This week’s culinary adventure landed us in Austria. In the short amount of time that we were stationed in Germany with the Army, we never made it down to Austria. Being a huge fan of The Sound of Music, I had desperately wanted to go, but the time just wasn’t found for that in-person adventure. So I had to research their famous dishes and desserts via the interwebs.
What I found fascinating while researching authentic Austrian food was how closely their cuisine relates to Hungary, instead of Germany as I had thought. They were allies before/during WWI and that relationship brought their food together as well. They have a national goulasch dish and baked goods that closely resemble Hungarian goods.
We chose to make Austrian kaisersemmel (kaiser rolls), wiener schnitzel, pumpkin soup, and the famous Sacher Torte. I found a cool history of the Veinna rolls, as well as the history of the famous Sacher Torte and included that below.
To get the recipes and websites on which they were found, scroll down to the bottom of the post.
Fun History of the Kaisersemmel
The Kaiser Roll is an old recipe that comes to us from the Austrian Empire of the 18th century. Read on to learn more about the key ingredients you’ll need, and the preparation required to bake your own delicious “Vienna rolls!”
The Kaiser roll originated in Austria in the 18th century. In German, it’s known as a Kaisersemmel or a Vienna roll – Wiener Kaisersemmel. If made by hand, the roll has been called a Handseemmel in German or Kajzerca in Slovene.
Historically, bakers crafted the Kaiser roll from white flour, yeast, malt, water, and salt. As a traditional Austrian food, this recipe has been approved by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in Austria as part of the national cuisine.
The suffix “Semmel” comes from the Latin “simila,” meaning wheat flour. The German state of Bavaria and in other parts of Austria, and roll may be called a Semmel. In Northern Germany, it would be known as a Brötchen, while in Baden-Württemberg it would be called a Weck.
The first recognizable form of a Kaiser roll was detailed in a painting by Martin van Maytens of a court banquet of Maria Theresa in 1760. In the art (you can view a digital upload if it here), the viewer can see rolls carefully laid out on a white tablecloth that look remarkably similar to the recent Kaiser roll.
The folklore around the role attributes it to Emperor (Kaiser in German) Franz Joseph I of Austria. Franz Joseph, I was born in 1830 and reigned from 1848 to 1916. In fact, the price of these bread rolls was fixed by the government until 1789, during which a delegation of bakers lobbied Emperor Joseph II to deregulate the prices of these staple foods.
History found at Pocket Change Gourmet
Fun History of the Sacher Torte
The world’s most famous cake, the Original Sacher-Torte, is the consequence of several lucky twists of fate. The first was in 1832, when the Austrian State Chancellor, Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, tasked his kitchen staff with concocting an extraordinary dessert to impress his special guests. As fortune had it, the chef had fallen ill that evening, leaving the apprentice chef, the then-16-year-old Franz Sacher, to perform this culinary magic trick. Metternich’s parting words to the talented teenager: “I hope you won’t disgrace me tonight.”
Franz Sacher seized the moment and conjured up the confection of a lifetime, the chocolate cake that would go down in history as the ne plus ultra of desserts: the Original Sacher-Torte. Disgrace, in any case, was not on the menu that evening. The cake soon gained a cult following, and was deemed “presentable at court”. From then on, it was a favorite at the imperial court and soon went on to win the hearts (and palates) of the world.
History found at The Original Sacher Torte