Start Date
31-5-2022 4:30 PM
End Date
31-5-2022 4:45 PM
Description
While Trappist monks in France have been producing artisan cheese since the seventeenth century, the ubiquitous trappista cheese in Hungary was generally recognized as a mass-produced and low-quality product at the end of the twentieth century. The origins of the mild flavoured, semi-hard cheese, however, reveal that trappista reached Hungary from Marija Zvijezda Abbey in Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The monastery was founded by Austrian Trappist monk Franz Pfanner in 1869 (then part of the Ottoman Empire), starting cheese production in 1882. This paper explores the contrast between the artisan cheese of Port-du-Salut (and Banja Luka) and the mass-produced Hungarian trappista as there has been a gap in historiography with regard to how this particular cheese gained such immense popularity in Hungary. It traces how the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s colonial mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina contributed to the spread of Trappist cheese consumption and production in Hungary from the late nineteenth century. By providing a comprehensive assessment of how industrial dairy production and trade transformed in Hungary from the days of the dual monarchy until the fall of communism in 1989, this paper investigates how the transnational history of Trappist cheese was shaped by colonial, national and communist forces across several borders.
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/wtd4-vj19
A Transnational History of Trappist Cheese
While Trappist monks in France have been producing artisan cheese since the seventeenth century, the ubiquitous trappista cheese in Hungary was generally recognized as a mass-produced and low-quality product at the end of the twentieth century. The origins of the mild flavoured, semi-hard cheese, however, reveal that trappista reached Hungary from Marija Zvijezda Abbey in Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The monastery was founded by Austrian Trappist monk Franz Pfanner in 1869 (then part of the Ottoman Empire), starting cheese production in 1882. This paper explores the contrast between the artisan cheese of Port-du-Salut (and Banja Luka) and the mass-produced Hungarian trappista as there has been a gap in historiography with regard to how this particular cheese gained such immense popularity in Hungary. It traces how the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s colonial mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina contributed to the spread of Trappist cheese consumption and production in Hungary from the late nineteenth century. By providing a comprehensive assessment of how industrial dairy production and trade transformed in Hungary from the days of the dual monarchy until the fall of communism in 1989, this paper investigates how the transnational history of Trappist cheese was shaped by colonial, national and communist forces across several borders.