Although the concept of Hungaricums by now has been fully incorporated into our common language, it is always good to clarify the exact meaning of the word. According to a law adopted in 2012, ‘Hungaricum’ is a term that stands for a unique collection of exceptional and distinctive features that together deliver top performance in…
Similar to our recent posts, we chose an old newspaper article as the subject of this post. The publication on August 6th 60 years ago features the life in the Szeged suburb Alsóváros titled: “Among the Red Millers”. While in our days we strive to preserve the authentic nature of city suburbs, the article writes…
Our regular readers will certainly remember last week’s post referring to an article published over a 100 years ago featuring measurements made by the Szeged City Council to protect the origin of its own paprika. Some 65 years ago – during the communist Rákosi era – a newspaper article was published that very precisely described…
Our readers surely can remember that a few weeks ago we wrote about the quality of Szeged paprika in Hungarian language on the Day of Food security. It is very interesting to see how a local producer of Szeged paprika can identify and protect its products against imports (Spanish paprika). This theme is not only…
Here’s a step-by-step process description of Hungarian paprika production. What about the process from paprika to paprikash? We looked at the process, broke it down into steps, asked Vera to draw the images for us and added our insights. We collected about 100 things to know and short-listed 20+ for you. Learn and enjoy!
Paprika is in the air is the title of a collection of essays, short stories and articles written by Zsigmond Móricz, early-20th century writer and columnist. Móricz was non-native to Szeged, only a visitor, but the city captured him physically and mentally as he kept returning and writing about the city and its people. As…
The third week of May has been pretty busy for PaprikaMolnar: after several starts and stops and restarts we eventually transplanted our paprika seedlings to their final place in our farm. It’s a small plot of land this year, but planting has never been so hard with rain coming down every day, between which we…
300 years ago today, on 21 May 1719, Hungarian King Charles III.granted city status to the municipality of Szeged and the crest that symbolizes this status has been used by Szeged municipality to this day. The memory of this formal recognition of Szeged as a royal free city has grown to be the most important…
It is paprika planting time and we very much hope the Ice Saints next week will come unnoticed! The days of the Ice Saints Pancras, Servatius and Boniface on the 12th, 13th and 14th of May are yet to come and although these past few days have been rather cold and threatened with night frost,…
Although paprika is regarded as part and parcel of Hungarian cuisine, it originated – together with other plants like corn, tobacco and potato – in the New World. The discovery of the New World is cornerstone in history and has been interpreted controversially, however, in this blogpost I’d like to remember it from paprika perspective.…
With postings of this blog it is our goal to talk about paprika from all kinds of different perspectives. Apart from our posting historical facts about the paprika industry we try our best to also share with you some inspirational aspects of paprika. On that note we have already posted about the decorative aspects of…
This time last year the Paprika Museum at PaprikaMolnar’s factory turned ten and on our tenth-year anniversary. I remembered some outstanding moments and statistics from the past ten years. In this post I’d like to look at the past a little and share some news from the previous one year. How did the Paprika Museum…
Paprika is in the air is the title of a collection of essays, short stories and articles written by Zsigmond Móricz, early-20th century writer and columnist, which he wrote during his numerous visits to Szeged, Paprika Town. Many decades later the writings recreate Szeged people before the war, and the reader can’t help but marvel…
Paprika is in the air is the title of a collection of essays, short stories and articles written by Zsigmond Móricz, early-20th century writer and columnist. In September 1936 he goes deep into Paprika Town and marvels at the sight of red people in red clothes, with red hair, red hands and faces. Like red…
„The water came in on us on St Gregory’s day… oh, what an ugly devil that was…. And the strong winds that drove the water all the way…. I had an old boat and we used that for fleeing. When the water was coming, it was rolling like rocks, high up! It was roaring loud……
25th of February in Hungary is Remembrance Day of the victims of the communist regime that lasted roughly between 1948 and 1989. The part of the regime that I knew as a child was the 70s and 80s, which is often referred to retrospectively as goulash communism, meaning a lighter form of dictatorship, a relative…
The very first museum piece in PaprikaMolnár’s Paprika Museum was the Szánthó family’s entire business and family documents, as can be read in an earlier article. The Szánthós ran a wheat and paprika-mill for two generations in Szeged-Szentmihály. The documents from a hundred years ago offer interesting insight into local and paprika history. Mihály Szánthó…
Paprika is in the air is the title of a collection of essays, short stories and articles written by Zsigmond Móricz, early-20th century writer and columnist. Móricz was non-native to Szeged and the stories reflect his visions and experiences of Szeged the city and its people between the 1910s and 1930s. In August 1936 he…
The history of Szeged and paprika have been forever linked together thanks to the local Franciscans and Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Györgyi. Another emblematic figure, though much less known, is chemist and paprika researcher Ernő Obermayer who was born 130 years ago, on 13 December 1888. Obermayer, a chemistry graduate from Budapest, was the first…
How did we go from getting a bunch of papers to actually building a museum? How did it all begin? What set the idea off was when my father, Albert Molnár, bought several thick folders with neatly organized documents in them. The papers had once been the property of the Szánthó family who ran a…
Saint Andrew’s day on the 30th November is nearing. In olden times this day was special for girls because on the eve of the day they could predict their future husband. For farmers in general, however, it had a more universal significance: it marked the end of the agricultural year and as cold weather set…
