The bag soup is one of the old, popular dishes of Hódmezővásárhely, which was prepared by the older women a few decades ago, but nowadays it has disappeared from the selection of everyday dishes.
It is made from flour, eggs, salt and water, and is a slightly softer dough than the usual dry dough. It was stretched as thin as a pastry. The stretched dough is then greased with melted fat and sprinkled with the filling, which is usually toasted bread crumbs, chopped fried onions and pepper. In the simplest version, only pepper was sprinkled on top. Less frequently, pieces of sausage may have been added. The pastry, sprinkled with the filling, was rolled up lengthwise into a cylinder and, after a few folds, cut endways. The dough could then be shaped in two ways: it could be cut into 3 finger-sized pieces, rolled up and the two ends pressed together, or it could be tied into a loose knot, in which case the pieces were cut a little longer. Finally, they were cooked in a vegetable soup and given a mash. (It was topped off with a tablespoon of paprika sprinkled in hot fat.)
Another popular version of cottage cheese soup is cottage cheese soup. This is made in a similar way to cottage cheese dumplings. 2-3 eggs are used to make a softer dough, stretched out thin. To the cottage cheese for the filling, flour, eggs, salt and pepper were added and mixed together. This, in clumps, was put on the dough in rows, and then, one row at a time, the plain dough was folded over it, pressed round and cut into cubes with a derby-iron. Alternatively, the cottage cheese was placed in a strip on the dough, rolled up a bit and then cut through the dough. A sausage-thick cylinder was cut into 3 finger-sized pieces and the ends were pinched together. These were also cooked in the almost done vegetable stock, cooked for 10 minutes, then poured over. The ends of the pasta that fell off during the making of the bags were eaten fried in fat.
The soup is one of the most characteristic of the folk dishes of the region and its preservation is therefore justified. As it is time-consuming to prepare, like other old pasta dishes, modern housewives do not undertake the work involved. Nowadays, it is more often prepared at gastronomic festivals than as a curiosity. Local restaurants can play a greater role in preserving its tradition. Once a popular local feature, it should definitely be included among the town’s assets to be preserved.