When I was a little girl my parents and I used to travel around Hungary in the summer. I can still remember the warm climate, and the little dresses I wore, many of which I have in a shoe box upstairs. What I also remember is the Bed and Breakfast, back then called ‘Zimmer frei’ in Hungary, which was run by an old couple. The woman looked a lot like my aunt and the man I can’t remember much. Their house was large for Hungary and by a main road, not far from a little restaurant by the river Danube where I always ate a very good omelette for supper.
Our time with the old couple was like staying with your grandparents, sure communication was complicated, they spoke a little German, so did my parents, and I as a four year old strangely enough spoke a good word of German too. They were loving people and love can be shown without the language barrier. Each day we entered our room, the old lady surprised us with a large stone bowl of the most plump cherries I have ever seen. As a child, and a picky eater, those cherries were some kind of heaven. Food I knew, and was so expensive at home that I could never really eat so many that my fingers would be stained in cherry juice.
And every day a bowl appeared, and every day we were greeted by the most loving smiles and gestures by these two wonderful people.
Two years after our last visit to the old couple’s Zimmer Frei we decided to do a detour and stay with them for a couple of nights. I requested it especially because I was eager to see my Hungarian grandparents as they had become to be for me. My parents too had never encountered such kindness and were eager to stay there again too.
So we drove to the rather large Hungarian house and as we parked the car I ran towards the door where the old lady – she must have been in her early seventies – was sitting in her chair.
But while I was running towards her the first thing I noticed was the anxious look in her eyes, and then the dress that she wore. As before she always wore granny clothes, now she was wearing a black embroidered dress with a deep decollete and very large earrings.
Anxious as she was, but really happy to see us, she told my parents that she would love it if we would stay but that she was no longer a Zimmer Frei since her husband had died the year before.
I wondered what the young girls were doing there if she wasn’t offering lodgings anymore, and somehow, while she was showing us to our room and I saw how the house had changed and lost all its granny appeal, I knew. I knew without without having the knowledge of years.
Heartbroken and realising that there might not be a bowl of cherries in our room each day, and hurt by the uncomfortable anxious look in my Hungarian grandma’s eyes we said we’d go for dinner and then come back to decide if we would stay.
The granny had tears in her eyes, and I felt like she was holding on to the summers and the bowls of cherries as much as I was doing. But those times were gone. The light had gone out in the rather large Hungarian house. It was replaced by sorrow, regret, and a need for survival.
So we ate an omelette at the restaurant by the river, and my parents gave me the choice on whether to stay at the granny’s house. Too young to understand what was happening at the house, but old enough to feel there was something wrong, I told them that I felt that it wasn’t right for us to stay there.
So we drove back to the granny’s house, and said our goodbyes, granny still trying to convince us we were so very welcome. But I was feeling so very sad. I could not understand what had happened and somehow I knew that by staying we would not only make her happy, we would also maker her very sad.
She had made her choice, and there would be no more bowls of cherries.
I hope she was at peace at the end of her life, so very long ago.
In her memory I have prepared this cherry tart, inspired by 18th century tarts, some of which you’ll find in my upcoming book. It’s a perfect tart to make when you have leftover sponge cake, that way you don’t need to bake a cake especially. The tart has a pleasant texture, though not like the tarts you are probably used to. Let me know if you’ve tried it!
x R
Cherry tart with curstard and sponge cake
What you need
Shortcrust pastry
- 180 g white flour
- 100g cold butter
- 20 g icing sugar
- tiny pinch salt
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp of cold water
Custard
- 250 ml cream
- 3 egg yolks
- a blade of mace
- a stick of cinnamon
- 1tbsp of raw cane sugar
Filling
- Sponge cake, preferably stale
- 2 tbsp of brandy (optional)
- a punnet of cherries
- 2 tbsp of unsalted butter – or bone marrow
- 22-24 sized pie pan or plate
Regula Ysewijn is a food writer, stylist and photographer, with a particular interest in historical recipes. he is a Great Taste Awards judge and a member of The Guild of Food Writers, as well as one of the two judges on 'Bake Off Vlaanderen', the Belgian version of 'The Great British Bake-Off'. A self-confessed Anglophile, she collects old British cookbooks and culinary equipment in order to help with her research. She is the author of 5 books: Pride and Pudding the history of British puddings savoury and sweet, Belgian Café Culture, the National Trust Book of Puddings, Brits Bakboek and Oats in the North, Wheat from the South. 
