Dracula’s Paprika Hendl from Bram Stoker’s 1897 Novel

Count Dracula the most famous vampire in history had a really monotonous diet. After all he hated garlic, and he couldn't even enjoy a glass of wine. I never drink. Why? Now the poor guy had nothing to look forward to but the blood of his victims. Very boring. Fortunately for me I am not a vampire so I can enjoy both the food and the drink that are mentioned in Bram Stoker's 19th century novel Dracula, like this 1890 recipe for paprika hendel or chicken paprikash. So thank you Factor for sponsoring this video as I make the paprika hendel from Bram Stoker's Dracula, this time on Tasting History. In 1897 the Irish author Bram Stoker published the gothic novel Dracula, and when it came out it received mostly good reviews but was often criticized for having too much horror in it. Go figure. But why you may ask am I talking about a novel on Tasting History? Well it mostly has to do with the first part of the book. See the novel is written in the epistolary style meaning that it's actually told through a series of letters, and diaries, and newspaper clippings, and journal entries, and the first chapter is actually the journal entry of the character Jonathan Harker. He is a solicitor from England who is going to Transylvania to meet with Count Dracula who wants to buy some property outside of London, and on his journey across central Europe he basically writes it as a travel blog mostly talking about the food that he's eating. As he enters the Transylvanian town of Clausenburg he writes, Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper which was very good but thirsty. Memoranda. Get recipe from Mina. I asked the waiter and he said it was called paprika hendel, and that as it was a national dish I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. Now today you might be hard-pressed to find paprika hendel on any menu especially near Transylvania and that is because the word hendel is actually a German word for chicken, but since Transylvania was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the time it uses the German word. After all Harker writes, I found my smattering of German very useful here. Indeed I don't know how I should be able to get on without it. Now today the dish is more often known by its Hungarian name paprikascirka or chicken paprikash. Is that paprikash? Now Harker notes in his journal to get recipe for Mina, Mina being his fiancée back in England, but since he soon meets Count Dracula and that all ends up with him in a hospital in Hungary I'm guessing he never actually got that recipe to send back to Mina. Fortunately for me there is a recipe for it in a cookbook called Valódi Magyar Szekecskenyf published in Budapest in 1892, just two years after the novel is supposed to take place, and it starts off by telling you how to butcher a chicken and then it says to put a piece of fat the size of a large egg into a pot. When the fat is hot add two finely chopped onions and a tin spoonful of fine red paprika. Then immediately add the chicken, salt it, pour on half a liter of water, cover and stirring often let it simmer for half an hour. Meanwhile take care that it does not boil to pieces. When the chicken is tender prepare a gravy thickening with three deciliters of very good sour cream and a small spoon of flour. Pour this into the chicken broth, stir it well, and boil together. Serve it on a long platter surrounded by egg barley or galushka, dumplings, not too far off from the modern recipe. So for this dish what you'll need is four to five pounds or two kilograms of chicken cut into pieces, legs and thighs work well, two tablespoons of schmaltz which is rendered chicken fat though lard or vegetable oil will also work, two medium onions about 500 grams finely chopped, one tablespoon of salt for the chicken plus another teaspoon for the onions, two tablespoons of sweet Hungarian paprika, two cups or 500 milliliters of water or chicken stock, I'm using stock simply because it's going to add more flavor, one and a quarter cup or 300 grams of sour cream, and one tablespoon of flour. Now as much as I'm looking forward to trying this dish it does take a little time to make so to hold me over I'm going to enjoy a meal from today's sponsor Factor. I have been eating Factor meals for years, long before I even started tasting history and that's because it was such an easy way to bring my lunch to work with me or to have a quick dinner and that would stop me from always ordering takeout and because of that it also helped me stick to my nutrition goals. Also I really like Factor because the portions are perfect and portion control has always been something that I've struggled with and Factor helps with that. In addition they have meal options to fit every diet whether you're It's clean, wholesome food, and most importantly it is delicious. Like for lunch I had the sour cream and chive chicken with Yukon mashed potatoes and broccoli. Easy to prepare and a delight to eat and with over 80 different weekly options there is something for everyone and you're not going to get bored. And right now when you use my link in the description or head to factor75.com and use my you'll get 50% off plus free breakfast