# Soups

Various soups (lé) occupy a prominent place in the menu of the Hungarian peasantry, for a major meal is unthinkable without them. That is why they say in a story from the Palots area that “of soup alone there were seven kinds”.

The most appreciated among soups is bouillon or meat soup (húsleves) made of poultry, of pork–especially spare ribs–and sometimes of beef. The meat cooked in it is eaten either with or separately from the soup. Different kinds of pastas are cooked in the soup. In the Great Plain, foremost among these is the csiga (snail shaped noodles), which is cooked in the soup for wedding dinners or on other festive occasions. These are made of small pieces of pasta cut into squares and curled with a small rod of wood or iron on the reed of the weaver’s loom. Making them is an occasion for popular winter evening gatherings. They also put ribbon, {284.} diamond, strawberry leaf, and other differently shaped pasta into the meat soup.

Amongst the long line of sour soups, we should mention the cibere or kiszi, some variety of which is known over the entire linguistic region. Hot water is poured on bran, and just as it begins to ferment, they strain it and mix it with egg and milk. Such soup is also made out of dry fruit. Both have a significant role among fasting dishes. Cabbage soup is found in a soured form, although not as often as among Eastern Slavs.

An outstanding place belongs to the soups made out of leguminous plants (beans, peas, less frequently lentils). These were grown either in the garden or along with maize, planted between the rows, so every household had plenty of them. Such soups were usually thickened with flour and enriched with smoked meat.

Soups made with pasta are mostly the food of herdsmen and field workers. In the Great Plain they cooked it out of lebbencs and tarhonya and made it so thick that the spoon stood upright in it. Both pastas are browned with lard or bacon, with onion, paprika, and more recently potatoes added to it, and cooked together.