THE SEARCH FOR THE PERFECT STRUDEL
Our last 24 hours in Hungary, why we write recipes, and why they are more important than we think.
Every year when we visit Hungary, we yearn for a handful of foods: the first pretzel at the airport in Frankfurt or Vienna (depending on what route we travel in from New York), Nagymama’s lecsó (her heady, paprika-laced pepper and onion stew), crackly lángos slathered with tejföl (sour cream) and a drizzle of garlicky oil, and, of course–strudel.
Our favorite strudel is packed with poppy seeds and sour cherries (mákos meggyes rétes) inside a shatteringly crisp pastry. It is toothsome and somehow perfectly shy of sweet.
The pékség (bakery) that sells our favorite strudel is in Zirc, exactly at the halfway point between Veszprém, the city of András’ birth, and Porva, our village. We stop, bleary-eyed with jetlag, on our way to the village, munching strudel as we go. The tart cherry is just sour enough, and the poppy seeds (ground with sugar) are so thick and iron-rich that they infuse us with courage for the last 20 minutes of our long journey (usually, a nap follows).
This year, however, our beloved strudel was not the same. For the first time in nearly two decades, it had a subtly floury aftertaste. The poppy seeds were slightly off, and the sour cherries were not as bracing.
“Something’s different,” I said, of the flavors we wait so long for each year.
Everyone agreed.
We speculated about the rising food costs in Europe (and everywhere) and the global wheat crises. Perhaps the baker had to compromise on ingredients? Or was it the drought—were the sour cherries not as juicy this year? Did they switch from blue mák (poppy seeds) to another variety? What if the baker—who made our family’s favorite strudel for decades (and even longer before I came along), had retired, or worse? This thought, most of all, haunted me.
Every summer trip, particularly the last few, we deal with small losses. Colorful, time-worn houses get repainted bright, sparkly white, gravel roads get paved, and the village Neni, who waters the municipal flowers every morning at dawn, quietly passes her watering can to someone else.
Sometimes, things change for the better—near the monastery in Zirc—our children’s favorite fagyizó (ice cream shop), got a facelift with a kávéház/brewery that serves perfect melange (my favorite Austrian coffee drink), a pleasantly lemony summer brew, and excellent handmade pretzels.
On the opposite corner, at the Zöldség (vegetable stand), the man who sold me every bundle of parsley and the world’s juiciest melons since my first trip handed his business to his daughter last year. She knows her produce but lacks her father’s weathered skin and his delicacy in selecting just the right bunch of wine grapes or the juiciest, blemish-free peaches.
I miss his patience with my miserable Magyar as I improved slowly, year by year. I miss his warm eyes, his bright blue cotton overcoat, and how he helped me fill my basket, stacking the more tender stone fruits at the top and tucking in an extra bundle of grapes for the kids.
I didn’t see these changes coming, though I had to know, somewhere deep inside, that our favorite shopkeepers might eventually retire, close up shop, or leave this world while we were away. This begs the question: what happens when a favorite food, restaurant, or bakery we count on changes without warning? Or, in the case of the strudel, is it possible we were the ones who had changed?
For a while now, there’s been another strudel, the one Andras brings us from the Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam Avenue as he returns from the city to our quiet life upstate each Thursday night—-tucked into a white paper box, tied with red and white string.
This strudel —the one we once said, “It passes, but it’s not nearly as good as in Hungary” —is the strudel we now eat weekly. It filled a gap through early COVID when we couldn’t travel overseas and during the 18 months after we’d lived in Hungary when we dug our heels deep into life back in New York.
In the summer, András brings us sour cherry strudel; in the fall and winter, apple strudel—stuffed with small pieces of tart green apple, softened into each other in each toothsome bite. This strudel is good at room temperature but better toasted–and I think it’s best of all on the second day, only after 10 AM, when I’m particularly hungry, as a Tizora (ten o’clock snack) as second breakfast on a school day once my kids have gone off.
We’ve eaten this newer (to us) strudel almost weekly for four years. Is it possible that, somehow, without intending it, this strudel became our new gold standard?
This is part two of Hungarian Food Appreciation Week! This letter wouldn’t be possible without YOU! Enormous thanks to all who choose to support my work with a paid subscription. Paid subscribers will have full access to all posts this week! Other ways to support my work: like comment and share this post with friends.
In the few years she was alive between the time Andras and I met, and the year we married, András’ Nagymama’s apple strudel was our gold standard. She made her dough by hand on a wooden pastry board (that now belongs to me) and stretched it tissue paper thin over worn linen tablecloths. Just hours after he’d proposed to me, she taught me to make it with a nod and a gesture indicating it was my job now to keep her prodigal grandson in pastry.
