Recipe of the week: sour cherry soup

Posted by Anna Wynn | Jun 10, 2018 | Special Hungary

This Hungarian delicacy may seem like an odd choice, at first, to make on hot
summer days. However, it is actually the perfect dish if you want to cool down
as this soup is served and meant to be eaten cold. It may seem like a dessert
but it is actually not, at least not in most places. Sour cherry soup is offered just
like any other soup, making it very popular among children. Especially since it is
often complemented by whipped cream. It is the perfect dish to start a summer
luncheon with or to commence an evening feast. However, its rich, fresh,
creamy taste is so delicious and filling that you may not need (or want) to eat
anything else afterwards. History of the soup Although nowadays, the dish is
offered in several restaurants all over Europe, it originated in Hungary and can
be seen as evidence of the mixing of Asian and Continental European
influences in Hungarian cuisine.

It is a known dish in the neighbouring countries like Austria, Slovakia and

Poland, but Hungarian emigrants even introduced it to Americans and
Canadians. Apart from the basic ingredients, the recipe for sour cherry soup
seems to vary from household to household. Special ingredients include extra
fruit (both canned and fresh sour cherries and regular cherries), red or white
wine, fresh cream and occasionally even some vanilla ice cream. Sour cherry is
the only fruit for which the currently still in-use Hungarian word – meggy – has
Finno-Ugric origins, suggesting that Hungarians have been familiar with the
fruit since before conquering the Carpathian Basin, although it is unsure when
the tradition of this delicious soup started. Truth be told, very little is known
about the history of the dish. It is an undeniable fact, though, that Hungary has
a huge variety of sour cherry bushes, producing different kinds of sour cherries.
This suggests that it is possible that these types of bushes spread from Hungary
to other parts of Europe.

Recipe
Ingredients: 1 kg sour cherries
4 tbsp sugar 250 ml cream
1 tbsp flour some cloves
1 tbsp cinnamon
2-3 pieces of star anise
1 lemon some salt water
Preparation: Wash the sour cherries thoroughly and pit them. Take a deep
saucepan; add the sugar and some water, about twice as much as the amount
of sour cherries. Depending on how thick you want the soup to be, you can add
1.5-2.5 litres. Then add the spices – the cinnamon, the star anise, the cloves –
in a tea infuser, along with the salt and the lemon zest. Now bring it to a slow
boil. Reduce the heat and remove the spice holder while whisking together the
cream and the flour in a separate bowl. Add a few tablespoons of the soup to
this and mix until smooth. Slowly add this creamy-floury mixture to the soup,
constantly stirring to avoid lumps. Now the only thing left to do is cool down
the soup, then you can enjoy this delicious summer dish.