Fish has almost completely disappeared from Hungarian gastronomy

By: Trademagazin Date: 2022. 12. 16. 11:43

At the end of the 1880s, the average annual consumption of fish per person was below one and a half kilos, which practically halved by the mid-1930s. Although there was some recovery in this field during the years of state socialism, Hungarians ate an average of no more than 2 kilos of fish per year even in 1985, which was roughly the same as the annual per capita tobacco consumption.

Fish dishes are not even part of the holiday dishes

“Although there are no data sets available on how much fish the Hungarians ate a few hundred years ago, it is certain that the natural waters were full of fish in the Middle Ages and even in the early modern period. practice changed it to such an extent that, after more than a hundred years, Hungarian fishing and angling were regulated in the law dividing the Hungarian fishing community, and at the same time the entire domestic fish stock of natural waters was ordered to be state property. they tried to inflate the domestic fish consumption, as a result of which the fish consumption indicators typical of the 1980s have roughly tripled: the amount of fish eaten by Hungarians per year has increased to around 6 kilograms. “