Bagel, beigel, Beugel. Three words: one English, one Yiddish, one German. They all share the same root: the old-/middle-German words 'pouc' or 'bouc,' which denote a ring. From 'pouc' or 'bouc' we get Beugel, which then becomes bagel/beigel. At first I thought these two items might somehow be related, yet insofar as I can tell, the bagel -- which is, of course, a hand-formed, part-boiled, part-baked yeast roll which is wonderfully chewy -- and the Viennese Beugel -- a kinked, sweet yeast pastry, shaped rather like a horseshoe, filled with either poppy seeds or walnuts -- have nothing to do with other, culinary-speaking. The sweet Beugel seems to have come first in the year 1403, while in 1610, the first known mention of the bagel was recorded in Krakow. (There persists a myth that a Jewish baker in Vienna conceived of either the bagel/beigel or the Beugel as a thank-you for the Polish king Jan Sobieski to mark his decisive role in ending the Turkish occupation of the Habsburgs' capital, but this would seem to be just that -- legend.)
The way to tell a Nussbeugel (nuts) from a Mohnbeugel (poppy seeds) at the bakers is by the shape. Traditionally, the Mohnbeugel should be V-shaped, with a pronounced kink in the middle, like in the picture above, while a Nussbeugel should appear rounder, more like the letter C. I prefer the Nussbeugel myself, and for me, it's important that a Nussbeugel predominately tastes of walnut. Not raisins, not lemon zest, nor any other ingredients ostensibly designed to make the flavour profile more complex. Simply, nuts. And to this end, I consider those sold in Anker, one of Vienna's larger bakery chains, to be the best Nussbeugeln in the city.
