When I decided that what Chew.hu - and the world - really needed was a comprehensive English-language encyclopedia of Hungarian food and drink, I assumed the work involved would be painstaking but relatively uncomplicated. After all, how difficult is it to figure out the name of some food or beverage, how it is commonly consumed in Hungary, and then write it up in English? To answer these questions, I present to you the above picture.

As I snapped the shot a few months back, I figured the item in question was some kind of giant retek (radish), and that when I showed it to one of the local members of the Chew.hu team, they would quickly sort out just what kind of retek it was. No such luck; all I got was "Oh, I know what it's called, but I can't think of it right now" and "Well, it's a giant radish." One even suggested they were jégcsapretek - the long, pointy radishes whose most common name in Hungary literally translates as "icicle radish" - even though the things clearly were more like snowballs than icicles.

Radish fetish: Whatever my mystery retek was, it was clearly neither a normal red retek (above) nor the distinctive "icicle radish," or jégcsapretek.

As a believer in doing a job right (and a long-time lover of radishes) I went back to the market and enquired at several stalls selling the item about what exactly they were called - and got a different answer from every peddler of the big crunchy orbs. Then, on my way home, I bumped into a friend on the metro, who assured me that she was a regular walking encyclopedia on Hungarian food matters, and would have no problem telling me the proper name of the item I was about to show her. ("Oh, no - I just had these at my grandparents' house a few weeks back…. what the hell are they called?")

Undeterred, I asked my friends at the popular Hungarian-language blog Kispad.hu to quiz their readers about what the mystery radish is properly called, and how it is best eaten. Given the gravity of the issue, I waited a month to let the resulting comment thread play out.

The first name suggested was vajretek (literally "butter radish"), the commenter saying this is what the vegetable is called where they buy it. But that answer was quickly deemed incorrect. The next name mentioned was vajrépa ("butter carrot"), but another commenter said that was also untrue, pointing to an allegedly indispensable Hungarian website about vegetable-related questions - Terebess.hu - which claims the name is actually fehér gömbölyű téli retek, literally "white round winter radish." And if fehér gömbölyű téli retek seems like a mouthful, the Latin name offered on the site was even worse: Raphanus sativus L. convar. niger provar. subrotundus albus DC.

Yet even this seemingly irrefutable answer was not enough to shut the discussion down, as other commenters began to weigh in with yet more new names, or to vouch for other names already put forth. Several continued to insist on vajretek or vajrépa, while kerekrépa ("round carrot") was one of the more memorable new entrants kicked around and then out.

Finally, the name appeared that I'd been secretly hoping for the whole time: sörretek. This beautiful word - which literally means "beer radish" - had been offered to me by the most convincing of the market-hall people I'd quizzed, and, well, it just sounded right to me. By the end of the thread, there seemed to be a consensus in favor of sörretek, which is what we have ended up using in the encyclopedia, along with the a.k.a. vajretek.

So what broader lessons can we learn from this unusual and maybe eccentric-seeming exercise?

First, it illustrates the relative richness of Hungarian food culture; you are more likely to argue about what to call something in the national kitchen if the kitchen is pretty well stocked. Meanwhile, the lack of a consensus over our radish indicates that regional differences may be at work; no doubt back in the day when everyone was eating radishes like this, what they were called near the border with Austria was different from what they were called in the far reaches of Transylvania. And maybe still are.

On the other hand, the inability of some folks I grilled to even get as far as vajretek also suggests that the growing variety of fresh vegetables and other eatables available in Hungary is causing some younger Hungarians to lose touch with some of the food traditions of their elders. My guess is that if I'd popped the same quiz 20 or 40 years ago, everyone I asked would at least have known their own word for what would have been an important seasonal staple. This alone indicates the importance of cataloguing such traditional foods using things like our encyclopedia, lest Hungary's magnificent culinary heritage be lost.

Now, as for how to best eat a sörretek/vajretek, I'll leave that to you. But from my own experience you can't go wrong with a pinch of salt, maybe a thin slathering of butter, and a big glass of beer, preferably Hungarian.