Hungarian gulyás is a beef and potato stew flavored with paprika. Other ingredients common to the dish are bacon fat, onion, red or green pepper and caraway seed. There is stringent advisement against the use of tomato for flavor or color, and against flour to thicken the dish.

Of course I realize to serve gulyas to a few hundred elementary school children would be neither practical nor economically sound. But why then, the name? And why then didn’t they serve us the same shaped ball made from rice and chicken and perhaps a little yellow food coloring and call it paella? Why not feed us a bowl of tomato broth sporting a few chunks of fish on Friday and label it cioppino?

I’m not saying the cafeteria goulash was horrible. It actually was one of the better items to come out of that kitchen. But it made me wonder how the same dish or recipe may change from region to region within one country, or from one country to another as people immigrate and are forced to substitute ingredients.

In more touristy locales, it’s no surprise that a national or regional dish often is served subpar and overpriced. I have friends who won’t even eat paella in Barcelona because they’ve been spoiled by versions in Valencia and Granada.

“Pallea in Barcelona?” said one friend. “That is not paella.”

Indeed, my Hungarian friend turned up her nose when I suggested ordering gulyás at restaurants in Hungary. Why? “Because it will never be as good as my mother’s,” she replied.

I have deliberately avoided the use of the word “authentic.” One region to the next in Spain or Hungary will claim authenticity with a version of a national dish, but who’s to say? Enchiladas vary wildly within Mexico.  Philadelphians can’t agree on one version of the cheese steak. Five cooks in New Orleans will each swear that their take on gumbo is the only way–filé powder versus okra, to roux or not to roux–it’s a battle that will never be won.           

While sensible changes in recipes for same‑named dishes are understandable and add to the history of the dish, and frequently enhance our enjoyment of it, some changes are seen as generally unacceptable. Such seems to be the case of adding tomatoes to gulyás.  

The issue of my lunchroom goulash will remain a mystery, I’m afraid. It may as well have been called succotash, lasagna or pea soup, for all its communion with Hungary’s national dish.

I’m pleased to finally have sampled the true stew.