Rigó Jancsi

The story

Rigó Jancsi was a Romani violinist and bandleader, born in Pákozd, Hungary, in 1858. In 1896 he was playing dinner music in a Paris restaurant when Clara Ward came in with her husband, the Belgian Prince Joseph de Caraman-Chimay. Clara was not a Belgian princess by birth, as the tale is often told. She was born in Detroit in 1873 to a wealthy family and had married the prince in Paris in 1890. After a few weeks of secret meetings she ran off with the violinist, and the Ludington Record, a Michigan paper, reported the scandal on December 24, 1896. The prince and princess separated early in 1897, and Clara married Rigó in 1898. When the couple visited Budapest in 1905, gossip-hungry crowds nearly broke a restaurant window. The marriage did not last. Accounts of the cake disagree: one says Rigó had a pastry chef create it to surprise Clara, another that a Budapest confectioner whose name is lost named it after him. In Károly Gundel's version, a cocoa sponge is spread with apricot jam, topped with thick chocolate whipped cream and a second sponge, and glazed with chocolate. Cut it into small squares and serve it cold, with strong coffee.