The story of the strudel -- that most Viennese of desserts -- begins in the Arab world. Old German-language cookbooks often refer to strudel dough as "spanischer Teig" or Spanish dough, the authors of Süße Klassiker explain, as by way of the Islamic expansion into Spain, the technique of hand-stretching dough to the point of near-transparency was brought to Europe. Arab cooks -- who filled their pastries with rose jelly or orange syrup -- also introduced the technique to the Ottomans, giving birth to baklava. It was the Ottomans and their conquest of south-eastern Europe all the way up until Vienna that introduced "spanischer Teig" first to the Balkans, and from there, to Hungary and Vienna. (Strudel was supposedly part of the Ottoman army's rations due to its durability.) Indeed, Apfelstrudel specifically was born not in Vienna but western Hungary, where it is called almásrétes, migrating over Burgenland and Lower Austria to Vienna was a swift one.
The filled and rolled strudel has many variations, changing with the seasons: pear, rhubarb, Italian prune plum, grape, apricot, and cherry, as well as apple, semolina, and Topfen. Apfelstrudel has become the iconic, go-to strudel most readily identified with Vienna though it is not, in fact, the ur-strudel. The aforementioned fruit strudel variations begin appearing in Viennese cookbooks in the seventeenth century, but before that, in 1696, came the Milchrahmstrudel (sometimes called Millirahmstrudel), whose contemporary variant was developed in the nineteenth century at the guest house Zum roten Stadl by a cook named (supposedly) Milli. The basis for this strudel is stale bread -- either bread rolls or sliced white -- torn into pieces and soaked in a custard made from some combination of eggs, vanilla, sugar, and a dairy product, be it milk, cream, sour cream, Topfen, or a mixture thereof. Either rolled and baked like any other strudel or layered in a cast-iron pan and baked like a bread pudding, a Milch- or Millirahmstrudel is traditionally served with custard and finished with a dusting of icing sugar.
"Strudel, Sugar and Schlag" will return on June 8.
