Two typical Hungarian soups and pancakes that everyone loves, but hardly anyone knows the story behind them.

Jókai bean soup

This bean soup is indeed associated with Mór Jókai, and there are several versions of the legend surrounding it. According to one version, the writer once ordered the ‘large-bean soup’ in Balatonfüred with pork knuckle and paprika-flavoured roux – just as his mother and his wife, Róza Laborfalvi, used to make it for him at home when they wanted to please him. Another version goes that he did not specifically ask for this version, but as soon as he tasted it, he liked it so much that from then on he would only eat it that way.

"Palóc" soup

Anyone who has ever seen a photograph of Kálmán Mikszáth will have guessed that he was rather fond of his belly (which really started to show after the Market Hall opened nearby). The writer was a regular at the Gundel restaurant, and he was also good friends with János Gundel.

That is why, for his friend’s birthday in 1892, the famous restaurateur came up with the idea of creating a new kind of soup, the likes of which Mikszáth – who was, incidentally, exceptionally well-versed in gastronomy – had never tasted before.

This turned out to be the finest Palóc soup, made from Palóc-style mutton (from castrated sheep), green beans and csipetke. The personalised gift was such a hit that from then on it became Mikszáth’s favourite soup.

Gundel pancakes

To this day, there is hardly a single Hungarian restaurant that does not feature Gundel pancakes on its dessert menu. Given the name, one might rightly assume that we have the owner of the legendary Gundel restaurant, built in 1894, to thank for these pancakes with walnuts, rum and chocolate sauce, but the reality is a little more adventurous than that. In fact, whilst savouring this delicacy, we should be paying tribute to Sándor Márai’s wife, Ilona Matzner, better known as Lola. It so happened that when the play *Kaland* (based on Márai’s short story *Rendelés előtt*) was premiered in 1940, the banquet following the premiere was held at the Gundel restaurant. The proud and hard-working wife contributed to the evening’s culinary delights with an old family recipe, commissioning chocolate pancakes filled with walnuts, raisins and candied orange peel for the banquet. Her version did not yet have a flambé finish and had a strong rum flavour.

The famous restaurant owner liked the dessert so much that he asked Lola for the recipe and, after making a few tweaks, added it to the menu under the name ‘Márai pancakes’. Unfortunately, however, when the Márai family emigrated and their name became undesirable, and the Gundel restaurant was nationalised in 1949, the pancake was also renamed ‘Gundel’. Incidentally, it was in this very restaurant that ‘Somlói galuska’ – which also evokes a similar flavour profile of walnuts, rum and chocolate – was first created.

Hortobágy pancakes

There is also a pancake that is a permanent fixture on the menus of Hungarian restaurants; it’s a staple on the starters page.

The savoury pancake stuffed with meat and topped with a paprika and sour cream sauce is a true Hungarian speciality, though it was by no means invented in Hortobágy. It was first prepared at the 1958 Brussels World Fair (the same venue where the Rákóczi cottage cheese dish, the Budapest beef fillet and the Brașov minced meat dish were also created), by a famous restaurateur, Endre Papp. He was then the manager of the Mátyás Pince in Pest, author of the book *The Restaurateur and His Famous Guests*, and it was undoubtedly a clever move to name the dish ‘Hortobágyi’, as everyone immediately associates it with traditional Magyars wielding whips and riding horses. The meat-filled pancake itself, of course, is not his invention; it was already featured in recipe books from the 1930s.