for one year. That's code tastinghistoryfb50 at factor75.com for 50% off plus free breakfast for a year. Now back to Dracula's paprika hendel. So start off by patting your chicken dry and seasoning it with a tablespoon of salt. Then set it aside while you add the schmaltz or other fat to a large pot and heat it over medium-high heat. Once it's hot and glistening add in the onions and sprinkle with the other teaspoon of salt. Then toss the onions to coat them in the oil and let them cook for 10 minutes or until they're soft and golden. Then remove the pot from the heat and sprinkle in the paprika and you want to have it off the heat so the paprika doesn't burn as you mix it in with the onions. Once the onions are coated you can return the pot to the heat and add in the chicken tossing it to coat in the paprika and the onion and it helps to add just a few pieces at a time. Let the chicken cook for just a few minutes to get some color turning it every minute or so and then pour in the water or the chicken stock and let it come to a simmer and then reduce the heat to medium-low and cover the pot and simmer for 30 minutes stirring every 10 minutes or so. You want the chicken to get nice and tender but you don't want it falling apart. Once the chicken's about ready mix the sour cream and the flour together until smooth and then stir in a little of the hot liquid to temper the sour cream and then pour all of that into the pot, stir it in, and let it gently simmer until the sauce thickens. I let it simmer for about 20 minutes and even when it's done you want to leave it on the stove on the lowest setting just to leave it to to warm and have all the flavors come together. It really helps and you can use that time to make your galushka or your dumplings that this dish is typically served with but before we make those I just wanted to let you know that I have signed a bunch more Tasting History cookbooks and I'm working with several small independent bookstores around the country to get those out so I'll put a link to that in the description or you can just head to tastinghistory.com slash cookbook as I talk a bit more about the different foods mentioned in Bram Stoker's Dracula. People love vampires. They have been the subject of books and movies and TV shows for over 200 years and one reason I think that we like them so much is because they're so often based in reality not the vampires themselves but the worlds in which they inhabit like Buffy the vampire slayer is just a typical high school girl and the characters in True Blood just live in your average Louisiana town and it is the same with Dracula. Bram Stoker pulled from actual places and actual people to ground the story in reality which then makes the horror aspect all the more frightening. Obviously there are the locations like Transylvania and Whitby in England but also some of the characters themselves are inspired by real people. Dracula himself was inspired by the 15th century Wallachian ruler Vlad Dracula better known as Vlad the Impaler and I'm actually going to be doing a video about him for Villains Month. Now the degree to which Vlad actually inspired Dracula is kind of up for debate. It seems that mostly it was just the name Dracula which at the time that Bram Stoker was writing meant devil in Romanian. Then of course there are the tales of Vlad the Impaler drinking the blood of his enemies and so that made a good jumping off point for the vampire in the story. Another character who is inspired by real life people is the doctor, scientist, and sometimes vampire hunter Van Helsing. Stoker based him and his profession of vampire hunter on people like Ernst Frommbald who was an official at the Austrian court who in 1725 was charged with investigating the alleged vampire known as Petar Blagojevic. See a small Serbian town had been terrorized by someone who had recently died. He had come back to life supposedly and killed nine other villagers and so they got this Frommbald to come and investigate what was going on. Now unlike Van Helsing Frommbald seems to have been rather skeptical that vampires existed but just like Van Helsing he did end up being involved in the staking of this supposed vampire Blagojevic. A newspaper from the time said that he ended up going with the villagers to dig up the grave and after opening the coffin they saw that the deceased's body was undecomposed as if it had been buried for a few hours not 10 weeks ago. After being pierced with a hawthorn stalk fresh red blood poured from Petar's body, nose, and ears. Then the body was burned while the priest read the prayers. After this act the mysterious deaths in the village stopped but perhaps the character that grounds the story in reality more than any other is Jonathan Harker. I mean what is more realistic and rather mundane than a lawyer going to do a real estate deal with a rich guy and as if to double down on the mundanity of Harker's trip to Dracula's castle he uses the first few pages as essentially a travel blog detailing the food that he has been eating and just like with a modern travel blog he not only talks about the food but goes on about his feelings toward the food like with the paprika hendel which he calls very thirsty. Now