The Eighth Hungarian Tribe, 1987 (14. évfolyam, 1-8. szám)

1987-07-01 / 7-8. szám

Birmingham. After all you people are involved in the sütni. I had hoped that the videotape on this would be available to demonstrate the difference between a first generation sütni in the United States and the sütni in Birmingham among third generation enthusiasts. Now again, the sütni as a custom (this may sound strange to you) but as a general practice in Hungary at the turn of the century, was really a middle class custom. When they went picnicking, they did a sütni. Peasants, the peasant society had the szalonnázás. which meant that you sat down at the table, you had your bacon there, and you had your knife, and you sliced, and I am sure that some of your parents or some of your grandparents did that. And you may know some that still do it, right. But it was not taken over a fire, it was already cured or it was already abált and you just ate the small slices on bread. Now,

I am not saying that, you know, a juhász (shepherd) or a csikós (horse herder) out on the plains did not take his szalonna, look at the fire and say, "Hey, maybe I can combine the two!’ I am quite sure that a juhász or a csikós might have done something like that and put it on a spit and rolled it over the fire and put it on bread. But as a wide-spread custom, around 1900, this was really a custom of people who wanted to get away from the city and who. when they went out of the city, went to the parks where they built a fire and they cut themselves just one spit, which they carved, as it's called in Hungary a nyárs. And they carved the ends, sharpened the ends and attached the slab bacon which they cut into chunks. They sliced it across in a number of ways, that, of course, varied by individual preference. I do not want to bring that up because there are a number of experts here who will contest what I might say is the best way. But anyway, what you have to do then is put the stick in the hard-back or into the thick end of the bacon. (I am not sure of the technical term for that.) The wooden nvárs and the bacon are then put over the fire.

The sütni was a group effort; people would gather around the fire and you would have ten, fifteen, and however many people were involved, each one of them had their own spit (nyárs). You combined the drippings from the bacon with onions and with good bread, and sometimes with strong green pepper. It's very good! Interestingly enough they did not combine it with tomatoes; that's an American custom! The BLT effect is an American addition! Everyone made their own combination. It is no longer just sitting around the fire, singing, having a good time. Oh yes, you have to have something to make the bacon slide down, so you have to have something like beer, or good wine, or pálinka. You do need that to go with it. It's the case on both sides of the Atlantic, as much in Birmingham as in northeastern Hungary. At any rate, the Birmingham sütni has become ritualized in many ways. One is that now you have a "twirler”, you have someone who is responsible for it. It's no longer a group effort that everyone gets around the fire, but now someone is made responsible for it. The host, or someone who is a friend of the host, is responsible for the sütni. They cut up the bread ahead of time, they cut up the tomatoes, they cut up the onions and the peppers, and then one of them gets down and begins to "twirl" the bacon over the wood fire. And, not any kind of wood, the wood has to be special. At any rate, in

Birmingham they prefer the wood of fruit trees, yes, cherry trees, yes cherry wood. What other kind of wood? Everyone has their preference. You cannot use pine wood because that smokes too much. Actually, some of those middle-class kids who go out into the woods in Hungary still use pine wood because they don't know what the people in Birmingham know, that cherry wood makes the best sütni. And, you need the twirler because you need experts. You need experts around the fire. You don't need amateurs around the fire. An expert knows that if you burn the bacon it becomes bitter. This I have been told a number of times already. Also, you can't burn the bacon. It has to be someone who can make it tasteful. Now, another factor that I want to mention is the role of women in the sütni. I have never seen a woman do the sütni in this neighborhood. It is a man's job. Well, maybe I have been to the wrong sütnis. But among the first generation Hungarian Americans, In first generation practice, everybody does it for themselves. Women and men are responsible for their own bread, bacon, onions and whatever. But again, this may be a misperception on my part; I haven't done my research thoroughly, I really haven't done my field research and I recommend that you go to a number of sütnis. At the Birmingham Ethnic Festival, they have a number of machines doing the sütni, and that indicates the entrance of American ingenuity. Here you can get maximum amounts of drippings, not grease, drippings. That is really mass production. The one thing that really should be added to this is the ingenuity in making tool -- nyárs — for the sütni. The implements reflect sophistication and ingenuity. You know more about this than I do, but the important point that I want to stress is that the available resources of the new environment put their Imprint on the process. Also, that this is an urban setting that transformed the sütni from the campfire type of get-together where everyone sits on the ground and everyone does their own thing to still another communal activity, because a sütni involves family or friends and family. It was and is usually a group activity, or at least the ones I have been to. So. you do not do it alone. I don't think anyone does it alone. It is a real social event that gets people together. I was talking about the technology of this, the technology of the sütni, and also the methods by which the bacon could be put onto the spit so that it cannot possibly fall off and so that you collect the maximum drippings. There are many variations of the technology that the urban environment has produced. The fact that people have acquired craft backgrounds, blacksmith backgrounds, or having worked in a place like the Malleable, or worked in a tool and die making shop, whatever, it has created this possibility of transforming a custom that was basically an escape from the urban environment to becoming a very attractive, very pleasant event in an urban environment.

And. it has been transformed in still another way. In the sütni now, the place is relatively defined, it is more analogous to the American grill. It may not look like an American grill into which they put cherry wood and over which they do the sütni. But, basically the structural features are a synthesis. So the sütni has been merged with a relatively small fire, a wood fire, which makes sense in the backyard. One expert, the twirler, is responsible for the process and he works it as if it were on a conveyor belt. The

Page 5