Whether it be Zimtsterne, Vanillekipferln, or this week's subject, Linzer Augen, the baking and distribution, purchase and consumption of rich, delicately-made cookies is an important part of the Advent season and Viennese Christmas experience. The tradition was supposedly born in monasteries in the Middle Ages, when monks would bake cookies to mark Jesus' birth, a ritual whose origin coincided with the introduction of exotic spices like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and cardamom to the European mainland, flavours which over centuries became strongly associated with the holiday season by way of sweets like Lebkuchen and Spekulatius biscuits. In Vienna, Christmas cookies exploded in popularity first during the Biedermeier period in the mid-nineteenth century and then again during the Belle Époque. Aside from the aforementioned spices, Christmas cookies are distinguished from other biscuits for using richer doughs such as buttery shortbread and Lebkuchen dough enriched with honey.
The Linzer Auge, suffice it to say, was not born in Vienna, and yet somehow no assortment or selection of Christmas cookies is complete without one. This sandwich cookie traditionally filled with apricot marmalade was, as the name suggests, born in the city of Linz and is a relative of the famous Linzer Torte. The essential difference between the two is that while the cookies are made with what is essentially a plain shortbread maybe flavoured with vanilla or lemon, the torte contains a lot of ground nuts and a hint of cinnamon and clove. (To add: the torte is glued together with redcurrant and not apricot or raspberry jam.) The first written mention of Linzer Torte dates back to a bill for catering services from 1619 that lists something called "Mandl Dortten" or almond torte, while the first recorded recipe for something explicitly called "Lintzer Dorte" comes from the Neue Saltz-burgische Koch-Buch, published in 1718. The recipe has slowly evolved: in the nineteenth century, more-or-less all Linzer Torten were made with ground almonds; at the turn of the twentieth century, the almonds began to be cut with ground hazelnuts.