at first I thought this meant that he thought it was dry like the chicken was dry but the next morning he actually blames the dish or one of its ingredients for a restless evening and so we get a little bit more context. I did not sleep well though my bed was comfortable enough for I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window which may have had something to do with it or it may have been the paprika for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe and was still thirsty. So while the reader knows that there's something sinister in the air that is causing Harker to lose sleep he blames it on his delicate English constitution though he does try it again the next morning for breakfast. I had for breakfast more paprika and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was mamaliga and eggplant stuffed with force meat a very excellent dish which they called impletata. Memorandum get recipe for this also. Mamaliga is a Romanian dish similar to polenta made with corn from the Americas though as corn was not in that area until about the I think the 17th century it used to be made out of millet. Now the impletata was a little bit harder to find because there really is no dish called impletata but rather there is a dish called or a variation on that word which means stuffed and to this day there is a dish either a zucchini or eggplant that is stuffed with ground beef but the meal that really sent me down a rabbit hole and it is a rabbit hole which I invite you to join me down was the meal that Harker had the night before he met with Dracula. I dined on what they called robber steak. Bits of bacon, onion, and beef seasoned with red pepper and strung on sticks and roasted over the fire in the simple style of the London cat's meat. I'm sorry what? Cat's meat? What exactly was going on in London at this time? I do know that Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd complained that her neighbor Mrs. Mooney was turning cats into pies but I kind of thought that was a story and it turns out it was because at this time cat's meat did not refer to the meat of cats but rather meat for cats. The meat was actually horse meat and today we kind of don't even think about how omnipresent horses were back in the day but essentially if you look around on the street for every car or every truck that you see there were a couple horses that would have been in that place and just like with cars there was an entire economy that circulated around horses. There were coachmen to drive them, farriers to shoe them, saddlers to make their saddles and harnesses, and grooms to care for them but just as today we have tow trucks to pick up a car that dies back then they had something called knackers to pick up a horse that died. They usually took it to a slaughterhouse and people especially in London did not eat horse meat during this period so the meat went to other places including to feed the cats and dogs of London. Cats at this time were very important because they played the crucial role of keeping the rat population down and they were more prevalent in warehouses and near docks and more industrial areas but also in the nicer parts of town and so the cat meat men were selling everywhere. They'd go around town with boiled and roasted horse meat on skewers to feed to the cats of London hence harkers comparing them to a dish known as robber steak which is essentially bacon wrapped beef and onion skewers, and there is a great description of the cat's meat man doing his job in the 1868 children's magazine Chatterbox. As the cat's meat man passes by different houses and announces his approach by a peculiar nasal yell the cats may be seen furtively stealing up their respective areas and eagerly seizing the meat which is thrown down to them. In large warehouses or breweries in the city where numerous cats are kept feeding time is a scene almost worthy of the zoological gardens. So fond are our London cats of this meat that after being long accustomed to it they turn away with a well-bred disgust when anything else is offered to them as a substitute. Now like I said I really fell down the rabbit hole with this subject and I am not at the bottom yet because I found a little tidbit of interesting history about a particular cat's meat man or rather cat's woman that just kind of ties in perfectly with the whole horror theme of this episode. Her name was Harriet Hardiman and she ran a cat's meat shop with her son on the ground floor of 29 Hanbury Street, and in September of 1888 she gave an interview about something horrible that had happened on the premises. I did not go out of my room. The woman in question was Annie Chapman, the second known victim of Jack the Ripper. Like I said I really fell down the rabbit hole and I totally think it was worth it because I've always been fascinated with Jack the Ripper and just what an interesting little little historic tidbit there. Anyway I digress back to the meals of Dracula. Now Jonathan Harker mentions several different drinks that he enjoys on his journey. One is a wine called Golden Mediash which was named after the Transylvanian town of the same name, and another drink is offered to him on the coach ride up to Dracula's castle. The