GASTRONOMY

HUNGARIAN DESSERTS IN CNN’S TOP 50 INTERNATIONAL LIST OF DELICACIES BASED ON NINE YEARS OF CULINARY EXPERIENCE

Hungarian gastronomy, including sweets, is well deservedly known abroad and this fact is now confirmed yet again as the country is featured with three items on a list compiled of the world’s best desserts.

A pastry chef by trade, Jen Rose Smith from the northeastern U.S. state of Vermont is much better known in the world as a travel and gastronomy writer for media outlets such as National Geographic, Rolling Stone, USA Today or CNN. For the latter, she looked much further than New England and compiled a list of what she considers as the world’s best desserts. After extensive travels for nine years, she first published this list in 2018 and early this year, we have the updated edition.

A subjective list

She acknowledges that it is not easy to spot the best dessert on the Earth as everyone has a different favorite. “From childhood treats to a grandparent's favorite recipes, beloved foods are deeply personal. This seems especially true of desserts, which often take pride of place at celebrations and traditional holidays,” she explains the difficulties of finding really the best. National categorizations are also hard sometimes as “some sweets rise above local flavors” like in the case of Hong Kong's dan tats – don’t blame yourself if you mistake the latter one for the Portuguese treat pastéis de nata since “those eggy tarts traveled with Portuguese traders and colonists to cities around the world.” Jen Rose Smith admits that this list blends the personal with something more broadly appealing. “It's the fruit of my nine years in the pastry kitchen, when I traveled to explore new flavors everywhere… But with food, like language or culture, determining what's ‘foreign’ turns out to be complicated.” As an example, she mentions tiramisu that relies on chocolate, coffee and sugar, which arrived in Italy through global trade. Deliberately not ranked, “some” – as she puts it – of the best desserts from around the world are listed in alphabetical order.

Esterházy, kifli and Rigó Jancsi

The Top 50 list features six French desserts and six American desserts (Chocolate Mousse, Crème Brûlée, Gâteau Fondant au Chocolat, Kouign Amann, Brittany, Lemon Tart and Tarte Tatin) as well as six Americans (Brownies, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Coconut Cake, Doughnuts, New York Cheesecake and Sour Cherry Pie), followed in number by three Hungarian delicacies: the Esterházy cake, the kifli with sweet filling and the ‘Rigó Jancsi’ cake. Regarding the Esterházy cake, it bears the name of a Hungarian noble family with origins in the Middle Ages and loyal to the Habsburgs when Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As Jen Rose Smith puts the delicacy into historical perspective, “in its glory days, the Austro-Hungarian Empire stretched across central Europe, and a century after the empire fell its creamy legacy can still be found in pastry shop windows from Vienna to Sarajevo.” According to her description, “for this elegant cake, slim rounds of almond meringue are piled high between stripes of chocolate buttercream, then topped with a marbled spiderweb of chocolate and vanilla fondant. A melting texture and rich sweetness make this old-fashioned cake a perennial favorite in sweets-loving Budapest, but it's just as easy to find in Vienna, the grand city that once led the empire. It remains deeply influenced by a shared culinary tradition.” What is simply called ‘kifli’ (simply meaning croissant in Hungarian) on the Top 50 list is better described by its Hungarian name, that is, ‘hókifli’ (literally: ‘snow croissant’, referring to its white appearance as it is covered by icing sugar). As the CNN compilation puts it, “while the rest of the world eats jam, central Europe enjoys the rich flavor of lekvár, a chunky preserve that retains all the tartness of the region's ripe apricots and plums. The hearty fruit preserve is the delicious prize inside these crescent pastries. A soft, flaky dough is shaped into a plump half-moon that barely contains the sweet filling, then topped with a light blanket of powdered sugar. Not that kifli are limited to fruit preserves. The sweets, which are especially beloved at holiday times, are often stuffed with sweetened walnuts or poppy seeds.” The third Hungarian delicacy selected for the list of the world’s top desserts is Rigó Jancsi (‘Johnny Rigó’): “fluffy chocolate sponge cake is sandwiched with apricot jam and airy chocolate mousse in this classic treat. Topped with a whisper-thin layer of chocolate glaze then cut into tidy cubes of chocolate, the Rigó Jancsi stands out even in the notably crowded field of fabulous Hungarian desserts.” Jen Rose Smith also provides a background why this name: “beloved for a silky texture and rich flavor, the seductive cake was named for a love story that caught the world's attention with racy images and juicy details. Rigó Jancsi was a Romani violinist who won the heart of the (married) Princesse de Caraman-Chimay of Belgium, and the two made international headlines when they ran off together in 1896.” We hope that these telling ‘pictures’ of the three Hungarian desserts selected to be among the world’s best make you want to taste them. And when you do, you will realize that there are many more of these culinary delights offered by Hungarian gastronomy – just ask for a Dobos cake, the ‘Somlói galuska’ sponge cake, a Gundel pancake, etc.

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