Is Goulash a Soup or a Stew?

Published by Fodor’s Travel on March 22, 2024

Credit: Victoria Shes @victoriakosmo via Unsplash

Ask a Hungarian to explain true goulash (or gulyás, as they will more accurately call it) and you will first get a wary question: “Do you mean the soup or the stew?”

This reply hints at how elusive one true goulash is–at least outside of Hungary. What began as a hearty peasant dish with beef, chopped onion, carrot, parsley root, and caraway seed evolved over the years as Hungary’s borders ebbed and flowed. The all-important ingredient of paprika, for instance, arrived on the scene with the Ottomans in the 16th century–just behind tomatoes, which came to Europe from the Americas around the same time. Stretch the populace further afield as waves of immigrants went to the United States starting in the mid-1800s and influences on the famous dish continued to expand.

Google “Hungarian goulash” and then “American goulash” and you’ll see an utter lack of resemblance between the two. The former looks to be a thick and meaty stew. The latter, meanwhile, is as chaotic and undefinable as its adopted country–complete with ingredients as alien to the Magyars as elbow macaroni.

Neither, many Hungarians would argue, is true “gulyás”.

What is then? And how and why has the name come to mean so many other things?