Diós béles

The story

Béles is a pastry built in layers: a filling closed between a bottom and a top sheet of dough and baked flat in a pan. A 2024 Pénzcentrum feature on this old Hungarian sweet says the oldest recipes probably date from the 17th century, when béles was a festive dish of the gentry, served at weddings and christenings. It could be baked at the bottom of a bread oven, in a pot set on embers or in fat. Peasant versions were usually made from unleavened kneaded dough, though the sheets could also be strudel or yeast dough. Fillings changed from region to region: cabbage and other vegetables, poppy seed and millet, and also jam, walnut and sweet curd cheese. In the Őrség, cooks mixed buckwheat flour into the dough and often filled it with pumpkin. The novelist Mór Jókai counted the karikás béles of Kecskemét among the finest dishes of his time. A second Pénzcentrum article, on Easter food, says the Easter Sunday feast usually closed with rétes, béles or kalács. The walnut béles published by the Hungarian recipe site Mindmegette puts tart jam and a soft walnut layer between two sheets of rich short dough and finishes it with chocolate. It keeps well, so bake it a day or two before Easter.