If you don’t like Gundel pancakes because your memories are of a dessert with dry edges, soaked in a watery cocoa sauce and filled with a runny walnut (or dejó) cream, it’s time to give this dessert, which is over a hundred years old, another chance. We asked Viktor Moldován, executive chef at the revamped Gundel Restaurant, to help us rekindle our enthusiasm for this dessert with its chequered history.

It could well be the symbol of Hungarian confectionery: the Gundel pancakes. It is based on an easy-to-make type of dough; the pancake is set apart from the world of everyday sweets by such fine ingredients as silky-smooth chocolate and a rum-and-walnut filling. Over the past seventy years, the lustre of this turn-of-the-century dessert has faded, but what better task could there be for contemporary Hungarian confectionery than to restore these treasures to their rightful place?  

Like most Hungarian desserts considered classics, the Gundel pancake also originated in the 20th century. Although it retains the name ‘Gundel’, a fitting tribute would be to call it the ‘Lola pancake’.

Márai pancakes on Zsolnay porcelain

The story is in fact linked to Sándor Márai’s wife, Ilona Matzner, who is remembered in literary history simply as Lola. Gundel features in the story because the writer was celebrating the premiere of one of his plays at the restaurant in Városliget, during which Lola prepared the family favourite in the kitchen together with Gundel’s pastry chef. The sharp-eyed restaurateur, Károly Gundel, took a liking to the recipe and added it to the restaurant’s menu.

It is easy to recognise the origins of this sweet treat, which was a favourite of the Márais, who were steeped in Germanic culture. The Hungarian Gundel pancake was inspired by the German Schoko-Nuss-Palatschinke; when served with whipped cream – as it still is in many places today! – it does not follow the original Gundel recipe, but rather its Germanic predecessor.

Does the Gundel pancake hold its own in the world of 21st-century desserts?

The answer is clear if we take a look at the menus of Gundel Restaurant and numerous other outstanding Hungarian restaurants. We can sample countless reinterpretations of this iconic Hungarian dessert across the country, but at Gundel alone, the experience is quite different. According to the story, this sweet treat was created within the walls of the legendary restaurant, which is celebrating its 130th anniversary this year, and has been made ever since by chefs and pastry chefs (and at home by families) across the country.

Gundel’s objective for the 2020s is clear: they are not following the trend for unconventional, experimental, „turn-it-inside-out” creations. They have dusted off the old Gundel recipe under the motto that this exquisite dessert deserves to be made, at last, from high-quality ingredients and with meticulous care – without taking shortcuts or cutting corners in a way that shows disrespect to guests, or the use of imitation food products. This is how the ‘Nemzeti 11’ section of the menu came into being, offering legendary Hungarian dishes created within the Gundel tradition. It is almost unbelievable that every one of the eleven courses is a Gundel dish, including such deeply rooted Hungarian favourites as palóc soup, Újházy chicken soup, Kárpáti pike-perch, Somlói galuska, Rákóczi cottage cheese cake and, of course, Gundel pancakes.

We asked an expert on Gundel classics about the latter – a restaurant that underwent a complete refurbishment a few years ago Viktor Moldován, executive chef at Gundel Restaurant.

„We just call the watery cocoa powder sauce ”Communist’ in the kitchen”

„Many negative experiences associated with Gundel pancakes stem from the unrestrained use of semi-finished confectionery products. Through the excessive use of a diluting sugar solution known as ‘Leiter sugar’, sauces and creams prepared for desserts in the catering industry are ”whipped up’ into a tasteless, intensely sugary liquid. “In the kitchen, we just call that watery cocoa powder sauce ‘the communist’.” – says the chef.

It’s a huge challenge to maintain high standards whilst having to serve as many as several hundred people a day. This isn’t the world of smaller gourmet restaurants; Gundel’s spacious interior – and, in summer, its garden – can seat hundreds at once. Naturally, individual dishes don’t receive the same level of attention as they would in top-class restaurants. Despite its sheer size, it’s well worth popping in for nothing more than a pancake and a coffee. The Gundel pancake is well worth a leisurely afternoon snack.

Returning to the question of sugar, the chef says: „People’s tastes change as they go through life. When we’re children, we crave sweet things much more, and as time goes by, we come to prefer flavours with more acidity.”.

”But it is not just our own tastes that change over the years; public tastes change too. We don’t over-sweeten this dessert; we let the flavours of the high-quality walnuts, the chocolate sauce and the candied orange come through.’

„The whole world is changing. In the first half of the 20th century, and especially afterwards, under socialism, oranges weren’t available here in the quantities we take for granted today. It’s now impossible to imagine an exciting dessert without the flavour of citrus fruits. We use candied orange to ensure a hint of citrus flavour after every bite. We’ve also chosen a chocolate that harmonises perfectly with the aroma of orange.”

At home, we traditionally add rum to both the walnut filling and the chocolate glaze. Cheap rum flavouring gives this sweet (too) a strange, perfumed taste. If you don’t have any good-quality rum at home, it’s still better to leave it out than to flavour it with rum flavouring that has an off-flavour.

Another way to cut costs is to use chocolate sauce – which, in many places, ends up running off as a watery mess and bears no resemblance to chocolate. Even the most reputable recipes contain cocoa powder, but strictly as an accompaniment to the chocolate. To make this, you can buy chocolate pastilles, or simply melt some good-quality dark chocolate to make the sauce, combined with cream, milk, a minimal amount of granulated sugar and rum.

Should the Gundel pancake be flambéed?

The flaming Gundel pancake is something of a Hungarian speciality in Hungarian restaurants. As such, this festive dessert is served in the most theatrical way possible – or, to use the technical term, flambéed. Whilst this spectacle has become a little outdated nowadays, it has nevertheless become inextricably linked with the serving of the Gundel pancake. For a small extra charge, you can still request it flambéed at Gundel today, though it does cause the kitchen staff a bit of a headache.

„This is a sensitive issue” – begins Viktor. „So much so that even last week I was still fine-tuning exactly how much alcohol to put on the pancake before setting it alight.”

As it turns out, there are two fundamental problems with it. „The risk here is that, relative to the size of the food and the plate, a relatively large amount of rum is needed to set the pancake alight. At the same time, you have to be careful, because if the alcohol spreads out too much, it won’t burn off sufficiently, and 80 per cent of it will remain on the plate, causing the dessert to become soggy. Naturally, the flavours will be distorted as a result of the rum soaking into the dessert.”.

The other problem is that, even if the alcohol burns very cleanly, the heat from the flame causes the ingredients to heat up, and the flames cause them to burn slightly – in other words, they become bitter. The flame can also cause them to dry out.”