Years before that, when András was a stranger walking around the same city as me, the strudel at Café Sabarsky at the Neue Gallery on the Upper East Side of Manhattan was once the best I’d ever known. I’d order it at a table alone, with a heiße schokolade (hot chocolate), and dream of Austria, not knowing what was coming my way.
All of these strudels are different. At the Hungarian Bake Shop, the apples are sliced thinly, like in strudels all over Austria. The strudel at Neue is packed with soft, cubed tart apples, like a tiny dumpling or pie. Nagymama stuffed hers with shredded apple, lemon, plump raisins, and just enough sugar. All are vastly different and perfect in their ways.
These thoughts swirled in my mind for days, haunting me. What if I could never get back to it—to our strudel, or any of these strudels—to these moments from my past?
Over the next three weeks, in Hungary, Vienna, and Croatia, we tried and failed to return to the flavor of our favorite strudel. Each attempt, while delicious in its own right, fell short of the mark.
“Something’s different,” the kids and András teased relentlessly each time I’d take a bite of another sample, then roll it back into a paper bag and move along. They’d finish it for me, but still, they agreed.
Viennese strudels were too refined and sweet. Though wildly delicious, Croatian strudel feels more like a pie, the dough a cross between Danish and puff pastry. All had merits, but not one filled the void from our rustic village bakery; the densely packed parcels rolled and cut, tucked perfectly on a small paper tray.
If I hadn’t gotten it before, I now know why humans need, study, and crave recipes as a form of history–proof that something they love truly exists. Writers like me spend hours researching, traveling, collecting, and perfecting recipes to help ourselves and others arrive at something—to a place or person we are otherwise helpless to return to.
We all have them: the flavors of our childhood, the foods of our grandmothers–of a time and place, or a person in our life that would fade without the smell, the joy, or the memory of a certain food.
Even as I’ve sometimes made light of my work, this is why food writing and recipe curation is vital work. “I love what I do, but it’s not brain surgery,” I often say—a humility we assign to seemingly less academic careers. Yes, it is not brain surgery, but maybe, in some small ways, it is heart surgery— a cure for something lost.
On our last day in Hungary, the last of 18 days traveling as a foursome, I stayed in the village to make linzer tortes, do laundry, and pack. Later, Greta and I drove into Veszprém for some last-minute shopping, past all our favorite little spots–the stand where we get the fluffiest lángos, our favorite strudel food truck, and our Sunday restaurant—the one that serves a course of handmade dumplings floating in the lightest beef broth at the start of every meal. We’d visited them all during our stay. It felt good to pass them by this time, no longer on the ravenous hunt to fill the gap of a year without Hungary.
“It’s nice to feel like we ate everything on this trip.” I said to Greta. “I’m even making peace with the strudel,” Finally, her teen side-eye seemed to say.
That night as I packed, I spotted a handful of brown bags my boys had picked up from our pékség while Greta and I were out. I didn’t have the energy to investigate, so I tucked them in the basket that would sit between my feet on our drive to Vienna the next day, snacks our morning flight.
By 4 AM the next morning, we sat in piles in the old Renault, skin on skin, nodding in and out of sleep, the last days of August. Thirty minutes outside Vienna, I reached in the basket to pass out breakfast: a kakaós csiga for Mátyás, mákos kifli for Greta, and kifli for András to nibble with his coffee. I would eat whatever was left over. I unrolled the last of the bags, and there it was—one thick slice of my old familiar friend mákos meggyes rétes.
I took a bite. Here, groggy and travel-weary, it offered just what I needed: no floury traces, utterly bursting with sour cherries and the zing of a billion black seeds. Perfect. I ate it silently, without a word.
xx
Sarah
p.s. I don’t have any great photos of the strudel, but I’ll share some BTS photos of us buying and eating this strudel over the years on my Instagram stories tonight, here.
HUNGARIAN FOOD GLOSSARY, Cont’d:*
pékség - bakery
lecsó - a Hungarian pepper and tomato stew
lángos - deep-fried flatbread
tejföl - sour cream
strudel - strudel (a type of pastry)
fagyizó - ice cream shop
kávéház - café
mákos kifli - poppy seed crescent roll
mák - poppy seed
mákos meggyes rétes - poppy seed and sour cherry strudel
Zöldség - vegetable stand
kakaós csiga - cocoa spiral pastry
Tízóra: a mid-morning snack or break, typically taken around 10 a.m.
Veszprém - a city in central Hungary, known as the Queen’s city
Nagymama - grandmother
* These are the Hungarian words used in today’s post. They will all be updated and added to the master Hungarian Food Glossary, which can be found here!
Beautiful, Sarah. I was transported. ❤️
Love this ❤️ and yes, it is important work!