Yes, reader Cole, it seems that they did. Apples were abundant in Hungary at the time of the Turkish invasion, and it’s not unlikely that thin Turkish doughs and apples were first combined in that area…though in truth it’s hard to know. Here I should point out that while apple strudel is popular in Hungary, […]

So how then did the strudel and/or filo dough handoff happen between southern and northern Europe? As I mentioned below, the southern (Balkan) portion was under the control of Empire A, the Ottomans, while the northern portion was under the control of Empire B, the Austro-Hungarians. To say the two didn’t care much for each other is putting it mildly. They were bitter enemies. A not implausible explanation is that the transfer took place via the region now known as Hungary.

To explain why we need to flash back a little further in history to a time when Hungary itself was a mighty empire, way back in the Middle Ages when a federation of Magyar tribes controlled pretty much everything from what is now the Czech Republic and southern Poland all the way down through the Balkans to the borders of Greece and Turkey. Those were the glory days of Hungary, and they lasted from about 900 A.D to about 1500 A.D..

Turkey. Oh sure, we Americans think of it as a German thing. Some of us might be a bit more precise and call it Austrian instead. The reason for that is because the best known strudel in America is apple strudel, and that’s something of a Central European specialty.

Venture outside German-speaking Europe however and you find strudels of many other types. Looking south and east, the Hungarians have them, so do the Slovenians, Croats, Serbs, Albanians, Bulgarians, the list goes on. What do all these locales have in common? They were once (in whole or in part) provinces of the Ottoman Empire, the seat of which was a little further south and east, in Istanbul (not Constantinople), Turkey.

I’ve brushed this classic aside for too many autumns. This year I resolved to get after it early, and so I shall. Now is the time to strike since I’ve been so heavily into ultra-thin doughs this year. Austria, here we come!

Get much into the South and you find that many city folk, even those of quite modest means, own their own formalwear. Having a tux in the closet (even a cheap one like mine) can be important in a place like Louisville. It’s evidence that, unwashed heathen that you are, you can still don the armor of the civilized and go get polluted in style.

I took this post down for the evening because I accidentally created some internecine warfare between a couple of my food science sources and I needed a little time to get my facts straight. Reader Bronwyn (quite helpfully I might add) challenged my early contention that hot syrup doesn’t cook egg whites in any meaningful way. Having had a little past experience taking meringue temperatures, I was sure that there was no real cooking going on. This set off a little debate on what exactly was meant by the term “cooking”, and things got confusing quickly. But anyway, here’s Michael’s original question:

I understand that when you add sugar syrup to egg whites to make Italian Merengue it cooks the whites a bit making it more stable than adding plain sugar. I’m curious if the purpose is the same when adding sugar syrup instead of plain sugar to yolks. I made a recipe for a “chocolate roll” which is to add a “light” sugar syrup to yolks and beat until light and fluffy. Then add in melted chocolate with a bit of coffee. Finally fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Then bake and then fill the roll with whipped cream. Why would the recipe call for sugar syrup to [be beaten into] the yolks instead of plain sugar ?

I’m a road weary fellow this evening, but I didn’t want to let the day go by without drawing at least a little attention to my hero Norman Borlaug, who died three years ago today. We humans are all the poorer for his passing. Read more about him here.

Traveling again. Back soon with more of the usual nonsense.