Czech cuisine
The 19th-century Czech language cookbook Pražská kuchařka by Karolína Vávrová shows influences of French cuisine in the order of multi-course meals common throughout the Habsburg monarchy, beginning with soup, followed by fish entrees, meat and sweets.
These flour-based sweets, including baked puddings, strudels, doughnuts and souffles could be served either before or after the roast meats, but stewed fruits, creamy desserts, cakes, ice cream, and cookies were to always be served after the roast and for multiple dessert courses would follow this stated order.
[1] Dumplings (knedlíky) (steamed and sliced like bread) are one of the mainstays of Czech cuisine and are typically served with meals.
Goulash soup (gulášovka) and dršťková are made from beef or pork tripe cut into small pieces and cooked with other ingredients; the meat can be substituted with oyster mushrooms.
Kyselo is a regional specialty soup made from rye sourdough, mushrooms, caraway and fried onion.
Jitrnice is the meat and offal of pork cut into tiny pieces, filled in a casing and closed with sticks.
Meat from the neck, sides, lungs, spleen, and liver are cooked with white pastry, broth, salt, spices, garlic and sometimes onions.
In restaurants one can find: Commonly-found poultry dishes are: In most cases, sweet food is not consumed as dessert, but rather as a separate occasion, for example together with afternoon coffee.
Czech coffeehouses are known for their strong coffee, sweet pastries and famous patrons who have included Franz Kafka, Antonín Dvořák, Václav Havel and Albert Einstein.
[7] Sweets filled with fruit, poppy seed and quark are prevalent and come in diverse forms including cakes, koláče (pies), tarts, fritters, and dumplings (ovocné knedlíky).
The tradition of making pies has been preserved in American Czech communities who have settled in the Midwestern United States and Texas.
The finished dumplings are boiled and often garnished with butter, poppy seeds or grated cheese, and a sweetener (traditionally dried and powdered pears, but sugar is used in modern adaptations).
[7] Traditional Czech sponge cake (bublanina), served most often for breakfast, is made with cream, eggs and sugar and seasonal fruits, especially whole cherries.
Czech Slivovitz and other pálenka (fruit brandies) is traditionally distilled in the country and are considered national drink.
More recently new drinks became popular, among them Tuzemák, traditionally marketed as "Czech rum", is made from potatoes or sugar beets.
Kofola was invented in Communist Czechoslovakia as a substitute to the Coca-Cola that they would not import, but it became so popular that production has continued well past the end of Communism in the country.
