The story of the Márai-Gundel pancake

Pancakes first appeared in the public consciousness hundreds of years ago. The word itself is derived from the Latin placenta, meaning flatbread, and the Romanian plăcintă. The description of how to make it is found in a 16th century cookbook, the 'Chief Cook of the Transylvanian Court'.

The thin pancakes of the upper layers were unknown to peasant cuisine at that time: the thicker pancakes of the lower layers, made from barley and corn, were more reminiscent of modern American pancakes. The elegant, thin pancakes of bourgeois cuisine only became common in the 20th century and only started to be filled in the 19th century, until then they were eaten empty.

When we think of pancakes, many of us think of the traditionally Hungarian Gundel pancakes of this dish. Although we associate the legendary dish with Charles Gundel, the history of the recipe is not linked to him. We now reveal the true story!

One of Sándor Márai's plays, The Adventure, was first performed in 1940 and was inspired by his short story Before Order. The play was a huge success, performed hundreds of times at the National Chamber Theatre. After the premiere of the play, his wife Ilona Matzner, aka Lola, prepared an old recipe of their family for the banquet, which was a chocolate pancake filled with walnuts, candied orange peel and raisins.

The venue for the banquet was the Gundel restaurant, so the owner had the opportunity to taste it. Károly Gundel liked the dessert so much that he immediately added it to the menu under the name "Márai pancakes".

The couple later emigrated and the restaurant was not spared nationalisation, so the dessert could no longer bear this name. So it became Gundel pancakes.

The dessert has undergone several changes over the years. In the 1940s, the filled pancakes were pan-fried with hot butter and then given the vanilla chocolate sauce.

In the late fifties, the dessert took on its characteristic notes of walnuts, rum, whipped cream, chocolate and vanilla, which can also be found in another local dessert, the Somló dumplings.

The classic dessert is of course not missing from the KIOSK menu: try this traditional favourite yourself!

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