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PAPRIKA HENDL (CHICKEN PAPRIKASH, 1892)

The night before Halloween, I attempted to make the dish from the most recent Halloween Tasting History video, a dish which was also mentioned in Bram Stoker's Dracula: Paprika Hendl, also known as paprikás csirke, or chicken paprikash in English. This recipe comes from the cookbook Valódi Magyar Szakácskönyv (The Real Hungarian Cookbook), which was published in Budapest in 1892. Published in this cookbook just five years before Dracula was published, the dish is spiced mainly with paprika, a very central spice in Hungarian cuisine. While stews involving meat and paprika were long common among Hungarian peasants, chicken paprikash was not written down as a recipe until 1830, during the Reform Era, when Hungarian nobles emphasized national unity through dress, tradition, and cooking. In the following decades, it became a popular dish in Hungary, and was sometimes accompanied by galuska (kind of like a spätzle), which Max and I also made here. Paprika hendl (the German name of the dish, since the story takes place while Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) appears in the book Dracula as one of the various meals the main character, Jonathan Harker, tries on his travels in Eastern Europe on his way to meet with Count Dracula. So, let's see if there is an air of foreboding when we try this dish! See Max’s video on how to make this dish here or see the ingredients and process at the end of this post, sourced from his website.

My experience making it:

Since the amount of chicken called for seemed to be ungodly, and I don't even own a pot big enough to fit that amount of chicken, I halved the recipe, opting to use chicken thighs and drumsticks (skin off). Otherwise, I kept to the recipe, only deciding to use chicken stock instead of water to achieve more flavour.

I began by first measuring out all my ingredients and preparing the chicken stock with a bouillon cube, then I prepared the chicken and seasoned it with salt. Warming the schmalz in a large pot on medium high heat, I added the diced onions, sprinkled on the salt, and mixed to ensure everything was coated. I think my stove runs a little too hot, because after ten minutes the onions were starting to burn to the pan, so I decided to turn the heat down to medium heat and add a little more schmalz to loosen them up. At this point I took the pot briefly off the heat in order to stir in the paprika without burning it. Then, I returned the pot to the heat, adding one piece of chicken into the pot at a time and stirring to coat each with some of the paprika onions. With barely any fat left in the pot, I was again worried the chicken and onions would burn to the pan, so I added the chicken stock very shortly after. I put the lid on the pot, set the heat to low, and let it simmer for 30 minutes, meanwhile stirring every ten minutes. The next line of Max's instruction confused me: "When the chicken is almost ready..." - readiness is super subjective and can vary massively depending on the recipe. As someone who is not very good at telling when meat is 'ready', I just assumed that after 30 minutes of cooking, the chicken should be cooked through and safe to eat, and for this dish, that was 'ready' enough for me. So, I decided to push forward. I proceeded to mix the sour cream and flour together, then slowly ladled in some of the paprika sauce from the pot, mixing it in with the sour cream to temper it. Since I was doing it slowly, it was mixing in fairly well, but I can imagine if you mixed in the whole ladleful at once, the sour cream and sauce would separate and not combine well. Next, I slowly added the sour cream and sauce mixture into the main pot, stirring as I went. It was kind of incorporating, but not as well as I hoped. Bubbles of fat were still floating on the top, making it look like the sauce hadn't really come together very well, but it did look like Max's, so I continued to simmer the pot uncovered for 20 minutes.

While the pot was simmering, I got started making the side: galuska. I set a bit of butter on the stove to melt, then added the salt to the flour and whisked the eggs. Next, I added the eggs and the melted butter to the flour mixture and used a spatula to fold everything in as best as I could. I noticed it was still very thick, forming a dough, so I used my hands to incorporate all the crumbs. Then, I slowly added the milk, this time using a spatula again to fold it in. I somehow felt like this process might have been easier if the milk was added earlier, but I trusted the instructions. Once all the milk had been added, I was puzzled - the dough was still way too thick compared to the 'thick pancake batter' description Max said to look for. Mine was still a doughy blob that held its shape. So, I veered off recipe and began adding and folding in milk little by little until the batter looked like Max's. This ended up being quite a lot of milk! When I deemed it 'good enough', I got out my cheese grater (the standing rectangular kind with various sides with different sizes of holes on each). Max uses a special kitchen instrument made especially for making galuska where you can slide and slice the batter to create perfectly sized droplets, but I think this is a little unrealistic to expect the average person to have in their kitchen. So, I boiled some water in a pot, laid the cheese grater on its side with the larger holes facing down, and spooned the batter inside the 'tunnel', using a spatula to scrape back and forth so that little droplets of the batter would push through the holes and fall into the boiling water. This technically worked, and the resulting droplets looked mostly correct, if not very uniform, but it was an awful lot of work for my wrists, which already suffer from carpal tunnel at times. Perhaps that galuska-making contraption really is worth getting! I worked in batches, waiting for the little batter droplets to rise to the top and cook through, then taking them out with a slotted spoon and mixing them with a bit of melted butter in a bowl to keep them from sticking. Once it looked like I had enough to fill out our meal, I stopped making them even though there was batter left. My hand was tired. I then turned my attention back to the chicken paprikash, still simmering (it had definitely been a bit longer than 20 minutes by now). I was disappointed to see that the sauce was still very thin and still had a layer of fat bubbles floating on top. Getting impatient, I decided to thicken it with flour by making a roux: I added a few spoonfuls of flour to a small bowl, ladled in some of the thin, simmering sauce, then mixed well and added the paste into the main pot, stirring to combine. After simmering for another 20 minutes, it was STILL not thickened enough, so I made and added another roux. Finally, I noticed it was thickening, but I also noticed that the chicken was beginning to fall apart (I had most definitely cooked it for too long) and the sauce itself no longer had the expected paprika-orange colour, but more of a beige tinge. I decided to call it a day and served up some chicken and sauce for my husband and I, also adding some galuska to each plate, drizzling with leftover chicken paprikash sauce, and adding a few dollops of sour cream to the meal. The orange dish I was hoping to make (it was supposed to be somewhat on theme for Halloween) had become a sad beige meal. I only hoped it would taste better than it looked - it at least smelled good!

