Each one of Russia's satellites had an important role to play in the space race, and Hungary was no exception. And because every Magyar wife and mother knows the importance of sending their menfolk on their way with a lavish hamper of high-cholesterol delicacies, it stood to reason that Hungarian chefs should be the ones tasked with developing a menu suitable for space travel. Index.hu spoke to Endréné Szenes, director of the Budapest Canned Food and Paprika Industry Research Institution (Konzerv- és Paprikaipari Kutatóintézet) and head of the Hungarian space food experiments, to find out what celebrated Hungarian astronaut Bertalan Farkas had packed in his lunchbox on May 26, 1980.

On the face of it, this may all sound like a bit of a joke, or a crude commie publicity stunt, but eating in space is actually a very thorny issue. According to Szenes, the change in pressure can wreak havoc with the digestive system, and anything liquid is guaranteed to float off across the cabin and cause a terrible mess. In addition, space travelers often suffer from a lack of appetite and often feel nauseous, so feeding them food they actually like is vital.

With this in mind, it makes perfect sense that the tulipános láda (box decorated with tulips) Farkas (pictured, looking well nourished and happy) took into orbit contained all the treats you would find expect to find in the average peasant's basket (minus the pálinka, of course). The menu included pork stew (sertéspörkölt), goose liver pâté (libamájpástétom), bean salad (babsaláta), layered cabbage (rakott káposzta), smoked tongue (füstölt marhanyelv) and disznósajt (pig's stomach filled with cooked pig's head, tongue, heart and skin). The space-safe snacks were stored in cans decorated with folk motifs from Kalocsa. Nice.

However, when Hungarian researchers first agreed to develop new meat-based foods, they were somewhat taken aback by the stringent requirements, recounts Szenes. "Can you imagine a pörkölt with a liquid content of not more than 10%, and does not spill when it is hot, or cold? What's more, hygiene requirements were 100 times stricter than for regular foods. The containers had to endure 40 times the rate of acceleration found on Earth, be easy to open and typically Hungarian – hence the Kalocsa motifs."

However, the two years of painstaking research proved successful, every container was licked clean during the crew's eight day odyssey, and Farkas reported that the Hungarian food proved very popular with his Soviet co-passengers. Despite recent revelations about the dangers of taking goose liver aboard aircraft, there was no mention of the potentially explosive properties of layered cabbage.