Gulasch alla Tirolese

Goulash descends from the gulyas of the Hungarian plains, where cattle-herders cooked beef in cauldrons over open fire while droving grey Podolica oxen to the markets of Moravia, Vienna and Nuremberg; gulya means a herd of cattle. Paprika, a New World pepper, entered the dish over the eighteenth century, and by its end goulash had climbed from the herdsmen's camps to bourgeois tables and was spreading across the Habsburg lands. In German-speaking South Tyrol, which lay within Austria-Hungary until 1919, the soup thickened into a stew and took on Tyrolean seasoning; it remains the province's definitive festive main.

The beef gives up all resistance, breaking into moist strands under a fork, and the sauce is dark, russet-red and glossy from the melted onions and paprika oil. It tastes deeply savoury and gently sweet, with the warm, faintly aniseed note of caraway and a bright lift of lemon zest cutting the richness.

The cuts used — shin, shoulder and neck — are dense with collagen; three hours of gentle simmering hydrolyses that connective tissue into gelatin, which is what makes the meat fall apart and gives the sauce its body. There is no roux: the near-equal weight of onions is the thickener, their cells breaking down and releasing pectin and sugars that also brown for sweetness and colour. Paprika is stirred in off the direct heat because its carotenoid pigments and sugars scorch and turn bitter above a moderate temperature; a little vinegar and wine add acidity that both brightens the flavour and helps soften the meat.