Papanași

Papanași is a Romanian sweet made from a dough of white cheese mixed with eggs and flour. There are fried and boiled versions, and both are eaten while warm. For fried papanași, a thick ring of dough and a small ball of dough are fried separately, stacked, topped with cream and jam and arranged in a showy presentation. Boiled papanași are made by shaping the cheese dough into dumplings and coating them in toasty breadcrumbs.

The moisture in the cheese determines how soft the dough is

The fried dough uses brânză de vaci, a fresh cheese made from cow’s milk. The whey is drained off well before eggs and wheat flour are mixed in, and the dough is flavored with vanilla, lemon zest, cinnamon and the like. Some recipes also add baking powder.

The amount of flour added varies with the moisture in the cheese, the size of the eggs and the absorbency of the flour. The cheese is drained well first so that the dough does not become stiff from adding more and more flour. In the method of the food writer Laura Laurențiu, the dough is brought together just soft enough to shape, and kneading stops once the ingredients have combined. Laura does not knead it until it develops a strong, bread-like elasticity.

Frying large and small pieces of dough, and adding cream and jam

The dough is divided into larger and smaller pieces. The larger pieces are rolled into balls and flattened, and the hole in the center is widened with a finger to form a ring. The smaller pieces are rolled into balls, and each is fried separately. Laura explains that opening a hole in the center helps the heat reach the inside. They are fried a few at a time while adjusting the heat so that the surface alone does not brown too darkly. There is also a method in which, once they are well browned, they are put in the oven briefly to cook them through.

The fried dough is drained of oil, the small round fritter is placed on top of the ring, and cream and jam are added while it is still warm. Sour cherry, blueberry, strawberry and other jams are used. Keeping the sugar in the dough modest brings out the flavor of the cheese and the sweetness and tartness of the fruit. Some are finished with powdered sugar or a sauce.

Besides cream with a tang from fermentation, unfermented cream, called “sweet cream” in Romanian, is also used. The “sweet” in this name does not mean that sugar has been added. Some recipes do add sugar to the cream, and in another of Laura’s recipes (ingredient proportions and method), powdered sugar is mixed into fermented cream with at least 25% fat and served alongside.

The ring is broken apart, and the cream and jam are eaten together with the dough. Besides the presentation that stacks large and small pieces, there is also a form in which only small balls of dough are fried and served arranged on a plate.

Papanași served at a restaurant in Sinaia. A ring-shaped fritter and a small round fritter are accompanied by white cream and fruit. Photo: Toniher, 2014-01-25, Sinaia, Romania. Original image / CC BY-SA 3.0. Downscaled version from the source; no further processing.

Coating boiled dumplings with toasted breadcrumbs

Dough for boiling may be made with semolina or with wheat flour. In one example using semolina, cheese, eggs and semolina are mixed and left to rest so that the semolina absorbs moisture. The dough is shaped into dumplings with wet hands and cooked in gently simmering water, taking care that they do not fall apart.

The dumplings are coated with breadcrumbs toasted in butter until golden, with sugar added. The boiled dumplings are drained, put into the pan of breadcrumbs and coated by shaking the pan or a similar method. They are eaten with sugar, jam or a fruit sauce. Whereas in fried papanași the surface of the dough itself becomes toasty, the soft boiled dumplings are a sweet in which the toastiness of the toasted breadcrumbs is enjoyed. The breadcrumb coating also has a different texture from the surface of fried dough.

The food writer Corina Ureche describes a household example using wheat flour. Corina combines urdă, a cheese made from whey, with wheat flour. Without adding too much flour, the slightly sticky dough is rolled into small balls, cooked in gently simmering water and coated with breadcrumbs. Cheese made by curdling milk and cheese that reuses whey also differ in how they hold moisture and in how the flour needs to be adjusted. Corina recalls that her grandmother and mother made boiled papanași.

The name, and two cooking methods recorded in dictionaries

Papanași is a plural form; the word for a single piece is papanaș. The name has been associated with “papă,” a children’s word for food.

Older dictionaries describe it as a dish made with cheese, without limiting it to today’s presentation of a ring and a small fritter stacked and topped with jam. A 1929 dictionary labels it a word from the Moldavia region and lists large dumplings made with fresh cheese, eggs and wheat flour. A 1939 dictionary records it as a word from the Muntenia and Moldavia regions, describing a dish of cheese and eggs formed together. This entry gives no dimensions, so it cannot be determined that the pieces were small enough to be called “small lumps of cheese.”

The 1955–1957 dictionary of the literary language includes small, flat pieces of dough made with wheat flour or semolina, along with both a method of frying them in a frying pan and a method of boiling them. The 2009 edition of a dictionary also lists both cooking methods. This shows that boiled papanași were also on record by the mid-20th century at the latest.

Glossary