As befits nomads, they ate poorly. Badly, to say the least, they ate. The travel ration consisted mainly of lumps of dried dough (tarhonya), canned powdered milk, and dried horsemeat. At halts, all this was mixed, put into a cauldron of boiling water, and boiled. The result was a thick meat porridge - not exactly tasty, but filling.
I am not mentioning this archaic recipe by chance. Powdered milk is now available in any grocery store (and why would you need it when you can take whole milk?), air-dried horsemeat is not very relevant either, but tarhonya has remained a national Hungarian dish. More precisely, a component of many of them. Factory-made tarhonya is practically impossible to buy outside Hungary, and making it by hand is tedious (the lumps of stiff dough should not exceed the size of wheat grains). So when getting acquainted with Hungarian cuisine in its homeland, it makes sense to try something with tarhonya, and if you like it, take two or three packets with you when you go home.
Incidentally, the bogrács cauldrons in which the nomadic Hungarians cooked their tarhonya gruel have also happily survived to this day and become fashionable souvenirs. And the gruel itself has turned into the most famous dish of Hungarian cuisine - goulash.
Fuss about goulash
But first, the nomadic Magyars had to settle on the fertile Hungarian Plain, stop raiding their near and distant neighbors, and take up something more peaceful - raising livestock, herding pigs and geese, fishing, laying out orchards and vineyards. That worked out. But even then, goulash was not yet goulash - something was missing. And only after the discovery of America did it become clear that this "something" was peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes. The gastronomic gifts of the New World quickly took root in Hungarian soil, and goulash found its true nature.
However, speaking of national Hungarian delicacies using only the word "goulash" is not quite correct. It is also incorrect to mean by it the goulash we have all known since childhood - meat cut into small pieces in a thick gravy. The fact is that "goulash" in Hungarian is not the name of a dish. "Goulash" is a herdsman. Or rather, herdsman's. And to get that very goulash of the familiar kind, you have to order "goulash-pörkölt". And if you want to try the goulash more customary to the Hungarians themselves, ask for "goulash-leves". And they will bring you... soup.
By the way, most likely the same result awaits you if you order simply goulash without specifying exactly which "herdsman's" dish your soul desires. Because for the Magyars, goulash is first and foremost a thick meat soup with potatoes, onions, small dumplings made of dried dough, and an incredible amount of red pepper. And what else could you expect from a dish that came out of a herdsman's cauldron? In general, traditional Hungarian cuisine rests on four pillars. Their names are goulash-leves, pörkölt, paprikás, and tokány. What unites them is that all four are meat dishes, but sensing the fine difference between them is perhaps only possible for the Magyars themselves. But we will try anyway.
So, goulash-leves is a thick meat soup. Pörkölt is the same thing, only even thicker, no longer a soup but rather a stew. Paprikás is the same pörkölt, but it is made from white meat (or even fish), usually with the addition of sour cream. Sort of an aristocratic pörkölt. Finally, tokány differs from all of them in that the meat for it is cut not into cubes but into strips, there is less pepper, but more other spices and all sorts of "extraneous" ingredients, from peas to sausage.
A bit apart stands the dish that closes the "big Hungarian five" - halászlé, or fish (more precisely, fishermen's) soup. Sometimes the word "halászlé" is translated as "ukha", but that is not quite correct. Simply, ukha in our understanding is... ukha; it has a specific taste and its own canons of preparation. Halászlé is close to ukha, but to avoid unnecessary disappointment, it is better to call it "soup".
Of course, Hungarian cuisine also has plenty of other delicacies of a distinctly national nature - such as, for example, "káposztás kocka" (noodles with cabbage), or "túrós csusza" (again noodles, this time with cottage cheese and... pork cracklings with a lot of fat - it is considered a dessert), but their names resemble linguistic riddles, and there is so much fat that only the strongest stomach can handle it.
In praise of paprika
So what do we have? Hungarian cuisine: a) cannot be considered nourishing and healthy because of the abundance of fat (and that is goose or pork fat; cholesterol goes through the roof), b) the main dishes are quite monotonous and all entirely meat-based. Correct? Not at all correct!
Firstly, to comfort those who care about the percentage of fats, proteins, and other carbohydrates: in Hungary they cook river fish admirably. Gourmands can be advised pörkölt of carp, stewed pike-perch Hungarian style, or carp baked "in the style of King Matthias". The main problem is to explain what exactly you want: even in Budapest, English is spoken only in the best establishments.
Secondly, despite all the apparent monotony, Hungarian meat dishes are not at all alike. And here it's all about the flavor additives, unique for each particular pörkölt or paprikás, and also in paprika.
In Hungary there is almost a cult of the red pepper. Most of the world's population believes that there is only one kind of red pepper (ground), few advanced ones separate chili and cayenne into a separate group. The Magyars laugh at both. They distinguish seven varieties of ground red pepper.
This diversity is defined by a single word: paprika. Which, by the way, creates certain difficulties when preparing Hungarian dishes at home: you have to figure out which particular paprika is needed in each case. The Magyars themselves, however, by combining different types of pepper and adding various other spices and vegetables, manage to give their signature dishes a new taste every time.
Gundel, the Great and Terrible
But even skillful use of spices would not have been enough to introduce Hungarian cuisine into the gastronomic pantheon. A cultural hero was required. And he appeared. His name was Karoly Gundel. A restaurateur and the son of a restaurateur, he made a genuine revolution in Magyar cooking. His "Little Hungarian Cookbook" became a bestseller and went through 40 reprints.
Gundel's main achievement was to blend national Magyar cuisine with haute cuisine, the refined cooking of Western Europe. Thanks to his efforts, traditional dishes became milder and more refined in flavor, while new ones delighted even the most discerning gourmets. Gundel is credited with creating such gastronomic masterpieces as crayfish pörkölt, sterlet à la Carpathians with a ragout of the same crayfish, and fillet "Esterházy" (which is to modern Hungarian cuisine what beef stroganoff is to ours). By the way, all of them are still available in the best establishments of the Hungarian capital.
Gundel ruled the Budapest gastronomic ball from 1910 to 1949. First he rented a restaurant near the zoo, which was called "Zoo" and "Állatkerti Vendéglő", then "Royal" was added, and finally, Gundel's pride – the restaurant of the Hotel Gellért.
His restaurants were frequented by all of Budapest's elite, from the Esterházy princes to unrecognized artists. During the war, the Gellért was a favorite haunt of the Nazis led by Kaltenbrunner – perhaps that is why Allied aircraft bombed the hotel so badly that it took years to restore.
Today all three restaurants made famous by Gundel are operating in Budapest. But I would not recommend visiting the one near the zoo, which now proudly bears the name of its most famous owner. It was recently bought by an international group, and there is less and less of the Hungarian character in it.
If your budget allows, it is better to go to the restaurants of the Gellért or Hungária hotels. Both serve authentic food of the highest quality, and the Gellért especially carefully preserves Gundel's legacy (the hotel has several restaurants; you should choose the largest one).
You can also head to Kodályi út, where there are also plenty of good establishments of national cuisine. Or Pozsonyi út, the Bratislava Avenue. At the little restaurant on Pozsonyi út, you should definitely try the roasted goose leg – they make it especially well there. Or you can go to the tavern "King Matthias" (by the way, there is a menu in Russian) – it was recommended by Andrzej Wajda, Roger Moore, and Federico Fellini with Giulietta Masina. And in general, nobody has starved to death in Budapest in the last 50 years...