) must go to Hungary to sample everything firsthand, prepared with real Hungarian ingredients–now by a new generation of talented chefs and winemakers. Despite the fact that last year more foreign tourists visited the city than ever before (36.6 million), there are still no guidebooks written in English focusing on Budapest restaurants and Hungarian food. Carolyn Bánfalvi has written the first culinary guide to Budapest, Food Wine Budapest. This book is a practical guide that contains the vocabulary you’ll need (one obstacle to discovering Hungarian food and wine is the difficult Magyar language); dozens of restaurant, café, and shop reviews; and descriptions of Hungarian dishes and wines. The Hungarian wine industry is young, dynamic, and relatively little known outside of the country, which makes sampling its wines deliciously adventurous. The book will ensure that readers have memorable eating and drinking experiences. Throughout Food Wine Budapest there are also sidebars providing local color and in-depth information.

Flavors of Hungary (101 Productions)

Charlotte Slovak Biro

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Favorite Hungarian Cookbook 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I have gone through several copies of this book both through constant use and giving copies to friends who express an interest in Hungarian cooking. As a Hungarian and a cook, I find this collection of recipes both authentic and easy to follow. If you are to have only one Hungarian cookbook on your shelf, this is the one.

Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is a book that I bought several years ago and subsequently I lost. I try to locate it in second hand books ever since. The recipes are particularly tasty and well written. I am not very good with praises, but the fact that it is the first time that I ever felt the need to share my views on a book, might tell you something.

Favorite Hungarian Cookbook 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I have gone through several copies of this book both through constant use and giving copies to friends who express an interest in Hungarian cooking. As a Hungarian and a cook, I find this collection of recipes both authentic and easy to follow. If you are to have only one Hungarian cookbook on your shelf, this is the one.

flavors of the past 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I own several hangarian cookbooks, and I think that this one is the best. Not only is it authentic but it also contains easy to follow recipes. almost all the ingredients are available in Israel.