Ch. 1: Cones that Unroll in the Night

As of right now? Everything I know about Viennese pastry, I learned from The Sound of Music.

“More strudel, Herr Detweiler?”

Uncle Max, that “very charming sponge,” strolls onto the Von Trapps’ terrace and encounters a maid holding a tray of strudel. The scene is so yellow with sunshine that I’ve always thought the strudel must be apricot-flavoured, made with jam and particularly golden pastry.

“How many have I had?”

“Two!”

“Make it an uneven three.”

How delicious.

Not only is he wearing a grey suit and lounging on a terrace, but the man has actually lost count of the number of apricot strudels he’s eaten. No wonder I associate Viennese pastry with luxury.

But according to Lilly Joss Reich, it’s not just professionals who make beautiful pastry! (Although she does recommend a place called Demel's - "perhaps the world's greatest institution devoted to the enjoyment of pastry" (p. 10) - if you don't believe her).

Reich was brought up on homemade pastries, and in 1970 she published an expanded take on her mother’s recipe collection called The Viennese Pastry Cookbook.

I found my copy of the VPC in my favourite used bookstore on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. Compellingly, besides being passed on through four generations, the recipes in the VPC also survived the Nazi occupation of France. Left in a safe-deposit box in Paris just before the city fell, Reich's mother's notebooks were passed over because they were "considered of no importance” (p. 14).

I feel lucky to have the book at all!