If it wasn't for 'vanilla' being the adjective for all things bland and boring, then for many people 'paprika' might mean the same. Compared to all the other spices paprika seems pretty unremarkable, useful for its colour but otherwise a bit of a fuss about nothing.

There are several million Hungarians who might disagree though as their paprika is renowned as being the very highest quality, and dishes like goulash and paprika chicken are famous around the world. I went to the main growing regions of Szeged and Kalocsa in southern Hungary to find out what the big deal is.

Gypsy musicians in a restaurant - a classic sound of Hungary!

All peppers, capsicums, chillies etc originate from central and south  America and it was Columbus who bought them back to Europe with him in the mistaken belief they were related to Indian black pepper (hence the confusion ever since about chilli peppers and black pepper). In fact there's no such thing as a single ''paprika pepper' just like there's no such thing as a single 'chilli pepper', only various different capsicums that have been bred over the centuries to have that distinctive mild, sweet taste.

This new plant (capsicum annum) from the New World turned out to be very easy to grow and produced good crops so it spread from Spain to North Africa and the Middle East, and was eventually introduced to Hungary by the Ottoman Turks who conquered the country in 1526. Over time the Hungarians discovered it grew best in the flat sandy soil around Szeged in the far south of the country where it's irrigated by the river Tisza and bathed in long hours of hot summer sunshine .

I had an image in my head of thousands of strings of colourful paprika strings hanging from farmers cottages but it seems like nobody bothers anymore - they're all stuffed into netting sacks like huge sausages to dry in the sun.

The early peppers the farmers grew were pretty hot and inconsistent because the seeds and veins (where all the heat is) were removed by hand, making it impossible to be sure exactly how hot the resulting paprika powder would be. Eventually in 1850  some farmers in Kalocsa produced a crop of very mild peppers that proved more popular to local tastes and meant the end product would be more consistent.

The other major innovation the Hungarians made was the development of the grinding process to produce a fine enough powder that dissolved in your cooking. In central and south America where the peppers originated from, people tend to soak and puree whole dried peppers or crush them up to use as flakes. If you've tried doing this at home you'll know that crushing up dried peppers in a mortar and pestle isn't easy but in the late 19th century the Hungarians developed a clever method of producing a very fine powder with consistent levels of heat and colour (much harder than it sounds!).

Nowadays the fresh peppers are sliced then dried quickly in a low oven before being steam sterilised, sieved, crushed, sieved, crushed, ground, sieved, reground, sieved and eventually mixed with a tiny splash of water to cool and help preserve the colour and flavour.

This process has  been refined over the centuries and even now Chinese and African paprika growers send their dried peppers to be ground in Hungary because with all the natural sugars present in the dried pepper it's very hard to produce a fine powder without overheating it and losing the colour.

Despite all this paprika-based innovation the truth is that most Hungarian cooking is unbelievably plain, if you were being polite you might call it 'rustic'. Locals put away monumental portions of fried meat or fish with mountains of potatoes or dumplings which might be ideal if you spend your days working in a field on the windswept Great Plain but you can see why in the last century so many people came round to the idea that their food could with a little extra seasoning. 

Being a land-locked country away from the ancient trade routes meant that paprika was probably the only seasoning in the kitchen apart from salt and judging from the supermarket shelves now it probably still is. I guess this accounts for the fact that such huge quantities are used which is very unusual for a single spice - in dishes like goulash using a tablespoon or more per person isn't unusual.

Szeged is famous for its fish soup made with carp and massive amounts of sweet paprika ( plus a little hot paprika).  It's a bit like a Hungarian bouillabaisse, deliciously rich in colour and flavour from all the paprika. The green sliced peppers on the side are fresh hot paprika peppers that have a surprising kick!

Over time people noticed that the farmers around Szeged were unusually healthy and had long life expectancies which considering their diet was pretty much nothing but bread, bacon and paprika led to investigations into the health benefits of this bright red seasoning (it probably wouldn't have taken a genius to see their good health wasn't due to the first two). Paprika was discovered to be useful for circulation, reducing inflammation and cholesterol but in 1937 Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, a professor at the university of Szeged identified vitamin C in paprika and won a Nobel prize for his efforts (It turned out that paprika contains 5 times as much vitamin C as lemon). Being the remedy for scurvy and its importance in boosting the immune system made the discovery of vitaminC an extremely important achievement in medical science and Albert is a pretty big deal in Szeged -there's a street, a square and a museum named after him.

Although Paprika isn't indigenous to Hungary and the Hungarians aren't solely responsible for using paprika in cooking, they do still produce the very finest quality and the way they use it is really unique. Good paprika gives the most extraordinarily rich colour and deep concentrated sweet flavour that's incredibly appetising. The simplest stew, soup or sauce all benefit from a really generous addition of paprika (it's one of the few spices where the more you add the better it is), and if you use it well you won't need any stock cubes, tomato paste etc etc to add depth of flavour.

Here's a few ideas to get the best out of your paprika:

• Paprika really likes oil (the fatty molecules don't dissolve in water) so when you add it to your cooking you'll get the best colour and flavour if you heat it gently in oil - don't fry too hard as it burns and turns bitter
• Add a good tbsp of paprika to any batters, breadcrumbs or coatings for a great colour and depth of flavour
• Make a simple lecsoby gently frying lots of sliced bell peppers with onion and garlic. Add at least a couple of tbsp of paprika then cover and leave to soften and stew together for an hour. Serve with potatoes or bread for a simple lunch.
• Porkoltis a stew much like we imagine goulashto be (which is actually a soup) - basically all you need to do is stew together diced meat, sliced onion, maybe a little garlic and smoked bacon together with 1tbsp paprika per person. Cover tightly (don't add any liquid) and leave to cook for a couple of hours......