Sárgatúró

The story

Sárgatúró, yellow curd, is not a cheese in the dairy sense. It is milk and eggs cooked together until they separate into sweet yellow curds, which are squeezed in a cloth and hung to drain into a firm ball that cuts into slices. It belongs to the Easter of north-eastern Hungary, especially Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County and the Hajdúság, regions of the Eastern Catholic churches. Pénzcentrum lists it with ham, lamb and eggs among the kókonyák, the cold foods forbidden during Lent that went into the covered basket to be blessed; eating them marked the end of the fast. Wikipedia adds that in some villages the blessed basket was carried around the house to ward off evil. On Easter Sunday, March 28 in 2027, the ball is served cold in thin slices next to smoked ham, boiled eggs and kalács, and the meeting of sweet and salty is the point. Families vary it with raisins, cinnamon or nutmeg. Hungarian cooks keep a simple rule of about one egg to every deciliter of milk, which makes the recipe easy to scale. Make it on Holy Saturday so it can firm up overnight in the refrigerator before slicing.