Goulash nationalism: the culinary identity of a nation

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between food, geography and national culture. Food is sustenance and ceremony; it is also malleable, transformable and indelibly linked with global movements. Certain foods, regardless of their origins, become intimately linked with particular cultures and begin to function almost metonymically, in some cases becoming the dominant thing which is known about the culture. This paper presents one of the most iconic culinary specialties of the Hungarian kitchen, gulyásleves and its better known bastard cousin goulash. In interviewing foreign visitors to the city of Budapest about their previous knowledge of the county, the most frequently cited fact was their familiarity with paprika and goulash (the former being the key element demarking a Hungarian meat soup from those found in other Central European kitchens). This highlights the way in which food and foodways, with some unpacking, reveal a rich host of cultural and historical information. In the case of goulash and paprika, these include the long route that peppers took through the Ottoman Empire, the role of the cowboys of the Hungarian Great Plains, the emigration of Hungarians at the end of the nineteenth century and the evolution from soup to stew in the ‘New World’.

Keywords:

• culinary heritage
• culture
• food
• national identity