Abstract: This study examines how paprika and culinary culture shaped the process of Jewish integration in modern Hungary. At the focus of its investigation are the paprika merchant Janos Kotanyi’s (1858–1928?) advertisements appearing from 1901 in Borsszem Janko , the political satirical weekly the Jewish physician-turned-journalist and well-known gourmand Adolf Agai (1836–1916) edited. Other advertisements of the Kotanyi firm and Agai’s selected writings also illustrate their understanding that paprika has become more than a staple of Hungarian cooking: it symbolized (according to some to the point of turning into a cliché) the Hungarian national consciousness since the early nineteenth century. As cultural insiders, through their creative and humorous engagement with the material and immaterial aspects of paprika and national cuisine, Agai and Kotanyi contributed to the formation of modern Hungarian national culture and nation building. Their participation in the majority culture guided their careers and set their paths of integration. More than that, it also allowed them to comment on and shape Jewish culinary culture and, thus, advocate Jewish integration in Hungary. The reconstruction of Agai’s and Kotanyi’s intertwining histories elucidates food’s influence on minority-majority relations in Hungary and challenges the historiographical approach that distinguishes between the roles culture played in the integration process of the two professional groups: merchants and intellectuals, participating in two different areas of nation building.
Katalin Franciska Rac (Thu,) studied this question.