Goulash

Goulash is a Hungarian dish of beef, onions, paprika and other vegetables such as potatoes and carrots, cooked as a soup in its traditional Hungarian form even though many international versions thicken it into a stew. It descends from a method used by Hungarian herdsmen as early as the tenth century, who cooked meat in cauldrons and then dried it in the sun to carry as a preserved food, and it only gained its characteristic red color and flavor after paprika reached Hungary from the Americas in the sixteenth century. Goulash spread widely across the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and into the Balkans and Central Europe, taking on many regional forms, and it remains one of the national dishes of Hungary and a widely recognized symbol of Hungarian identity.