Somlói galuska

Name: Somlói galuska
Total time: 3 h
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Hungary
Ingredients: 8 eggs, for the sponges; 160g sugar, for the sponges; 160g flour, for the sponges; 20g cocoa, for the cocoa sponge; 100g walnut kernels, ground, for the walnut sponge; 80g raisins; 100ml (1 dl) rum, for the raisins; 200g sugar, for the syrup; 200g water, for the syrup; 200g rum, for the syrup; 500ml milk, for the vanilla cream; 1 vanilla pod; 4 eggs, for the vanilla cream; 100g sugar, for the vanilla cream; 30g flour, for the vanilla cream; 300g sweetened whipped cream; 300g milk, for the sauce; 200g dark chocolate, for the sauce; 70g butter, for the sauce

Gundel, Budapest, late 1950s

Somlói galuska, three sponges soaked in rum syrup layered with raisins and vanilla cream, with whipped cream and hot chocolate sauce: a glass dish of soft dumpling shaped scoops of three sponges, pale, brown walnut and dark cocoa, layered with yellow vanilla cream and rum raisins.

Illustration

Time: 3 hours

Gundel's dessert, the waiter's idea and the pastry chef's work, named for the Somló hill. Telex calls the original a six hour job. The sponges, syrup and sauce are Magyar Konyha's Gundel recipe for four, by weight; a second breakdown in the same source does not match it. The vanilla cream is from Gundel's own press room, whose list and method disagree on the eggs, so the list is given as printed.

by Gundel, Budapest, late 1950s

Rétes was made in the Carpathian basin from at least the sixteenth century with Balkan filo ancestors, and the first written strudel recipe cited is a manuscript of 1696 held in the Vienna city library. Vienna and Hungary share it, and the earliest surviving recipe is Viennese. József C. Dobos presented his torta at the 1885 national exhibition in Budapest, a cake that would keep without refrigeration, published the recipe in 1895, and it became a hungarikum in 2019; the stories of a kitchen boy's sugar for salt mistake and of Elisabeth and Franz Joseph tasting the first cake are anecdotes told after famous inventions, and we tell them as told. The Gundel building has served since 1894; the Gundel family took the lease in 1910, and Károly Gundel made it the standard, Hungarian and French together, naming dishes for his guests: Újházi chicken soup for the actor, Jókai bean soup for the writer, Munkácsy eggs, Feszty beefsteak. The restaurant was nationalised in 1949 and the family, as ethnic Germans, was forcibly moved to a farm in 1951; it was bought in 1991 and reopened in 1992. Jókai bableves is attributed to Károly Gundel and first published, a recipe site says, in his Kis magyar szakácskönyv of 1937; what Mór Jókai had to do with the soup beyond its name, nobody we read says. Somlói galuska came later than its reputation: the idea was Károly Gollerits's, Gundel's head waiter, and the pastry chef József Béla Szőcs, who ran the Gundel pastry shop from 1956, made it and named it for the Somló hill of his home town. A late 1950s invention in a nationalised restaurant.

Read the history

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 3 hours, and the rest of the day if Gundel's pastry chef is counting.

Ingredients

8 eggs, for the sponges
160g sugar, for the sponges
160g flour, for the sponges
20g cocoa, for the cocoa sponge
100g walnut kernels, ground, for the walnut sponge
80g raisins
100ml (1 dl) rum, for the raisins
200g sugar, for the syrup
200g water, for the syrup
200g rum, for the syrup
500ml milk, for the vanilla cream
1 vanilla pod
4 eggs, for the vanilla cream
100g sugar, for the vanilla cream
30g flour, for the vanilla cream
300g sweetened whipped cream
300g milk, for the sauce
200g dark chocolate, for the sauce
70g butter, for the sauce

Method

Soak the raisins in the rum.
Beat the eggs with the sugar until pale, fold in the flour, and divide the batter in three: one plain, one with the ground walnut kernels, one with the cocoa. Bake as three thin sponges and cool.
Boil the sugar, water and rum for the syrup.
Make the vanilla cream from the milk heated with the vanilla pod, the eggs, sugar and flour, and the chocolate sauce of milk, dark chocolate and butter; keep the sauce hot.
Layer the torn sponges with the raisins, soaking each layer with syrup, and the vanilla cream between; chill.
Scoop into dumplings with a spoon, top with whipped cream, and pour the hot chocolate sauce over at the table.

What a modern chef changes

The six hours spent where they count

Rung 4

Method

Bake the three sponges the day before and let them dry a little; they drink the syrup without collapsing.
Make the vanilla cream a true crème pâtissière with a split pod, 500 millilitres of milk to six yolks, and set it firm.
Soak with the syrup by weight, 60 grams a portion, which is the difference between moist and drowned.
Serve the chocolate sauce from a jug, hot, in front of the eater.

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