Austrian cuisine
Austrian cuisine is a style of cuisine native to Austria and composed of influences from Central Europe and throughout the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Austrian cuisine is most often associated with Viennese cuisine, but there are significant regional variations.
, a traditional Austrian dish made with boneless meat thinned with a mallet, and fried with a coating of flour, egg, and breadcrumbs
Mealtimes
Breakfast is of the "continental" type, usually consisting of bread rolls with either jam or cold meats and cheese, accompanied by coffee, tea or juice. The midday meal was traditionally the main meal of the day, but in modern times as Austrians work longer hours further from home this is no longer the case. The main meal is now often taken in the evening.A mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack of a slice of bread topped with cheese or ham is referred to as a Jause; a more substantial version akin to a British "ploughman's lunch" is called a Brettljause after the wooden board on which it is traditionally served.
Popular dishes of Vienna
- Rindsuppe, a clear soup with golden colour
- Tafelspitz, beef boiled in broth, often served with apple and horseradish and chives sauce
- Gulasch, a hotpot similar to Hungarian pörkölt. Austrian goulash is often eaten with rolls, bread or dumplings
- Beuschel, a ragout containing lungs and heart
- Liptauer, a spicy cheese spread, eaten on a slice of bread
- Selchfleisch, meat that is smoked, then cooked, served with Sauerkraut and dumplings
- Powidl, a thick sweet jam made from plums
- Apfelstrudel, apple strudel
- Topfenstrudel, cream cheese strudel
- Millirahmstrudel, milk-cream strudel
- Palatschinken, pancakes similar to French Crêpes, filled with jam, sprinkled with sugar, etc. They are also served in savoury versions, e.g. with spinach and cheese.
- Kaiserschmarrn, soft, fluffy pancake ripped into bites and slightly roasted in a pan, served with compote, applesauce or stewed plums.
- Germknödel, a fluffy yeast dough dumpling filled with plum jam, garnished with melted butter and a mix of poppy seeds and powdered sugar, sometimes served with vanilla cream
- Marillenknödel, a dumpling stuffed with an apricot and covered with streusel and powdered sugar. The dough is made of potatoes or Topfen.
- Saftgulasch, also known as the Austrian or Wienese Goulash, is an Austrian twist of the traditional Hungarian dish. The characteristics of the Saftgulash is that it is prepared exclusively with lean beef and a large quantity of onions, at least two thirds of the quantity of meat used. No other vegetables are added and it must be slow cooked for at least 3 hours. The end result is a thick dark brown sauce with melting pieces of tender beef.
- Wurstsemmel, basically sliced bread rolls containing a slice of ham, or sausage, or also ham & cheese
Meat
Austrian butchers use a number of special cuts of meat, including Tafelspitz, and Fledermaus. Fledermaus is a cut of pork from the ham bone that resembles the winged animal. It is described as "very juicy, somewhat fatty, and crossed by tendons"; the latter fact makes it suitable for steaming, braising or frying after tenderization in a marinade.
Austrian cuisine has many different sausages, like Frankfurter, Krainer Wurst from Carniola, Debreziner, or Burenwurst, Blunzn made out of pig-blood and Grüne Würstl—green sausages. Green means raw in this context—the sausages are air dried and are consumed boiled. Bacon in Austria is called Speck, bacon can be smoked, raw, salted, spiced, etc. Bacon is used in many traditional recipes as a salty spice. Leberkäse is a loaf of corned beef, pork and bacon—it contains neither liver nor cheese despite the name. Vanillerostbraten is a garlicky beef dish.
Game
Austria has an old hunting tradition since there are many woods across the country. In the autumn season many restaurants in Austria traditionally offer game on their menu along with seasonal vegetables and fruits like pumpkins from Styria. Usual game are:- Deer : "Hirsch"
- Wild Boar: "Wildschwein"
- Roe Deer: "Reh"
- Fallow Deer: "Damhirsch"
- Brown hare: "Hase/Feldhase"
- Common pheasant: "Fasan"
- Duck: "Ente"
- Grey partridge: "Rebhuhn"
Sweets
Cakes
Austrian cakes and pastries are a well-known feature of its cuisine. Perhaps the most famous is the Sachertorte, a chocolate cake with apricot jam filling, traditionally eaten with whipped cream. Among the cakes with the longest tradition is the Linzer torte. Other favourites include the caramel-flavoured Dobostorte and the delicately layered Esterhazy Torte, named in honour of Prince Esterházy, as well as a number of cakes made with fresh fruit and cream. Punschkrapfen is a classical Austrian pastry, a cake filled with cake crumbs, nougat chocolate, apricot jam and then soaked with rum. Tirolerkuchen is a hazelnut and chocolate coffee cake.These cakes are typically complex and difficult to make. They can be eaten at a café or bought by the slice from a bakery. A "Konditorei" is a specialist cake-maker, and the designations "Café-Konditorei" and "Bäckerei-Konditorei" are common indicators that the café or bakery in question specialises in this field.
