Recipe of the week: Hungarian strudel (rétes)

The Viennese apple strudel is among the world’s 100 most famous foods. But where does this hearty dessert come from, and how do Hungarians make it? Nowadays we tend to do it the lazy way, not like our grandmothers who even made the pastry from scratch. We tried to find out their secret 🙂

In Hungarian we call the dessert rétes, which comes from réteges (layered), while the German strudel comes from swirl/ whirl. According to mindmegette.hu, rétes used to be a layered dessert baked in a furnace without filling. The stuffed version is known since the 17^th century, and it spread in the Habsburg Empire in the 18^th century. The first written document speaking about the dessert is from 1696, and it is kept in the Viennese Municipal Library.

The dessert is known as strudel all over the world, even though it is a traditional dish in almost all Central-Eastern European countries. For instance, it is called zavitek in Slovenia, závin in the Czech Republic, savijača or štrudla in Croatia, and gibanica in Serbia.

It is closely related to baklava and burek, which are the beloved delicacies of the Mediterranean, Turkish, Arab and Iranian cuisine. It is believed that the Turks introduced the dessert family in the 16^th century. Today’s stuffed strudel was created in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 18^th-19^th century. It has been a traditional festive dessert in Hungary since then.

The Parisian Ritz Hotel featured the “rétes Hongrois” (Hungarian strudel) on its menu in the 19^th century. They wanted it to be authentic so they ordered pastry flour from Hungary and even sent their confectioners to learn some tricks in Pest. We don’t know whether or not they succeeded, but we do know who to turn to for the secret: grandmas or elderly ladies who still know the tricks of making strudel pastry.

If you like challenges and having fun in the kitchen, you should definitely try to make it at home. It all comes down the flour, which has to be lighter than normal flour and has to be high in gluten. Regarding the filling, you can basically use anything. You can make a filling out of everything, just make sure to use some ground nuts or wheatmeal in the case of juicy fruits.

A few filling options:

• cottage cheese filling: cottage cheese, sour cream, egg, sugar, possibly vanilla sugar, zest of lemon/ lemon juice, raisins, wheatmeal;
• poppy seed filling: ground poppy seeds and sugar scalded with milk, spiced with cinnamon/ lemon zest/ orange zest etc. or mixed with apricot jam/ grated apple;
• apple filling: grated and steamed apple (sour type) mixed with sugar, raisins, ground walnut, cinnamon;
• sour cherry filling: pitted sour cherry with ground walnut and cinnamon
• pumpkin-poppy seed filling: ground poppy seed mixed with sugar and grated pumpkin or squash;
• walnut-plum filling: quartered plum mixed with ground walnut and cinnamon sugar.