Jókai-bableves

The story

Jókai bableves carries the name of Mór Jókai, the Hungarian novelist whose Zoltán Kárpáthy of 1854 includes a detailed description of a buffet. The story told in Hungary is that Jókai was a regular at a restaurant in Balatonfüred, on Lake Balaton, where he nearly always ordered bean soup, and that the soup was later named for him. The Budapest news site Telex weighed the evidence in 2024 and found the first recipe under that title in a later, revised edition of the Gundel cookbook, concluding that the dish was most likely a 20th-century restaurant creation. Memoirs by Jókai's niece Jolán record that he liked small beans brought from Komárom, along with lentils with pig's ear and chicken paprikás with túrós csusza. Beans had spread through Hungary by the 17th century, and with smoked pork from the smokehouse they made a soup that could be cooked from the pantry in midwinter. Today's version simmers smoked hock with dried beans, root vegetables and a paprika roux, adds smoked sausage and csipetke, and is topped with sour cream. Soak the beans the night before; with rye or white bread, one bowl is a full lunch or dinner.