The first food mentioned in Maria’s list of favourite things in The Sound of Music and a mainstay of menus across Vienna: the Apfelstrudel or apple strudel.
- A classic Viennese dish
- Uses its own kind of pastry
- Numerous other kinds of strudel exist
- Book a culinary experience* in Vienna
- See also:
Apfelstrudel!
(A piece of apple strudel. Note the crisp flaky pastry and the dusting of icing sugar)
Open up practically any menu in a Viennese coffee house or restaurant, and Apfelstrudel (apple strudel) lurks somewhere within. Maybe suggested as an accompaniment for your coffee. Maybe tempting you as a dessert with a dollop of whipped cream to seal the deal.
You probably know the dish already, as it’s migrated across the world.
In Vienna, apple strudel generally consists of baked rolled pastry with a filling consisting largely of (and this will shock you) cooking apples.
However, the ingredients typically also include sultanas, roasted breadcrumbs, sugar, and cinnamon.
This combination along with apple varieties that tend to the sour side give the strudel its distinctive flavour.
Traditionally, Apfelstrudel uses its own extremely thin pastry, which can be quite challenging to make, master and manipulate.
Many home bakers (well, me at least) tend to buy ready-to-use prepacked strudel pastry. Puff pastry makes a decent option, too, particularly for alternative strudel varieties: see below.
The history
(The Gerstner café-restaurant at Schönbrunn palace makes a great strudel. The Vienna Pass includes a strudel show at the location)
The German word strudel means the swirls, eddies and whirlpools you get in water. The term finds metaphorical application, and its use to describe this apple-based delight stems from the appearance of the rolled up form when sliced.
Although closely associated with Austria and Vienna in particular, the strudel joins a list of classic Austrian dishes actually adopted and adapted from elsewhere (see, for example, the Schnitzel).
According to ministerial sources, strudel pastry originated in North Africa. But we can largely thank imperial conflicts for bringing it to Vienna.
The Ottomans brought the pastry with them on their military forays into Habsburg territories. And all promising novelties in Habsburg territories inevitably found their way to Vienna for fine tuning to local tastes.
Not just apples
(Close up of the pastry)
Though English-speakers associate the term strudel with the apple strudel, our local cuisine has other varieties in both sweet and savoury form.
Apfelstrudel is the most famous example, and the one normally meant when you simply ask for strudel. But, for example, you might enjoy a main course of Spinatstrudel (with a spinach filling)
At home, we regularly eat Gemüsestrudel (with a broader vegetable filling) along with a sour cream sauce flavoured with chives.
If any meat eaters feel left out, well, you can also enjoy a Fleischstrudel (usually with a mincemeat filling).
And on the sweeter side of life…Topfenstrudel (quark filling) and Mohnstrudel (poppy seed filling) might, for example, join Apfelstrudel on the dessert menu.
For more desserts and pastries popular in Vienna, try this list.