The traditional Hungarian meal is not ordered as starter-main-dessert, but revolves around a leves (soup) that forms the foundation and opens almost any meal worthy of the name, followed by the főétel (the main dish, often paprika-laden stew with sour cream), then the sweets of the kávéház, those Viennese-Budapest coffeehouses where one settles the world's affairs. Set aside are the pogácsa, taken on journeys, and the sweet wine of grand evenings. This is the table—the Hungary of his youth—that Alexander Korda carried with him all the way to the hushed clubs of London.

The powder of dried and ground sweet peppers, a deep red, is the soul of Hungarian cuisine. It is melted off the heat in hot lard to release its color and aroma without bitterness—a foundational gesture every Magyar cook knows by heart. Korda, born in 1893, grew up with it: in his time paprika was already the national emblem, and no anachronism here, the New World chili having reached the Hungarian plain centuries earlier.