Taste Austria
A thin cutlet, a hot pan of fat, and a coffeehouse that takes cake as seriously as soup. Austrian cooking is Central European, not a generic Alpine fondue.
Wiener schnitzel is veal, pounded thin, flour-egg-breadcrumb, fried in plenty of fat so the coating balloons. A lemon wedge is the sauce. Pork schnitzel exists and should be named as pork. Tafelspitz is boiled beef with apple-horseradish; dumplings (Knödel) catch broth; Styria pours pumpkin-seed oil on salad. Tirol eats more mountain pork and dumplings; Vienna eats the cutlet and the cake. Apfelstrudel is stretched dough, not puff pastry pretending. Coffeehouse culture is meals of soup, egg dishes and cake as much as espresso. The schnitzel should rattle on the plate.
5 recipes · 1 cuisine
Essential dishes
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Further Austria listings, including shorter editorial recipes and imported methods.
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Regional cuisines
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Take the Austria food quizFood history
Habsburg court and bourgeois restaurant cooking sat on older rural pots of cabbage, pork and dumplings. Italian, Bohemian, Hungarian and Jewish Viennese kitchens all left traces — paprika next door, noodles, a sweet tooth, a respect for broth. The golden cutlet is related to Milanese frying; the Viennese version became a national plate in the nineteenth century. Anschluss and the Holocaust destroyed much of Jewish café culture; the remaining coffeehouses are not a complete museum. Home frying still uses breadcrumbs you grate yourself if you are paying attention.