The Cheese Board: Hungary

The most singular of these was Rögös túró, a high-moisture fresh cheese, whose grainy cauliflower texture is a little like cottage cheese. Rögös however is soured with a bacterial starter culture rather than citric acid which gives it a more complex fermented and tangy flavour with a drier texture. It’s usually made from cow’s milk, though there is also a richer sheep version. For a unique experience you could try this cheese in the form of Túró Rudi, a chocolate bar filled with the sour lactic curds. 

Gomolya is more familiar to the seasoned Central European cheese tourist. These small loaf or ball-shaped cheeses come in cow, sheep or mixed-milk versions. The curd is drained in cloth and is eaten at a couple of weeks, when fresh and zesty, or aged until it develops a springy textured paste with a scattering of small holes and a rounder more developed flavour. 

Körözött is a creamy fresh curd cheese, gussied up by whipping in paprika, cumin seeds and for the more adventurous, a splash of the indigenous fruit brandy Palinka, which would make a mighty snack. If you want to live like an old style Hungarian aristo, you can add a topping of caviar – which along with the cheesy chocolate bar is quite the oddest way to consume cheese that I’ve ever come across. 

The nineteenth century saw a second wave of cheesemaking in Hungary. The country had gained a degree of autonomy with the creation of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1867, and so began its own industrial and agricultural revolutions, of which dairying was a significant part. This cheese naissance, if you will, took a while to get going, but by the 1890s Hungary was developing its own modern cheesemaking industry. 

Unsurprisingly for a Central European country which was part of a transnational empire, the new cheeses were heavily influenced by foreign styles. Trappista can trace its lineage back to a cheese made by Trappist monks in France, now known in its somewhat rubbery modern form as Port Salut. Their monastic brothers in Imperial-controlled Bosnia-Herzegovina began making a version in 1882, which rapidly became popular all across the Empire. New-wave Hungarian cheesemakers wanted a slice of the action, but, Trappists not being famed for their communication skills, had to come up with their own version. Hungarian Trappista was born - a firmer, milder and less funky cheese than its monastic inspiration. This cheese, now firmly industrial, is Hungary’s most ubiquitous, the equivalent of block Cheddar in the UK. 

 In the 1890s cheese entrepreneur Pál Heller, founder of the Derby Cheese and Butter Company in Budapest, invented the washed-rind cow’s milk Pálpusztai. This farmy little cheese comes in dinky fifty-gram brick shapes, like the famously smelly Limburger from the Low Countries, and its moist off-white rind gives off a similarly intense aroma. Apparently Hungarians have this on toast for breakfast. I love these people. 

In the early 1900s agronomist and cheesemaking teacher Imre Újhelyi invented Óvári, inspired by the Prussian-Swiss Tilsit. Another washed-rind cow’s milk, it is milder than Pálpusztai, with a gentle funkiness lightened by a sour acidic note, its firm but creamy texture melting in the mouth. If I gave the idea that the Hungarians were slouches at the whole agricultural revolution project, it’s worth noting that Újhelyi taught at the Agricultural Academy of Magyar-Óvár. The Academy, established in 1818, is one of the oldest specialised agricultural colleges in Europe. Also, the collective dairies of the time were nothing like modern factories, and their cheeses, made from the milk of happy, healthy animals grazing on natural pasture were almost certainly more characterful than today’s pallid factory cheese. 

The twentieth century was catastrophic for Hungarians as it was for all of Central and Eastern Europe. Hungary lost seventy percent of its territory in the post-First World War settlement, suffered terribly in the Second and then had to endure the oppression, economic inefficiencies and bland industrial cheese of the Soviet period. The twenty-first got off to a better start, particularly for cheese lovers, when in 2006 the Hungarian Specialist Cheesemakers Association (Magyar Sajtkészítők Egyesülete) was founded to advance the cause of proper good farmhouse and artisan cheese, and to encourage and support new artisan and farmhouse producers. Since 2010 a third wave of dairying has gained momentum.

As with the British Renaissance, many of the third-wave cheeses are inspired by foreign styles, though they develop their own character from Hungary’s long dairying past, Hungarian terroir and the use of domestic breeds. Anita Kun, in true renaissance style, doesn’t come from a dairying background, but began cheesemaking in her kitchen in 2010 and set up her business, the Csíz Cheese Workshop in 2013. She makes a Dutch Gouda style called Baracskai Félkemény Öreg with the milk of the Magyartarka, or Magyar Pied cow, a cross between the native Hungarian Grey and the Swiss Simmental, known for its bountiful milk production. In 2021 Anita won best artisan cheese at the 2021 World Cheese Awards and finished fourth overall. At the 2024 World Cheese Awards Hungarians took home a vat-full of medals including nine silvers and two golds. These Hungarians have got game.

For some Hungarian cheese and wine matches, I am going to let Anita have the last word. She suggests opening with “a pastoral, summery pairing,” soft, fresh Juhgomolya cheese with the floral yellow Muscat, Sárgamuskotály. For an international pairing, “yet still very Hungarian in character” try Tokaji Aszú dessert wine with Márvány, a rich creamy blue. To finish, and this really would finish off your palate for the evening, Pálpusztai with a hefty barrel aged Tokaji Furmint would be “very Hungarian,” and indeed it would.