How is the dish prepared according to the Gundel recipe?

‘Bakonyi‘ style dishes are made with sautéed mushrooms and a sour cream mousse. It is used with a wide variety of meats - we cook steaks for red meat lovers (at the level the guest requests, of course). We make a thick mushroom and pepper sauce with sour cream. A classic garnish is the homemade cottage cheese pasta, and to make it better, we fry it in the fat of the mangalica bacon in a casserole. The fatty cottage cheese and sour cream come from artisan dairy farms. The pasta is topped with a crispy crumble.

How did the recipe become part of the tradition, part of the Gundel heritage?

Károly Gundel gave us many of the dishes and flavour combinations that are now considered the basis of Hungarian cuisine. They are so widespread that we don't even think they were created in the restaurant's kitchen at the beginning of the last century. With perseverance, he tasted sauces, gravies and stews made from different ingredients and in different proportions. He spent months perfecting the ratio of ‘paprika’ to mushrooms and sour cream in the ‘Bakonyi’ ragou, until he finally got the ‘Bakonyi style on his menu.

The question may arise: what makes a dish ‘bakonyi’ style ‘bakonyi’? In Gundel's day, the Bakony was a popular mushroom-growing region, and that is where the mushrooms came from.

Why was it selected for the National 11, considered the essence of Hungarian flavours?

Because there were many forests and hilly areas in Hungary, many species of mushrooms were grown. Thus, mushroom dishes were typical of Hungarian cuisine and are still popular today.

Many people make "galuska" with Bakonyi paprika-sour cream sauce, but the real flavour harmony is created with the cottage cheese pasta. What's the difference between cottage cheese pasta (túrós tészta) and regular pasta (csusza)? First of all, it is made from a type of pasta with many eggs, which is a Hungarian classic. The well-cooked pasta is mixed with cottage cheese and sour cream and fried in a pan with bacon fat. This makes the flavours really come together, the bottom of the "csusza" pasta browns a little.