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Few desserts are as bound to a city as apple strudel is to Vienna. The layered pastry is often traced to the Ottoman world, whose thin doughs traveled across the Habsburg lands, and the oldest known handwritten strudel recipe, from 1696, is kept in the Vienna City Library. Over three centuries the Viennese made it their own.

Today Apfelstrudel is the anchor of every coffeehouse menu, served warm with whipped cream or vanilla sauce alongside a Melange. The test of a great one is the pastry: stretched so thin, the old saying goes, that you could read a love letter through it.

Where to taste it in Vienna

Order it in one of the grand coffeehouses of the Ringstrasse, where lingering for hours is expected. At Café Residenz in the grounds of Schönbrunn Palace you can watch it being made. The strudel tradition runs through central Europe; try it in Prague too, and as the season turns, at Europe’s best Christmas markets.

A shortcut worth taking

Hand-stretched strudel dough is a weekend project. Good phyllo pastry, brushed generously with butter, gives a beautiful result and is what we use here. The buttered breadcrumbs are essential: they absorb the apple juices and keep the pastry crisp.

Ingredients

Serves 8.

For the filling

• 1/3 cup (50 g) raisins, soaked in 2 tbsp dark rum
• 2 lb (900 g) tart apples such as Granny Smith or Braeburn, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup (100 g) sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• Zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1/3 cup (40 g) chopped walnuts (optional)

For the crumbs and pastry

• 3/4 cup (60 g) fine dry breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup (115 g) unsalted butter, melted, divided
• 10 sheets phyllo pastry, thawed
• Confectioners’ sugar, to dust

Method

1. Toast the crumbs. Fry the breadcrumbs in 3 tablespoons of the butter until golden. Cool.
2. Make the filling. Toss the apples with the sugar, cinnamon, lemon, raisins and walnuts.
3. Layer the pastry. Heat the oven to 375°F. On a clean tea towel, lay a sheet of phyllo, brush it with butter and repeat until all ten sheets are stacked.
4. Fill. Scatter the breadcrumbs over the lower two-thirds of the pastry, leaving a border. Pile the apples on top of the crumbs.
5. Roll. Fold in the short sides, then use the towel to roll the strudel up from the long side. Lift it seam side down onto a lined baking sheet and brush with butter.
6. Bake. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, brushing once more with butter halfway, until deep golden and crisp. Cool for 15 minutes.

How to serve it

Warm, dusted with confectioners’ sugar, with softly whipped cream or vanilla sauce, as in Vienna.

What to pour

Coffee, in the Viennese manner, or a glass of Austrian Beerenauslese or a late-harvest Grüner Veltliner if you want something sweet.

Make a menu of it

For another apple dessert, try our tarte tatin, or bake our apple cider doughnuts for the morning after. Every fall recipe is At the Table.

Photo: Burkhard Mücke, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0