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For many people, paprikash means winter. After all, it's a dish fit for cold, gray days: A belly-warming mix of meat and spices, it's the perfect cure for the doldrums of late January.

For Merelyn Chalmers, though, the classic Hungarian casserole recalls someone far dearer: her mother, Yolanda. A survivor of Auschwitz, Yolanda had rebuilt her life in Perth, Australia, after the war. "My mum was Hungarian," Chalmers explains. "We ate paprikash probably five nights a week. This was something that she just threw together when I wasn't feeling well."

Merelyn and her mother both considered it a "nothing special" dish, one that was just thrown together in a pressure cooker. But when Merelyn moved to Sydney many years later, she was surprised to learn it was also a favorite among other daughters of Hungarian women. "We have quite a large Hungarian population, and they had all grown up on the same dish."

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