Goulash, Romantic Nationalism, and Eszter Kisbán

It’s a funny feeling when you have a sense of knowing someone when you have never met them and read only a few of their works.

That’s the case with Eszter Kisbán, ethnologist and folklorist of Hungarian culture.  A few months ago Victoria Pope who edits the quality new travel quarterly Smithsonian Journeys asked me if I had anything I could contribute for their special issue on the Danube.

My first thought was to say that there was absolutely nothing.  Then I remembered that some years earlier I had read the brief twenty-page English-language summary at the end of of Kisbán’s Népi kultúra, köz kultúra, jelkép: a gulyas, pörkölt, paprikás (Folk culture, public culture, symbol: goulash, pörkölt, paprikash) (1989).

In it, Kizbán laid out how Hungarian nationalists, not entirely happy with their situation in the Austro-Hungarian empire, turned to romantic notions of the nation as growing from folk culture.  This led to the elevation of Magyar to a literary language, to the promotion of folk dances and dress, and to the transformation of goulash from cowboy food on the plain to national dish.

I’d always thought this a very fine study on culinary nationalism. It was ground-breaking at a time when cuisines were popularly supposed to go back deep in time, deserved more exposure in the English-speaking world.

Here was my chance.  I spent several weeks rooting around in histories of Hungarian nationalism, English-language Hungarian cookbooks, particularly George Lang’s classic Cuisine of Hungary, as well as websites devoted to paprika, Hungarian painters, and so on.

Here’s the final result, “The humble beginnings of goulash.”  Thanks Eszter Kisbán.  I hope we meet some day so that I can thank you in person for your work on goulash.

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