A paprika-spiked goulash recipe to keep you warm as the nights draw in

The Gay Hussar was a resolutely old-school Soho institution that served up hearty portions of traditional Hungarian food to various Labour grandees, sozzled hacks and Laurent-Perrier Lefties (as well as the occasional damp Tory). It was a place fuelled not only by lashings of Bull’s Blood, that mighty red from Hungary’s Eger, but by whispers and intrigue, treachery, double-dealing and good old-fashioned gossip.

As to food… well, that was somewhat of an afterthought, more boozy ballast than culinary high art. There was a decent cold cherry soup and a pretty respectable roast duck. But it was the goulash soup (or gulyásleves) that I really remember (well, as much as anyone can precisely recall a lunch at this unashamedly bibulous establishment) — soft beef, sweet paprika and onion, all swimming in a broth as brown as Danube mud.

Yet, despite being the national dish of Hungary, you’d be pushed, these days, to find a goulash or, to be more correct, a gulyás, on local menus, as the word simply means ‘cattle herder,’ or ‘cowboy’. No, you’d be after a pör-költ. Or is it a páprikás? Or even a tokány? All use meat and onion, cooked in lard with paprika, but then things get complicated. A pörkölt has nothing to do with the pig and is usually made with veal, although beef, mutton, game and even pork can be used. It never includes sour cream and is said to have a more pronounced onion taste than the páprikás, which also includes veal or chicken and never sour cream. A tokány is made with beef or veal, cut into pieces the size of French fries, and throws in mushrooms, goose liver, peas, asparagus and parsley roots. It may or may not contain sour cream. Confused? Join the club. There was me thinking that goulash was the simplest of stews.

To make any sense of anything, we must travel back to the beginning, to the Magyar cattle ranchers of 9th-century Hungary, who roamed the Great Plains with their herds. Every year, before setting out for pastures new, they would cube beef and cook it with onion and spices (mainly black pepper) in a heavy iron kettle (or bogrács), hung over an open fire, until all the liquid had evaporated.

The beef was then dried in the sun and stuffed into a bag made from a sheep’s stomach, a technique used for millennia by nomads across the world. When hunger panged, the ranchers could add water and, depending on the amount, cook up either a gulyás stew or a gulyás soup. A proto-ready meal or, in the words of Albert Jack in his 2012 book What Caesar Did for My Salad: The Secret Meanings of our Favourite Dishes, ‘the earliest example of the stock cube’.

Paprika, however, was a relative newcomer to the party, probably arriving in Hungary with the invading Ottomans, but not gaining widespread popularity until the 1820s. Black pepper had traditionally been rubbed on raw meat, together with salt or sugar, as a preservative. Paprika was used in the same way. The effects weren’t quite the same, but did produce the most delectable crust. To pörköl meant to slightly burn the surface, hence the new dish being known as pörkölt. The key, however, to any of the above, is gently cooking the onions in lard so they reach a subtle shade of soft gold.

But whatever the dish is called (and don’t even get me started as to whether a pörkölt or páprikás can include potatoes or pasta), all that matters is the end result. A paprika-stained taste of Hungarian history and a stew of the mightiest succour.

Recipe: Bográcsgulyás

This comes from The Cooking of Vienna’s Empire, part of the legendary Time Life ‘Foods of the World’ series. Published in the 1970s, it features some of the finest food writers, as well as lavish (if slightly dated) photography. Anyway, this is named after the cast-iron pot it was originally cooked in, but is by no means an authentic gulyás. It has tomatoes, for a start. But what really matters is that the onions are cooked in lard, and there’s a lot of sweet paprika. Finish with a generous blob of sour cream.

Ingredients

Serves 4 to 6

2tbspn lard


2 onions, finely chopped


1tspn garlic, finely chopped


3tbspn sweet Hungarian paprika


800g shin of beef, cut into 1½in cubes

½tspn caraway seeds


600ml chicken or beef stock


½tspn salt


Freshly ground black pepper


2 medium potatoes


4 big tomatoes, peeled, seeded and finely chopped


2 medium-sized green peppers, with seeds and ribs removed, finely chopped


½tspn marjoram

Method

Heat the lard in a four- or five-quart heavy saucepan until a light haze forms over it, then reduce the heat to medium and add the onions and garlic. Cook them for 8–10 minutes or until the onions are lightly coloured. Off the heat, stir in the paprika until the onions are well coated.

Add the beef cubes, caraway seeds and stock to the pan and season with the salt and pepper. Bring the liquid to a boil and partially cover the pan. Gently simmer for two hours or until the beef is almost tender.

Parboil the potatoes in boiling water for 8–10 minutes or until they can be easily penetrated with the point of a sharp knife. Peel the potaoes, cut them into 1½in cubes and add them, together with the tomatoes, the peppers and the marjoram, to the pan.

Partially cover again and cook over a medium heat for 25 to 35 minutes or until the potatoes are done and the beef is tender.

Skim off the surface fat and taste for seasoning.

Serve the goulash in deep individual plates.