rather creepy coachman tells him the night is chill mine hair, and my master the count bade me take all care of you. There is a flask of slivovitz, the plum brandy of the country, underneath the seat if you should require it. I did not take any but it was a comfort to know it was there all the same. And I actually got some of this slivovitz and they started selling it in 1894, this brand, so it would have been around when the book was written. So I wanted to try it. Here we go. That's gonna put hair on your chest. It does not taste like plum I can tell you that. That is a strong brandy but it's actually kind of nice. There is a sweetness to it. I find it there is a sweetness that isn't there with like a grape or an apple brandy but it's really strong. Anyway the last drink that Harker mentions is a wine that is served to him just before he is actually accosted by three vampires in Dracula's castle, and it is served to him by Count Dracula himself. The count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I fell to it once on an excellent roast chicken. This with some cheese and salad and a bottle of old Tokaj of which I had two glasses was my supper. It is strange that as yet I have not seen the count eat or drink. He must be a very peculiar man. Peculiar indeed. Now exactly what this wine was is hard to say but it would have come from the Tokaj region of Hungary and Slovakia. They make all sorts of wine but they're most famous for their sweet white wines and their really sweet dessert wines usually called Royal Tokaj or Imperial Tokaj, but I figured I would get this sweet white to drink with my paprika hendel which I can make or rather eat after I make the galushka. So for this recipe which also comes from the 1890 cookbook, what you'll need is three eggs, two and a half cups or 300 grams of flour, one teaspoon of salt, three tablespoons or 45 grams of melted butter, plus a little bit more for coating the finished dumplings, and a half cup or 120 milliliters of milk. Start by whisking the eggs in a large bowl until they're smooth and then add in the flour, salt, and melted butter and mix it until it starts to form a dough. Then add in the milk just a little bit at a time until you have what you might think of as a very stiff pancake batter. Once it's ready bring a pot of water to a boil and then you can make the dumplings either with a dedicated galushka maker or you can use a cheese grater or just pinch off little pieces. With the maker though you just put the batter in the top and then scrape it across the holes and it will drip off into little bits. Do just a bit at a time and after a few seconds they will float to the top then let them continue to boil for about another 45 seconds and then use a strainer to take them out of the pot and put them in a bowl and pour a little bit of the melted butter over them and toss just to keep them from sticking together. Once they're done you can dish them up along with the chicken and plenty of the sauce. And here we are the paprika hendl or chicken paprikash from Bram Stoker's Dracula. This has to be one of the best smelling dishes that I have ever made in this house. The whole house smells so good. Yeah just, just by the scent you should make this but I'm gonna try it. I knew that it was going to be so delicious and I was right. So good. Let me just try the galushka. Sometimes these are also called nokidli, same thing. They kind of remind me of just like buttered noodles. I've seen some modern recipes that have like they add spices and other things to give them a little bit more flavor because there's not a lot to it. It's just eggs and flour and milk but they're really good. But it's the chicken, it's the chicken that's the star. You could also even make the chicken just with like rice or other noodles or whatever because the texture is really nice. It is falling apart. It's still holding together. You don't want to let it go until it is actually falling apart but it's so tender. But the flavor, it is, you get the, it is paprika forward. You could add even more paprika. The paprika is just so nice and it is sweet paprika so it's not hot at all. This is what they typically use for this dish in Hungary. It's just super flavorful. Between that and the onions there's just this wonderful homey, heartwarming, perfect for autumn and winter flavor and yeah you gotta make it. Also I wanted to try it with the tukay. Like I said I got one of the sweet whites. These are more common today but definitely throughout history they've also had reds and all sorts of drier wines but this is one of the sweeter whites. It's not dessert wine though. Though it's on the cusp. It is rather sweet. Honestly if you told me that it was apple cider I would probably believe you. It's really good though. It's just, it's not typically what you would expect when ordering a glass of wine but I like it. Like I said next week as long as everything goes to plan I will have a video on the person, the historical person who inspired Count Dracula Vlad the Impaler. Don't forget if you want a signed copy of the Tasting History cookbook links in the description to where you can get those, and they do ship, and yeah I will see you next time on Tasting History.