Hungarian cuisine

Hungarian cooking stands on paprika and onion: the first for colour and flavour, the second for the body other cuisines reach for flour to get.

Paprika reached Hungary through the Ottomans in the sixteenth century and within two hundred years had become definitive. There are eight grades, from delicately sweet to fierce, and they are not mixed at random.

The second thing people do not expect is soured cream. It goes into soups, onto meat and into sauces, and its acidity does the job lemon does around the Mediterranean.