What a story. Love it. Really really fantastic.
thank you!
A beautiful and sad story. This old-fashioned cherry tart is really original and must taste heavenly!
Cheers,
Rosa
I've been told it is good 😉
Although I'm very much into recipes I'm maybe even more into personal history (hence my job as a social worker probably). There are so many levels in this little story about your holidays abroad: the memories of your childhood holidays, the sensitivity of a child for the facts of life it doesn't even understand, the fact that communication is universal even without knowledge of a language and (ofcourse) the language of food or even better: the emotion of food. It makes me so curious about the drives of the mourning woman! And what did you really sensed? Do your parents remember it the same way? Baking this tart and writing this bittersweet memory is a beautiful tribute to childhood memories and this intriguing Hungarian woman! Thank you!
I think it was the fact that the B&B had no family rooms anymore and the rooms I saw were just a bed and a sheepwool carpet on the floor and bare walls, and the fact that there were a couple of girls around that clearly were there to 'work'. And most shocking how the landlady had transformed and how ashamed she looked.
The sponge cake is such an unexpected but tasty sounding addition. Do you think leaving the pits in the cherries adds extra flavor?
I think if you would have to bake the tart for long then maybe, but the cooking time is too short to get a flavour out them I think. I just wanted to have the stalks, and in the past people weren't that bothered about getting a stone out a cherry when they ate, whole small birds were put in pies, bones and all, so people just took a bite, and then spent a few seconds getting the bones out, or spitting them out 😉
Food with such a touching story, thanks for sharing both the story and the recipe!
Food with such a touching story… thanks for sharing both the story and the recipe 🙂
glad you enjoyed it!
Lovely post, and stunning photographs.
thanks!
Beautiful post Regula. It is sad that she had to go in to the business she did. I wonder why and how the B&B did not provide sufficient sustenance after working fine for so long. Nevertheless, you are right. She made a choice. As children, instinct is so much more powerful that we lose some of it as we grow older and supposedly 'wiser' 🙂 I sometimes we could get back some of that intuition and ability to glide with time and space! Loved reading this post. Made me think 🙂
glad you enjoyed this post Asha, I often think about this woman when the cherry season starts. It was one of the weirdest moments of my life and as a child it was very confronting to have the idea that because the woman lost her husband she had no other choice than to become a 'madame'. Maybe because the B&B only provided extras to the couple over the summer and nothing in the winter months, or maybe because she suddenly found herself alone, and vulnerable without a man around that she took in girls, to earn, and to stand stronger than being a woman alone. Don't forget, in the past, it was quite common for a widow to either be married off to the brother of the husband, or become a prostitute or mistress to some man. It was the way of the world, and Hungary in that time in the 80's had just gotten out of communism. Times were hard. It is weird that I as a child, without even knowing the way of the world, kinda sensed what was going on and felt very uncomfortable and sad about it. And as we sometimes passed the red light windows in Antwerp, it gave me a sense of feeling that there were men out there that were fathers, and men that were predators. I didn't feel like prostitution was 'ok' as a child, I've always thought about it as abuse that was 'allowed' to keep more fortunate woman safe from those predators who otherwise would just attack innocent woman… It does make you think doesn't it? I'm still not okay with how prostitution is accepted in society…
A sad story defining the sign of times. It seems we both were lost in childhood memories this week. You cherry tart is so precious especially with the story in mind. I love the sponge cake in this. Lovely!
thanks so much Meeta, glad you enjoyed this rather sad story!
Love your food photography and details, really helps,
thank you so much for sharing