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FOOD IN BURGENLAND & AMERICA
Burgenland food around 1900 was not much different from that eaten in America. Many meals (both in Burgenland and in immigrant American homes) might include the following: 

Bread, butter, milk, coffee or wine were breakfast items. The men of the house might also have a small glass of „Schnapps“ or „Kirsch“ or „Slivovitz“ along with paprika bacon, cheese, or smoked sausage. 

The main meal had soup (Tage Suppe), made from boiled beef or chicken stock. It included “Einlagen“ of noodles (home made) or rice, buckwheat „sterz“ or dumplings. Soup was also made from flour browned in fat („Einbrenn“). The soup meat was a second course with potatoes. Bean and goulasch soup were favorites. Wild greens like dandelion or garden salad or other vegetables were used as salad as were sauerkraut or boiled white beans with vinegar and oil. Cucumbers with sour cream were popular. Vinegar was made from wine or cider. Wild mushrooms, nuts and berries were picked.
Wine mixed with water went with meals. Wine was a basic food item, dating to medieval times when those employed by the nobility would receive a daily ration of bread („Zipolte“) and wine. Considering that water sources were often polluted, mixing wine with water was a life saving habit Supper might be „Sterz“ (cornmeal or buckwheat flour, water and fat, sometimes mixed with blood from butchering or eggs), potato dumplings containing plums (Zwetschken Knödel), homemade noodles mixed with cottage cheese (Topfen) or fried cabbage or pork crackling. Goulash using lots of onions and paprika was made in many ways. Peppers were filled with rice and meat in an Einbrenn sauce. A dish of barley, beans and ham „Richert“ was popular. 

For feast days goose was best. Fish, fresh, dried or pickled were eaten on Fridays and fast days. 
Fruit was eaten with bread or made into „Strudels.“ Raised nut and poppy-seed Strudels were baked. Pancake (crepes) „Palatschinken“ were spread with jam. Sour cream was added to stews, soups or vegetable dishes. A biscuit made from flour, potatoes and lard (sometimes Grammel), called „Pogasa“ or “Pogatscherl“ in Hungarian, are still very popular among immigrant descendants. 

Donuts, „Krapfen“, and „Kipfels“ (crescent shaped filled pastries),were holiday treats. Oranges and Marzipan were seen at Christmas. 

This just scratches the surface of ethnic Burgenland food which includes the best of German, Hungarian and Croatian cuisine. Their life was constantly involved with food. Planting, raising and harvesting,feeding, care and butchering of animals, laboring in the vineyards, carrying wheat and rye to the miller, turning cabbage into sauerkraut, grapes to wine, meat to sausage and fruit to cider, preserves and schnapps. This involvement was a tradition that emigrants to America found hard to break. I still remember my grandparent’s grape arbor, the „back yard“ kitchen garden, the wine barrels and sauerkraut crocks, sausage making and all kinds of canning and live fowl. Times have changed, but kitchen food favorites live on among the immigrants’ descendants.

by G. Berghold <GBerghold@aol.com>, Editor BB News