Desserts
Austrian desserts are usually slightly less complicated than the elaborate cakes described above. The most famous of these is the Apfelstrudel, layers of thin pastry surrounding a filling of apple, usually with cinnamon and raisins. Other strudels are also popular, such as those filled with sweetened curd cheese called Topfen, sour cherry, sweet cherry and poppy seed strudel.Another favourite is Kaiserschmarr'n, a rich fluffy sweet thick pancake made with raisins and other fruits, broken into pieces and served with a fruit compote for dipping, while a speciality of Salzburg is the meringue-like "Salzburger Nocken". The Danish pastry is said to originate from Vienna and in Denmark is called wienerbrød. The Danish pastry uses a dough in the classic cuisine referred to as "Viennese Dough", made of thin layers of butter and flour dough, imported to Denmark by Austrian bakers hired during a strike among the workers in Danish bakeries in 1850.
Drinks
Coffee
Austria is credited in popular legend with introducing coffee to Europe after bags of coffee beans were left behind by the retreating Turkish army after the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Although the first coffeehouses had appeared in Europe some years earlier, the Viennese café tradition became an important part of the city's identity.Coffee is served in a variety of styles, particularly in the Viennese cafés. An Austrian Mokka or kleiner Schwarzer is similar to espresso, but is extracted more slowly. Other styles are prepared from the Mokka:
- großer Schwarzer – a double Mokka
- kleiner Brauner or großer Brauner – single or double Mokka plus milk
- Verlängerter – "lengthened" Mokka with more water plus milk
- Melange – half Mokka, half heated milk, often topped with foamed milk
- Franziskaner – Melange topped with whipped cream and foamed milk
- Kapuziner – kleiner Schwarzer plus whipped cream
- Einspänner – großer Schwarzer topped with whipped cream
- Wiener Eiskaffee – iced Mokka with vanilla ice cream, topped with whipped cream
Traditionally, coffee is served with a glass of still water.
Drinking coffee together is an important social activity in Austrian culture. It is quite common for Austrians to invite friends or neighbours over for coffee and cake. This routine activity can be compared to the British afternoon tea tradition. It is also very common to go to a coffeehouse while dating.
Hot chocolate
Viennese hot chocolate is very rich, containing heavy cream in addition to chocolate, and sometimes thickened further with egg yolk.Soft drinks
is an Austrian soft drink based on mountain herbs and with a flavour reminiscent of elderflower beverages. It is considered the "national drink of Austria", and is popularly used as a mixer with white wine or water. While Red Bull is popular all across the West, the energy drink company started in Austria. The headquarters of the Red Bull company are located at Fuschl near Salzburg.Beer
is generally sold in the following sizes: 0.2 litre, 0.33 litre and 0.5 litre. At festivals one litre Maß and two litre Doppelmaß in the Bavarian style are also sometimes dispensed. The most popular types of beer are pale lager, naturally cloudy Zwicklbier, and wheat beer. At holidays like Christmas and Easter bock beer is also available.Austrian beers are typically in the pale lager style, with the exceptions noted above. A dark amber "Vienna Style" lager was pioneered in the city during the 19th century but is no longer common there.
Wine
is principally cultivated in the east of Austria. The most important wine-producing areas are in Lower Austria, Burgenland, Styria, and Vienna. The Grüner Veltliner grape provides some of Austria's most notable white wines; Zweigelt is the most widely planted red wine grape. Southern Burgenland is a region that mainly grows red grapes; the "Seewinkel" area, east of the Neusiedler See in Burgenland's north, has more mixed wine cultures and is famous for its sweet wines. Wine is even grown within the city limits of Vienna – the only European capital where this is true – and some is even produced under the auspices of the city council.Young wine is called Heuriger and gives its name to inns in Vienna and its surroundings, which serve Heuriger wine along with food. In Styria, Carinthia and Burgenland, the Heuriger inns are known as Buschenschanken.
Other alcoholic drinks
In Upper Austria, Burgenland, Lower Austria, Styria and Carinthia, Most, the fresh juice of grapes or apples is produced, while Sturm, a semi-fermented grape juice is drunk after the grape harvest. Most and Sturm are pre-stages of wine.At the close of a meal, sometimes schnaps, typically of up to 60% alcohol, is drunk. In Austria schnaps is made from a variety of fruits, for example apricots, rowanberries, gentian roots, various herbs and even flowers. The produce of small private schnaps distilleries, of which there are around 20,000 in Austria, is known as Selberbrennter or Hausbrand.
Snack food
For food consumed in between meals there are many types of open sandwiches called "belegte Brote", or different kinds of sausage with mustard, ketchup and bread, as well as sliced sausage, Leberkäse rolls or Schnitzelsemmeln.es in Vienna, with a Pfiff-size beer
Traditionally you can get a Wurstsemmel at a butcher or at the delicatessen counter in a supermarket.
There are also other common yet informal delicacies that are typical of Austrian food. For example, the Bosna or Bosner, which is an integral part of the menu at Austria's typical fast-food joint, the sausage stand. Most Austrian sausages contain pork.