Szeged Paprika

Ground paprika from Szeged carries a protected designation and is the reference version of the spice in Hungary: capsicum grown on the sandy soils of the southern plain, dried, and milled through a process that determines colour and heat as much as the fruit does. Grades run from the sweet delicate to the hot, and the difference between them is mostly which parts of the pod go into the mill. Szeged has grown and ground it since the eighteenth century, and the spice has a scientific footnote here, since Albert Szent-Gyorgyi used local paprika as the material from which he isolated vitamin C in quantity, work that took the Nobel Prize in 1937. Markets, mills and a small museum cover it.

What you'll find

• Graded ground paprika - sweet to hot, decided at the mill.
• Drying strings of pods - the autumn racks around the villages.
• The vitamin C connection - Szent-Gyorgyi's Nobel work on local paprika.
• Szeged markets and mills - where the spice is bought fresh.

When to go

September and October, when the crop is drying and the strings are hung out. Half a day. Buy from markets rather than souvenir shops. Ground paprika loses colour and flavour within months.

Practical notes

Souvenir tins and decorative strings are often old stock or poor grade. Paprika ages badly and what you carry home fades fast. Much of the crop is now grown outside the region and only milled locally.

Nearby

Opusztaszer is north; the Serbian border lies south.