Csapó Katalin - Füreder Balázs - Sári Zsolt: Reneszánsz ételek – Ételek reneszánsza Időszaki kiállítás 2008. március–május (Budapest, 2008)

Renaissance dishes - the first known Hungarian recipe Our investigation of Renaissance culinary culture must go beyond the cultural historical and archaeological sources; indeed it cannot be complete without the research of recipes. Over the past century or so scholars have come to agree that the earliest description of food in Hungary dates from the fifteenth century. Hans Wiswe, however, claimed in 1970 that there exists a Hungarian recipe from the century before. The recipe for a "Hungarian cake" comes from a fourteenthcentury Libro di cucina. "Hungarian cake" is none other than a Strudel cake with a meat filling. Flavour capon meat and pork with onions, spices and salt, fry it in plenty of lard, add water and cook. In the meantime, prepare the pastry from flour and salty water, roll out into sheets, spread with bacon fat, fill and bake: Hungarian cake, for twelve people Take a good fat capon and a large belly of pig and two large onions and half a pound of sweet and fine spices, and take three pounds of fresh fat, not salty, and take flour of the equivalent of three loaves of bread, the best you have; now dice the capon and the pork belly and also dice the two onions, and fry all these in plenty of fresh fat; now add a pinch of fresh spices, a lot of saffron and a little salt; and when it is fried, add a glass of water to keep it from burning, and take the flour and kneed with a little salty water, and roll it out strongly, and that done, get a tin-lined copper pan and grease it with the best fresh bacon you have. Take the pastry, roll it out, and roll it very thin with a rolling pin, as thin as you can; you need two people to do this, stretch it wafer-thin with lard, and transform it into 18 sheets, and them take the filling made of capon and other things and make a juicy base on one side (of the sheets) and cover this with the sheets, brushing with lard every leaf, and make a top to cover it. This cake requires little fire from below and a good one from above, and you can make more or less, depending on how much you need. (Balázs Füreder: "Magyar torta tizenként személyre" [Hungarian Cake for Twelve people] in Lymbus, vol. 7, 2006)