Of course, it's worth asking round before you take the family heirlooms to be melted down (to fry "gilded" sausages). Although the Bombay Brasserie in London offers gilded lobster stuffed with white truffles for the equivalent of six hundred thousand Forints and the Swiss DeLafée chocolate factory's pralines, covered in gold flakes, cost twice the Hungarian minimum wage, eating gold was not invented by the nouveaux-riches of Russia. The Byzantines started it, the Arabs continued it, and Medieval Europe learnt it from them. Benedetto Salutati, a Florentine banker, served almond cake sprinkled with powdered gold at a feast that he gave in 1476 in honour of the King of Naples, Medieval English cookery books describe the art of gilding walnuts or jellied fish and for centuries, powdered gold was thought to be an aphrodisiac and even medicine.

It is thanks to the eccentricity of eating gold that we owe the tradition of frying meat in breadcrumbs. In 1514, a merchant of Venice served his guests slices of veal coated in gold. The chefs of Milano were so enraged by this arrogant prodigality that they invented pauper's gold, a coating of breadcrumbs. They covered the cutlets in flour, eggs and breadcrumbs and in this way their meat became golden brown too. (The grand council prohibited once and for all the gilding of foods.)

In 1848, marshal Radetzky, field-marshal of the imperial army, gave an account of this recipe in his first war bulletin. The young Franz Joseph immediately summoned his chief cook, who prepared - in one go - the first chicken fried in breadcrumbs and the first Wiener Schnitzel. The emperor found the "wrapped" meat so tasty that in just a couple of weeks, the Wiener Schnitzel became extremely popular in Vienna. According to the Austrian linguist, Heinz Dieter Pohl, not a word of all this is true, the whole story was made up by an Italian, Felice Cúnsolo, the author of travel guides. The coating of breadcrumbs is of Byzantine origin, and it was passed on by Spanish mercenaries posted in Milano, who learnt it from the Moors. This was known as the chuleta andaluza.

This may be the case, but the world's best (and biggest) Wiener Schnitzel is made in Vienna, at the Zum Figlmüller Inn, only a few hundred metres from the fiakker-stop by the cathedral, under the arcades. In the sanctuary of Franz Figlmüller, four cooks tenderize veal cutlets all day. The slices of veal are about four to five millimetres thick (cut with the so-called butterfly method), the breadcrumbs are freshly grated, a dollop of milk is mixed into the egg, the oil is heated to 180 degrees Centigrade, and the frying lasts no longer than half a minute. If the coating of breadcrumbs is not golden-brown, if it isn't crisp or doesn't "breathe", they do not serve the meat. Each year, some eighty million servings are ordered in Austria. The Wiener Schnitzel is an Austrian trademark, George Tabori even wrote a play about it, entitled The Ballad of the Wiener Schnitzel.

And yet Antal Szirmay mentions it already in 1807 (well before Radetzky), in his verse about a dish called Bosporos. According to István Ráth-Végh (in his book Magyar Kuriózumok-Hungarian Oddities), this is the description of "pork cutlets fried in breadcrumbs, with vinegar, garlic and pepper". As befits the Hungarian stomach. Of course, it is possible that the learned scholar - who is familiar with old libraries - was mistaken on this occasion. Nevertheless, for Hungarians, life is not worth living without the famous wrapped meat. On Sunday mornings, when the aroma of fried meat envelops the whole country, a kind of reconciliation sweeps over us, as if everything were fine. Some people start thinking that perhaps the poet was right: if the Earth is God's hat, Hungary is a breadcrumb on it.

No wonder that, with time, the country's shape has become similar to that of a Wiener Schnitzel.