My experience tasting it:

Starting with the chicken, I got a decent amount of sauce on top as well as a bit of the sour cream, and shoveled it in (I was terribly hungry by this point - it was past 10pm - because the dish had taken twice as long to make than I had hoped). It was actually very tasty, hearty, and soul-warming - thank goodness! While I honestly don't think I could taste any paprika flavour (I have always found sweet paprika to be really subtle), the chicken flavour was fairly strong. Perhaps if I had used water instead of chicken stock, the taste of the paprika would have shone a little more. Nevertheless, the sauce was really lovely, and with the help of the roux, definitely my preferred thickness. Just a little bit salty, but not overly so. The chicken was fall-apart tender, almost like it was in a stew, and the sour cream added a much-needed freshness and brightness to the sauce. The galuska were actually quite nice as a side as well - I think they achieved the perfect spätzle texture, and the sauce clung to them well. Some pieces were bigger than others due to my haphazard cheese grater method used to make them, but otherwise, they were the perfect accompaniment to the chicken paprikash. My husband cleared his plate (always a good sign), and I purposely saved a bit of mine to have as leftovers for lunch the following day. It also tasted great warmed up the second day! As tasty as this dish was, I was a little miffed that you couldn't taste or see the paprika much, especially since I thought it would be the star of the dish (it's in the name!). I will probably not make this particular version of chicken paprikash again, if only because it was a bit challenging for me and took much too long, but I will definitely give a modern recipe for chicken paprikash a try at some point. It would also be nice to try in a restaurant to see if the version I made here was close or far from what it is supposed to taste like. All in all, it seems the sense of foreboding did in fact play out a little bit, but despite that, the dish did taste nice. If you end up making this dish, if you liked it, or if you changed anything from the original recipe, do let me know!

Paprika Hendl original recipe (1892)

Sourced from a recipe in Valódi Magyar Szakácskönyv (1892) and Max Miller’s version in his Tasting History video.

Put a piece of fat the size of a large egg into a pot… When the fat is hot, add two finely chopped onions and a tin spoonful of fine red paprika, then immediately add the chicken…salt it, pour on half a liter of water, cover and, stirring often, let it simmer for half an hour. Meanwhile take care that it does not boil to pieces. When the chicken is tender, prepare a gravy thickening with 3 deciliters of very good sour cream and a small spoon of flour. Pour this into the chicken broth, stir it well, and boil together…Serve it on a long platter, surrounded by egg barley or galuska (dumplings).

Modern Recipe

Based on a recipe from Valódi Magyar Szakácskönyv (1892) and Max Miller’s version in his Tasting History video.

Ingredients:

Chicken Paprikash

4-5 lbs (2 kg) chicken, drumsticks and thighs

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon salt, divided

2 tablespoons schmalz, lard, or vegetable oil

2 medium onions (about 500 g), finely chopped

2 tbsp sweet paprika, Hungarian if you can find it

2 cups (500 ml) chicken stock or water

1 1/4 cup (300 g) sour cream, plus extra for garnish

1 tbsp flour

Galuska

3 eggs

2 1/2 cups (300 g) flour

1 tsp salt

3 tbsp (45 g) melted butter, plus a little more for coating the dumplings

1/2 cup (120 ml) whole milk

Method:

For the chicken paprikash: Pat the chicken dry and season it with 1 tablespoon of the salt.

Heat the schmalz in a large pot over medium high heat. Once it’s hot and shimmering, add the onions and sprinkle them with the remaining 1 teaspoon of salt. Stir to coat the onions in the fat and cook for 10 minutes, or until they’re soft and golden.

When the onions are golden, take the pot off the heat and stir in the paprika. It’s important to take the pot off the heat so that the paprika doesn’t burn when you add it in.

When the onions and paprika are evenly combined, return the pot to the heat and add in the chicken and stir so that it gets coated in the onions and paprika. Adding the chicken in a few pieces at a time and stirring after each addition can make it easier to coat the chicken.

Cook the chicken for a few minutes, just so that it starts to get some color, turning it every minute or so, then add the chicken stock. Reduce the heat to medium low, cover the pot, and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so.

When the chicken is almost ready, mix the sour cream and flour together until smooth. Stir in about a ladleful of the hot liquid from the pot to temper the sour cream, then stir all of the sour cream mixture into the pot. Let it gently simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes, or until the sauce thickens.

For the galuska: Whisk the eggs until smooth. Combine them with the flour, salt, and 3 tablespoons of melted butter and mix until it forms a dough. Stir in the milk a little at a time until the mixture is the consistency of a very thick pancake batter.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Cook the dumplings in batches by running the batter through a galuska maker, a cheese grater with large holes, or by just pinching off small pieces and dropping them in the water. The galuska should float after just a few seconds, then let them boil for another 45 seconds, then take them out with a strainer. Put them in a bowl and pour a little melted butter over them and toss to coat so they don’t stick together. Repeat with the remaining batter.

To serve: Plate the galuska with some of the chicken and plenty of the sauce. Garnish with sour cream and serve it forth.

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