Kürtőskalács
[5] The name refers to a stovepipe (kürtő), since the fresh, steaming cake in the shape of a truncated cone resembles a hot chimney.
This opinion is shared by Attila T. Szabó [hu], scholar and philologist from Cluj-Napoca: "...when taken off from the spit in one piece, the cake assumes the shape of a 25–30-centimetre [10–12 in] long vent or tube.
[9] The first known record that hints at a family of cakes baked by rotating spit over cinders dates back to medieval times (about 1450) and is found in a manuscript from Heidelberg.
The first branch contains pastries that preserved the image of cake similar to the one mentioned above, with a strip wound on spit in a helical shape.
The second branch has pastries made from batter, namely the Lithuanian raguolis and šakotis, Polish sękacz, the French gateau à la broche, the German Baumkuchen, the Austrian Prügeltorte and Prügelkrapfen as well as the Swedish Spettekaka.
[12][13][14][15] The first known recipe of Kürtőskalács originates from Transylvania, included in the 1784 cookbook of Countess Mária Mikes of Zabola ("‘kürtős kaláts’ à la Mrs. Poráni").
[16][17] A recipe from the cookbook written by Kristóf Simai in 1795 in Upper Hungary (present-day Slovakia) first mentioned "sweetening subsequent to baking".
[18] Almost 100 years passed before the first mention was made of the next step in the evolution of kürtőskalács, the appearance of a caramelized sugar glaze, in Aunt Rézi's Cookbook written by Terézia Dolecskó in 1876, published in Szeged, Hungary.
By this procedure the layers of dough wrapped around the spit are pressed together, rendering the cake smoother, more compact in structure and more elegant.
One hint at an Austrian or German origin is the fact that a conservative Transylvanian nobleman, Péter Apor, in his work Metamorphosis Transylvaniae does not mention Kürtőskalács in the list of traditional Hungarian foods, for all the evidence we have about the cake already existing in his wife's cuisine.
In a letter from a mother superior in Moldavia addressed to Mrs Péter Apor, née Borbála Kálnoki, the writer asks Mrs. Apor to have a butler of hers taught the art of baking kürtőslalács: "Honored mother Superior prays you if she could send you a butler in the hope perchance you spare no pain and teach him kindly some art of baking kürtőslalács withal others".
[24] By the end of the 18th century, kürtőskalács had become popular in all Hungarian speaking regions as a defining element of both urban and rustic cuisine.
In the first volume of A Székelyföld leírása (Description of the Szeklerland) from 1868, Balázs Orbán writes about the genesis legend of Udvarhelyszék, which holds that the Szeklers, chased into caves and later blockaded by the Tatars, eventually made the enemy leave by presenting them a huge kürtőskalács made of straw which they held out of the cave to show they had supplies to endure the siege.
[25] Following the regime change of 1989, and the aftermath the kürtőskalács became the traditional local treat offered to tourists visiting Szekler villages and thus a representative element of the area, for a wider mass of people.
This gastronomic tradition, which earlier had been preserved merely in rural Szekler communities, gradually found its way back to mainstream culture, mainly due to tourism.
[26] Due to its initial increase and later surge in popularity, initially in the Hungarian speaking community and later in the wide Transylvanian community mainly through tourism, the kürtőskalács is no longer regarded as a solely Szekler or Hungarian symbol, but rather as representative element in European gastronomy, as part of the greater family of chimney cakes, manufacturers of this sweet treat being present Europe-wide.
Strictly, homemade kürtőskalács can be made exclusively from natural ingredients (flour, sugar, milk, butter, eggs, yeast and salt).
Skalicky Trdelnik from Slovakia (formerly Upper Hungary), as well as Trdlo/Trdelnice/Trdelnik from the Czech–Moravian region, differ from kürtőskalács in that there is no caramel sugar glaze applied to their surface.
