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Hungary is the land of the most unexpected and the most delightful contradictions. It has the wide stretched lonely plains, the Puzstas, and it has the towering Carpathian Mountains. It has the touching old-fashioned simplicity and gaiety of its country people, who, clad in their colorful national costume, still lead the patriarchal life of bygone days, and it has at the same time the ultra-modernity, the utter sophistication of its capital, Buda-Pesth, one of the most beautiful, the most alluring and most dangerous of continental cities.
As is the land, so are its people. Fiery, passionate, temperamental, quickly aroused to anger as well as to enthusiasm and yet displaying a sentiment, not to say a sentimentality, which astonishes the foreign beholder. The Hungarian is proud and humble, tender and cruel, hard and yielding at the same time, and these apparently incompatible qualities give his character a distinct piquancy and fascination.
It is only natural that the character of the land as well as its people are clearly displayed in the national cookery, and Hungarian cooking enjoys a world-wide and well deserved fame. The most famous and the most typical of all Hungarian dishes is the Papricasz and it displays the same combination of contradictory ingredients which are to be found in the Hungarian character and the Hungarian landscape. The Papricasz has as its foundation the tenderest of all meats—young chicken, delicate veal—but it is cooked and seasoned in such a manner that this soft and tender meat sets tongue and throat aflame.
To prepare a real Hungarian Papricasz in your own kitchen select a tender young pullet and cut it up in small pieces as if you were making a fricassee. Smother the pullet in its own juice with one or two charlotte onions. When almost done add a generous dose of paprika, the typical Hungarian spice that looks much like Cayenne pepper, cook for another twenty minutes and serve with dumplings or small new potatoes.
“All the news concerning Jews” is faithfully and promptly reported in the Jewish Dally Bulletin — the only Jewish daily newspaper printed in English
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.