[Sca-cooks] Romanian Cookbook

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

> Have you looked at the recipes of Marxen Rumpolt?
> While he was a German, he grew up in Hungary and
> has some recipes that he labels as being "in the
> Hungarian style".  I would consider these the
> closest you can get at the moment.  Romania was
> not the same country as Hungary any more that
> Poland was.  I wouldn't use Romanian recipes for
> Hungarian. Just because they are Eastern
> European, doesn't mean they had the same roots.

Hm, let me comment on this.

First of all, while Poland and Hungary weren't the same country, there
were significant periods of time where either the same person was king of
both, or they were under the rule of siblings, so in terms of court
cuisine, we can't totally discount joint influence-- in some cases, we
know of cookbooks that came to Poland through Hungary.

And of course, there are major influences between Romanian
(Wallachia/Moldavia) and Hungary. So, we can't totally discount influence,
but I suspect influence will be even harder to document.

On the other hand, we've discussed the term 'in the X style' before and
agreed that it is often clear that something in the 'x style' may have
very little resemblance to the original (take 'Hungarian goulash' and
'guylas' as examples!) So we do have to approach the 'in the Hungarian
Style' recipes with caution.

I'm not sure I would consider the second type of source that much more
useful in 're-creating' Hungarian cuisine than the first... but obviously
that's just my opinion.

-- Pani Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika   jenne at fiedlerfamily.net
"If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long
To get so that we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving. " -- Robert Frost, "The Star-Splitter"