What exactly are the Hungarikums?
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According to mno.hu, the list of Hungarikums has been expanding for five years now. It includes things like fish soup, stew, pálinka, remedies, and even an educational method. But what exactly are the Hungarikums, how does a product profit from being called a Hungarikum, and what guarantees good quality?
Imagine a table full of delicacies like Karcag mutton stew, Egri Bikavér, Csabai sausage, grape marc pálinka, chimney cake… people are wiping their Hungarian moustaches, while cattle dogs are barking. This could be an idyllic picture from the 70s-80s, but the truth is that we are very much in the present world. In the world of Hungarikums, created “to identify values that are important to the whole of the nation”.
March brought about the expansion of the list, as the Kodály method, the Hungarian shepherd and hound dog, and the fisherman’s soup from the region of Tisza were added to the list. Out of these, the first two are easy to comprehend and demark, but the problem with the latest characterises the whole of the Agriculture and Food Industry category.
The case of Hungarian fish soups is a bit cynical, as fishing in the natural waters of Hungary was prohibited two years ago, thus revolting hundreds of people. This meant that the fish had/has to be purchased from either abroad (in frozen form), water farms, wholesalers or lake farms.
To define Hungarikum, we turned to www.hungarikum.hu, the official website of Hungarikums.
“Hungarikum is a collective term indicating a value worthy of distinction and highlighting within a unified system of qualification, classification, and registry and which represents the high performance of Hungarian people thanks to its typically Hungarian attribute, uniqueness, specialty and quality.
In the beginning of the 21th century a movement was organized that aimed to systematize and sum up the Hungarian values. After a broad societal and professional collation, the Act number XXX of 2012 concerning Hungarian national values and Hungarikums was established and declared by the Hungarian Government on the 2nd of April, 2012. The act’s purpose is to give a legal frame to Hungarian people in order to specify and identify their own values, moreover to contribute the promotion of collected values.”
The listed Hungarikums come from many different fields of life. Among others, you can find Halas lace, Herend porcelain, Béres drops and Béres drops extra, Erős Pista, the life-work of Ferenc Puskás, the caves of Aggtelek etc. in seven categories (Agriculture and Food Industry, Health and Lifestyle, Industrial and technological solutions, Cultural Heritage, Sport, Natural environments, Tourism and catering).
However, it’s not quite clear what kind of advantage it means for a product to be listed as a Hungarikum. More importantly, what is the guarantee of good quality in the case of a concept which is used in general terms quite often?
Another question that might arise is how we can compare exact brands, like Pick, Herz, Unicum with general concepts like Csabai sausage or grape marc pálinka, mentioned without origin or any categorization. The production of the former ones follow strict rules and sometimes even secret family recipes, while generally listed products can be of any quality. Even though the pálinka law, for instance, has bettered the quality of the beverages sold in shops, we can still find fake versions that are quite far from what is called a Hungarikum.