World War I – or, as it was called then the Great War – ended a hundred years ago. The war was ignited by the tragic event on 28 July 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo. The Balkan powder keg exploded and various conflicts within Europe escalated into war,…
Zsigmond Móricz, early-20th century writer and columnist visited Szeged in 1913. Szeged was a new and upcoming town then, just barely rebuilt after the Great Flood. He loved to sit and talk to local people, seek out what they were like, what made them Szegedi. In his prose collection called Paprika is in the…
After the previous post I’m continuing with translating another literary text written by early-20th century writer and columnist, Zsigmond Móricz. The original and full stories In Hungarian appeared in his prose collection called Paprika is in the air. From the writings we get to know Szeged the city and its people in the 1910s through the insights…
In this Paprika & Chili blog I have already written about representations of paprika in Hungarian literature. Now I’d like to continue with a series of literary texts written by early-20th century writer and columnist, Zsigmond Móricz. The stories appeared in his prose collection called Paprika is in the air. Móricz was non-native to Szeged, but…
It is October and we are in the middle of paprika harvest and processing. Among autumn to-dos is paprika processing, which today is by no means easy and quick but a lot easier than in the past. Until the 1930s all paprika pods were naturally hot and it was local farmers in the mid-19th century…
„Discovering is seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought” said Albert Szent-Györgyi, Hungarian Nobel Prize winner in Physiology and Medicine in 1937. Albert Szent-Györgyi was born on 16 September 1893. In this post we are celebrating the life and work of this wonderful man. A charming personality, an eventful…
Szeged Lowertown has always been a separate entity within Szeged city. Its homogeneous Hungarian population followed strict Roman Catholic ethics and made a living from agriculture. Among their most famous crops were tobacco and paprika. The two most important characteristics by the end of the 19th century were their religious faith and the sweet paprika spice called…
September the 8th is one of the many Marian devotion days in the life of the Roman Catholic Church. In olden times the people of Szeged on this day devoted time and piety to the Blessed Virgin Mary. September was a busy time for a Catholic farmer, and on this day thoughts and prayers probably…
Szeged’s International Fish Soup Festival is on us. Hundreds of cauldrons will be set up and families and friends will be cooking fish soup along the River Tisza. Fish soup is an iconic dish in Hungarian kitchen today, however, its popularity today is nowhere near to what it was in the past. Before river regulation in…
Szeged writers have been using the paprika plant in their literary works in a number of ways. Literary representations are not about plant philosophy but serve as symbolic links with Szeged the city, its puszta (farming) areas and people. On 1 August we just celebrated the birthday of Sándor Bálint (1904-1980), the man who has…
Hungarian lecsó, stuffed pepper, pumpkin cream with dills, fried eggplant slices,butterhead lettuce dressed in sweet-and-sour sauce, and cucumber salad topped with sour cream and a pinch of red paprika powder are some of our most common summer dishes. What’s common in them besides being Hungarian summer faves? Most of them have a vegetable in them…
We proudly announce PaprikaMolnár’s Paprika Museum is on TV, or rather, on Youtube! CNN’s Great Big Story production group wanted to know why Hungarians are so obsessed with paprika. So, they came to Budapest, went to Paprika Market, ate nothing but paprikash and spent a day with us in PaprikaMolnár’s museum and factory and listened to…
Churches have always been centres of communities. When bells in the first world war were commonly taken and melted down for military purposes, the church-going community immediately started collecting money for the new bells. It took about five years for Szeged-Alsóváros people to collect money for the new bells for their church. In 1921 the…
The post last week The Englishman who went up the mill and came down astounded showed details from the life of a paprikamiller in Szeged-Szentmihály. Mária Lábdy’s memories now continue with her mother’s role in the paprika business and we’ll touch upon drink problems, too. “My parents were respected and liked by the community. When they…
I’m publishing here a few details from the memories of Mária Lábdy. Mária (1914-2007) was the fourth child of Ákos Lábdy, one of the two paprikamillers in Szeged-Szentmihály. Szentmihály was and is a separate community within Szeged. The Lábdy paprika mill was attractive for several reasons: it worked in a community that was heavily depending…
We are in the middle of celebrating Szeged City Festival and now is the time to remember another emblematic object of the city: Szegedi papucs. Szeged slippers were sewn and embroidered by hand and they did not come in pairs, that is, they were without a right and left foot version. It was often said…
Now that the Ice Saints are gone and we may no longer expect night frost, the seedling is ready to be removed from its sowbed. This is a nursery or hotbed, these days it is a foil tunnel, where between mid-March and mid-May paprika seeds germinate and grow into seedlings or plantlings. The plants are…
Between 18-27 May 2018 we are celebrating Szeged City. There will be a series of events and festivities to remember and commemorate Szeged earning a city status in medieval times. The quotation „Paprika put Szeged on the map of the world” comes from a Hungarian American from a hundred years ago and it highlights the…
We’ve turned ten. On 17 April 2008 we opened the Paprika Museum at PaprikaMolnar’s factory. Since then we’ve had over ten thousand visitors from Hungary and abroad. We built the museum to commemorate and show all the effort that went into the creation and making of a special local product that proved to be so…
What did Szeged country people use to fight illnesses in the 19th century? What else but hot paprika! Qualified doctors in the country were scarce therefore country people were used to relying on their own healing and curing practices when it came to illnesses. They must have tried and experimented with everything they found in…
Despite its New World origins, paprika is an essential part of Hungarian culture and identity. A good example of its physical appearance on traditional objects is the famous kalocsai embroidery, which includes red paprika fruits among vividly colorful flowers on white cloth. Kalocsai embroidery is a relatively young invention. The first embroideries in the 19th…
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