Czech

Bohemian cooking grew up inside the Habsburg empire and swapped dishes freely with Vienna and Budapest: schnitzel, goulash and strudel are shared property. What is Czech is the knedlík, the sliced bread dumpling that soaks up sauce, and the vegetable-cream sauces of the Sunday table. Pilsner lager, brewed from 1842, became the national drink. The socialist canteen gave the country fried cheese and standardised the menu; the decades since have restored the classics.

Caraway, marjoram, garlic and onion over pork, with sour cream or sweet cream smoothing the sauce. Dumplings rather than potatoes beside anything saucy, though potatoes get their turn as pancakes with garlic and marjoram. Sauerkraut and braised red cabbage supply the sour. Spice heat is almost absent. Sweet baking leans on yeast dough, quark, poppy seed and plum jam.