Hungarian Heritage Review, 1987 (16. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1987-03-01 / 3. szám
“DIÓS ES MÁKOS” FAVORITES OF ALL HUNGARIANS My Christmas mailbag was indeed a mixed one. I am not ashamed to ad- _ mit that some of the readers of this publication scolded me for giving the recipe for Mákos Guba or Bobolyka for Christmas. Granted, several readers liked it — I received some very touching, very pleasant thank you notes. One woman wrote on behalf of her father who became 90 years old at beginning of January. She told me, at her father’s request, that he had been 12 years old in a small village back home when he last ate Mákos Guba, and all through his life had just dreamed about it until his daughter, herself almost 60 — born not far from Buffalo — finally fixed this childhood dish for him — according to my recipe. I read her letter through my tears. Most of the people who wrote felt disappointed because they felt that I should have given a good, workable recipe for the most Hungarian of all holiday pastries, the walnut and poppyseed cakes (or more correctly, pastries) which have different names in various parts of the country, but have been served at every big holiday for several centuries. So, to please everybody, I am giving you the recipe for the Makos (poppyseed) and Diós (walnut) pastry in time for Easter serving. At one time, at least three times a year, this pastry was baked at Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, which used to be — even during my youth — just as celebrated a two-day holiday as the first and second days of Christmas, and Easter Sunday and Easter Monday were. How could you possibly celebrate Easter Monday without the poppyseed and walnut pastries. Every little boy, teenager, and young man in Hungary got dressed on Easter Monday in the most elegant, most festive clothing he had, filled up a small bottle with perfume, cologne, or a mixture of cologne and water, closed the bottle with a sprinkler cork, or simply with a cork through which a hole was burned with a thick nail, and went from house to house to sprinkle a few drops of the scent on the unmarried daughters of the house. Originally the custom was to pour a bucket of water on the girls, and this custom went back to pre-Christian times as part of the fertility rites and rites of spring, just as the poppyseed and walnut cakes were pre-Christian traditions. Poppyseed in one form or the other was eaten throughout Eurasia as a symbol of fertility, the idea being that the family should grow from one tiny seed, a handful of seeds in the pod. The walnut was also a symbolic food from the dawn of primitive religions. Members of a family should stick together and prosper or perish together, as the four segments of a walnut do in the shell. When Christianity came, these old symbols continued to survive. The recipe I am giving you is my mother’s. She baked it three times a year since she took over the baking from my grandmother some 45 years ago. Grandma’s recipe, as I recall, was richer, heavier, and was cut into small dainty slices. Mother’s was lighter, not as sweet, and it was cut into 1/4-inch to 1/3-inches wide and about 1-1/2 to 1-3/4-inches high after baking. I tried to keep the recipe as close to my mother’s as possible. Through the years I have shared it with many people who used it with great satisfaction. I hope you will try it for Easter, and then use it year after year. For the big holidays, Mother always prepared a delightful side dish three or four weeks ahead. She always offered it to guests together with the poppyseed and walnut pastry. It was dried mixed fruits in sweet vermouth. If you would like to have the recipe for this delightful, traditional Hungarian holiday dish (which is equally excellent with ice cream, with plain sponge cake or by itself, as well as with the Hungarian pastries), send a self-addressed, stamped envelope, marking the lower left corner “Fruit in Vermouth,” to me at The Bakery Restaurant, 2218 North Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614-3799. I have the recipe ready and will send it out within two or three days. MARCH 1987 HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW 19
