Hungarian Spices: Paprika, Caraway, Marjoram, Bay and Garlic, and What the Sources Say

Hungarian cooking runs on paprika, and it’s sold by grade, not just as sweet or hot. Michelin counts eight. The paprika itself is younger than you might think: Hungarian paprika was hot until the 1940s, and cookbook beef recipes before 1876 didn’t use it at all. Around it sit caraway (which Hungarians call kömény, a word that can trip up English-language recipes), marjoram, bay leaf and garlic.

At a glance

Paprika

Paprika is the ground, dried fruit of Capsicum annuum. The plant was domesticated in Mexico, and a 2014 study combining four lines of evidence points to central-east Mexico.³ Peppers reached Europe through Spain after the voyages to the Americas, and got to Hungary by way of the Turks. Sharon Hudgins dates pepper growing in Hungary to the Turkish occupation of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.²

The word itself is Hungarian. The Online Etymology Dictionary records it in English from 1839 and explains it as a Hungarian diminutive of the Serbo-Croatian papar, pepper, which goes back to Latin piper.⁴

When paprika became the Hungarian spice

Paprika didn’t take over overnight. Hudgins writes that paprika showed up only in peasant dishes at first, and caught on widely in Hungarian food only in the late eighteenth century, slowly working its way into the cooking of the gentry and nobility.² A 2026 Telex survey of goulash recipes finds that beef recipes in cookbooks before 1876 didn’t use paprika at all. It treats Rézi néni’s Szegedi szakácskönyv (1876) as the first known written goulash recipe, under the name gulyáshús, sprinkled with paprika.⁵

The paprika itself has changed, too. The Hungarikum Committee says Hungarian paprika was hot until the 1940s.⁶ Sweet varieties were bred from non-pungent plants Ferenc Horváth found in Kalocsa in the 1930s.⁷

Where it goes

Michelin’s guide to Hungarian paprika names goulash and paprikash as the key traditional dishes. It quotes a Budapest chef who uses ground paprika for goulash and fish soup, and several kinds of fresh peppers for lecsó, which the article calls a Hungarian take on ratatouille.¹ Hudgins gives a paprika fish soup, sometimes called “the bouillabaisse of Hungary,” that she says began with fishermen cooking over campfires.² You’ll often read that Hungarian fish soup is one of the hottest native dishes in Europe. We couldn’t trace that to any source.

Grades and heat

Hungarian paprika is sold by grade, not just as sweet, hot or smoked. Michelin counts eight traditional grades, from mild to pungent, and says édesnemes (noble sweet) is the one Hungarian cooks use most; rozsdás (rusty) has a stronger, smoky flavor.¹ Hungary’s Food Codex sets four heat classes by capsaicinoid content, from non-pungent to very hot (nagyon csípős).⁸

Two producing regions hold EU protected designations of origin. Szeged’s PDO caps capsaicin at 100 mg/kg for non-pungent paprika and records that the Szeged area was declared a restricted paprika zone in 1934.⁹ Kalocsa’s PDO notes that the area’s first paprika drying plant went up in 1880.¹⁰

A safety episode worth knowing

In 1994, Hungarian ground paprika was adulterated with red lead. A report from that year says 5.8% of 3,432 random samples tested were adulterated,¹¹ and a clinical paper on the outbreak describes 53 patients with symptoms and signs of lead poisoning.¹² The paprika profile covers current contaminant limits and adulteration testing.

See also smoked paprika, paprika vs. cayenne, paprika vs. chili powder and paprika substitutes.

Caraway (kömény)

Caraway is the fruit of Carum carvi, a carrot-family plant (Apiaceae) native to temperate Eurasia. It smells a bit like anise and tastes warm and slightly sharp. The main components of the oil are carvone and limonene, and Hungary is one of the main producers of winter-type caraway, along with the Netherlands, Poland and Russia.¹³

Caraway is loved mostly in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, and its Hungarian names are köménymag and kömény.¹⁴ In Hudgins’s Hungarian recipes, caraway seeds get stirred in with the paprika and salt.² Caraway is often said to belong in goulash, vegetable stews (főzelék) and caraway seed soup. That’s plausible, and the soup’s Hungarian name (köménymagos leves) contains the word for caraway seed, but we didn’t find a source that documents those dishes.

See caraway seeds, cooking with caraway seeds and caraway substitutes.

Cumin, and the kömény mix-up

In Hungarian, plain kömény means caraway. Cumin is római kömény (“Roman caraway”) or egyiptomi kömény. Katzer notes that many languages don’t have a separate word for caraway and use the word for cumin instead,¹⁴ and that blurring the two names can cause real confusion in the kitchen.¹⁵ He also says cumin matters little as a traditional flavoring in most of Northern and Eastern Europe.¹⁵

Keep that in mind with English-language Hungarian recipes. We couldn’t trace the claim that cumin is essential to Hungarian stuffed cabbage. When an English recipe calls for “cumin” in a Hungarian dish, check whether the original said kömény, which is caraway. See caraway seeds vs. cumin.

Marjoram

Marjoram (Origanum majorana) is a mint-family herb native to southern Türkiye and Cyprus. Its flavor is warm, aromatic, slightly sharp and bitterish, and a 2022 review credits its sweet note to cis-sabinene hydrate.¹⁶ Marjoram often gets mentioned as a goulash and tokány seasoning, but we found no source confirming either use. See marjoram, cooking with marjoram and marjoram vs. oregano.

Bay leaves

Bay leaves come from Laurus nobilis, native to the Mediterranean. They taste herbal, bitter and slightly piney. Bay is often listed for Hungarian stuffed cabbage (töltött káposzta) and Jókai bean soup, but we found no source for its Hungarian use. See bay leaves, cooking with bay leaves and bay leaf substitutes.

Garlic

Garlic (Allium sativum) is native from Central Asia to northeastern Iran, with a powerful onionlike smell and pungent taste. Its place in Hungarian food is widely assumed, and Hudgins’s recipes include it,² but we couldn’t trace claims that it arrived in Hungary in the 1400s, or that it’s essential to particular dishes. See garlic and garlic powder.

Related pages

• Paprika and smoked paprika
• Caraway seeds and caraway vs. cumin
• German spices, a neighboring caraway-and-marjoram cuisine
• The master list of herbs and spices