My Hungarian colleagues love half-and-half. I guess it’s an only-in-America thing. A few weeks ago, one visiting co-worker asked me what it was.

“Half milk, half cream,” I said.

“Oh, that’s what I thought. I put it on my cereal and was wondering why it tasted so good,” he laughed.

Then, tonight, a different Hungarian colleague made coffee for his house guest. “Wait, I know how to make this coffee better,” he smiled. With the kind of excitement Charlie Bucket might have reserved for his birthday bar of Willy Wonka chocolate, he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a thin carton of organic half-and-half.

Is half-and-half one of our national cuisine’s overlooked treasures?

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I also have to tell you what happened on our trip to Budapest. La Doug, starving, ducked out of the bike rental shop we were in to go get a snack at a nearby shop. He came back and dug into what he thought was a small container of yogurt. Puzzled by its taste, he asked the lady at the counter what tejföl was.

“Oh, that’s sour cream.”

“No wonder the guy gave me a funny look when I asked him for a spoon,” he mused.