January 18 is the name-day of Piroska in the Hungarian calendar and we use this occassion to write about Saint Piroska and the Paprika Bell. In our previous post we wrote about how Hungarian princess Saint Piroska became St Eiréné in Constantinapole. 900 years later, in 1921 the people of Szeged Lower Town – which…
January 18 is the name-day of Piroska in the Hungarian calendar. No longer a popular name today but a hundred years ago Piroska was a common name given to newborn girls. Who was Piroska? Saint Piroska plays an important role both in Hungarian history and Szeged local history. In 1921 the people of Szeged Lower…
The Paprika Museum item series have already portrayed a an old publication from the Millers news and one of the paprika tin boxes from the Szécsi family. We continue in January 2020 with a sculpture of the Paprika-stringing woman. The sculpture beautifully harmonizes folk art with industrial art and its unique history begins in Hollóháza…
We started the Advent period with a meatless dish and followed with a rich traditional Christmas dish. It is now time to close down the holiday season and wish you a happy new year with a special dish we cook for new year’s day: chili lentils. New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Why lentils?…
After our Advent recipe for fasting before the feast HERE it is high time to remember how we celebrate Christmas with an original Szeged fish soup on the festive table! Christmas customs and Christmas menu What do we celebrate at Christmas? Obviously: the birth of Jesus. The date of Jesus’ birth is known as December 25th.…
Now that the last week of Advent just started, we recommend something light before Christmas starts. This is an expectation anyway in traditional Christian culture as fasting is a way to prepare the body and mind for the celebration. Advent in a nutshell In Christian culture the four Sundays before Christmas is called Advent. The…
A colleague of ours, Eva, shared this lovely family story with us. The story is made of paprika bags, commercial opportunities and some colourful people from the Szeged region. But most of all it portrays the ingenius creativity of women. Smuggling paprika bags. Background of the story During the early years of communism (1950’s) free…
The Advent period – in fact all of December – is a collection of celebrative days. There is Borbala Day, arriving with a branch of a blooming fruit tree, then there is Luca the witch, and of course the holy night of Christmas Eve, followed by two days of Christmas. Then finally the Small Saints…
While the old paprikafarmers around Szeged were busy picking their harvest, during the beginning of September, obviously other events of the economic life took place parallelly. Already at that time, much attention was paid to the preparation of pig slaughtering. For most people the making of hams, sausages and bacon were crucial winter activities and…
Hopefully loyal readers of our blog still remember last week’s post. We wrote about the paprika uprising happening 100 years ago in December 1919 and mentioned that the case was closed only 5 years after. Recalling the 1919 paprika uprising The March 13th 1924 publication of the Délmagyarország newspaper already gives an exciting prediction of…
Just after World War I when the famous miller family Szánthó had received an breakthrough patent to turn their milling process from grain to paprika, it received huge publicity, and not only for its innovative approach. The Délmagyarország newspaper in those days of December 1919, followed the happenings of a paprika-uprising that had started, now…
The newspaper archives of „Délmagyarország”, from which we have already quoted from in various posts, is an unlimited source of everyday life in Szeged all the way back to over 100 years ago, The articles are painting a truly colorful and complex picture of, for example, the paprika decree or of the eternal struggle between…