Unfortunately, that multitude of influences does not apply to Czech cuisine, which seems to be not only influenced but downright regurgitated from one single tradition: the German. And say what you want about the Czechs’ great neighbours to the West, but their cuisine is definitely not their greatest contribution to mankind.
To start with the conclusion: Czechs are the ultimate meat-eaters. Cheap (and fatty) meat was one of the main carnal delights with which the former regime bought itself the people’s acceptance (see: Communism). And the broad masses surely took full advantage of the offer. By 1990, the Czechs consumed more pork and beef per capita (50 kilos and 28 kilos respectively) than almost any other nation on the planet.
The only thing that seems to have changed after the Velvet Revolution is that vegetables have become somewhat more visible on the dinner plate. Before 1990, the Czechs shovelled down dishes of fatty meat with rawgrated cabbage. After 1990, they have been shovelling down dishes of fatty meat with rawgrated cabbage and some tomatoes and cucumbers. But the sauce’s role in Czech cuisine is still the same. While other nations use it to stimulate the meat’s taste, the Czechs drown the meat in loads of heavy sauce to make sure that the taste is killed completely.
This is not a militant vegetarian’s personal opinion.
Surveys conducted by the Czech Statistics Office prove that consumption of red meat, thanks to extensive propaganda of healthy nutrition, went down in the first years after the Velvet Revolution, while the popularity of poultry grew. And, occasionally, a “mad cow” incident weakens the average Czech’s taste for beef.
The problem, however, is that this healthy trend reversed by the end of the 1990s. Today, the Czechs’ eating habits are only slightly healthier than in 1990. Their risk of dying from a cardio vascular disease is, according to official figures, still double the Western average. Their average level of cholesterol, which in the early 1990s dropped to Western standards, has rocketed back to its original heights and, eventually, with 16 percent of Czech men and 20 percent of women categorized as obese, this nation places itself in the forefront of Europe’s lard league.
It’s hard to point out one single reason for the Czechs’ culinary impotence. Okay, they don’t have access to the ocean, so you can’t blame their cuisine for not offering a variety of delicious seafood (see: Carp). But that goes for the Hungarians, as well, and yet their halaszlé (fish-soup) is by all standards excellent.
A comparison with the world-famous Hungarian cuisine might seem unfair, but the fact is that the agricultural conditions that Mother Nature gives the Czechs don’t differ all that much from their ex-neighbours’. Even the yodelling Austrians have come up with a more fiery cuisine. So why are the Czechs, in this respect, so drab?
Photo © Jaroslav Fišer
One rather uncomplicated theory is at hand: the cuisine’s character is to a large extent influenced by the beverage that is consumed to smooth its digestion. And in the Czech case, only one candidate can be taken into consideration: beer.
Indeed, this country’s brewing traditions are as old, rich and various as the cuisine is dull, fatty and tasteless. It’s simply impossible to imagine a genuine hospoda meal without a rosy glass — or three — of beer (statistically, every Czech consumes about 160 litres annually, which makes them the world leaders in this discipline). So, where the Hungarians, French and Italians swallow light and spicy food with sparkling wine, the Czechs use tasteful and high-calory beer to digest loads of fatty meat and heavy sauce.
To be fair, Czech cuisine also has some bright spots. The soups, for instance, which are an obligatory starter at any meal, can be delightful, and like all other nations in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, also the Czechs revel in cakes and pastry. The ultimate Czech speciality, however, is the knedlík (dumpling).
You can find the same delicacy in Bavaria and Austria as well, but nobody serves this boiled savoury pudding with greater affection than the Czechs. There are even regular timed contests in stuffing down as many knedlíks as possible. In her now-cult-classic cookbook from the 1920s, Marie Janků-Sandtnerová listed 37 different ways of preparing the knedlík. Since then, some fifty more recipes have been published.
As a foreigner, you might mistake the knedlík for a soft-boiled ice hockey puck that moves through your intestines with the speed of a plasticine ball, but the locals treat it with sacred respect. Actually, no classic Czech dish can go without the knedlík.
To achieve the total Czech culinary experience, you should therefore find any ordinary hospoda and try the following combination: go for a glass of Becherovka, the traditional herbal liquor, as an aperitif, and then continue with one of the soups that are on the day’s menu (if the dršťková is the only one left, consider whether you really wish to eat ground cow stomach). As for the main dish, there is no alternative other than the vepřo-knedlo-zelo (pork meat with dumplings and sauerkraut), which must be swallowed down by large quantities of beer.
The dessert can be a palačinka (a pancake) accompanied by a cup of what the Czechs dare to call Turkish coffee. If you’re not used to filtering the coffee through your teeth to avoid swallowing the grounds, order a glass of grog (tea with rum) instead.
Finally, control that the waiter hasn’t doctored your bill too heavily, leave a small tip — and be sure not to check your weight or measure your cholesterol for a couple of days. Dobrou chuť!
Czech Language
Let’s start with the unambiguous verdict: Czech is the Rolls Royce of the Slavonic languages, and a star player in the Indo-European linguistic league. Czech is so rich, precise and, unfortunately, also complicated that a foreigner trying to learn the language may be driven to suicide. Either because he or she never manages to learn it, or because of the utter depression that follows when the foreigner realizes how primitive his or her own mother tongue is.
Linguistically speaking, Czech is — as are Slovak, Polish and the now nearly extinct Lusatian (Wendish) — a Western Slavonic language. Eastern Slavonic languages, such as Russian and Ukrainian, or members of the South Slavonic branch, as Serbian and Croatian, all belong to the same linguistic family. But because Czech, thanks in part to the unique vowel mutation it has undergone, is the most distinctive of all the Slavonic languages, its spoken version can be hard to understand even for other Slav peoples, bar the Slovaks.
The Czechs have traditionally been known as a book-loving people. Today, this can indeed be questioned (see: TV Nova), but one fact remains undisputed: no Slav people started to produce literature in their own language earlier than the Czechs. Within two centuries after the Macedonian missionary Cyril (ca. 827-869) and his brother Methodius arrived from Salonika to convert them to Christianity (see: Religion), the Czechs could boast an array of hymns, chronicles and ballads in their mother tongue.