Recipe of the week: Roast á la Brasov (Brassói aprópecsenye)

Geographic locations have always been favoured constituents when naming meals. They are easy to remember and imply some kind of tradition. However, they can be misleading, because many times they have nothing to do with the actual place. This is probably the case when speaking about roast á la Brasov (brassói aprópecsenye), which has several origin stories.

Unraveling the story of the name of roast á la Brasov is not an easy task, because quite a few people claim to be the “godfathers”. According to beol.hu, some people believe that it was Nándor Gróf, the chef of the Hungarian State Railways, who created the recipe in 1948 on the train circulating between Budapest and Brasov.

However, master chef György Dózsa claims the recipe was first shared in a 19^th century cookbook, which defines it as a meal from Brasov. According to him, it should be a garlic beef pot made with potatoes roasted on fat and garlicy beef.

The next story is about Endre Papp, the onetime head of the Mátyás Cellar of Vienna, who said that it was him who created the roast. He made it for a “food innovation” competition on the 17^th of September, 1950.

He called the dish “á la Brasov” because he still remembered the Treaty of Trianon, and the name of Cluj Napoca (Kolozsvár) was already taken.

Still, the locals of Óbuda (Budapest’s 3^rd district) argue that the recipe was created by the wife of the Weiss Pub’s owner as a one-pot meal (made with marjoram-onion pork and egg barley) for the birthday of master carpenter Károly Brassóy.

So the meal has probably nothing to do with Brasov, and the “apró” (tiny) qualifier was only added to the Hungarian name as a joke, when someone accidentally cut the meat into pieces that were too small.