FAMOUS SACHER TORTE
Vienna is heaven for cake lovers. After seeing the city's sights, there
is nothing better to do than sit in a coffee house and gorge on
delicious cakes. These great cakes, or tortes, are part of Austrian
folklore, and the recipes for them are closely-guarded secrets. They
were invented by brilliant and creative young chefs back in the mists of
time and some have even been the subject of court cases between rival
confectioners. Now, inevitably, the top Viennese cakes are even
available over the internet.
The date was 1832. In a royal
palace outside Vienna, the Prince had sent an edict to the kitchen for a
new dessert to be created in honour of some influential guests, and was
anticipating something special. The head chef was ill and the order
ended up with a 18-year-old pastry apprentice named Franz Sacher.
What the chef thought when he
returned is unknown, but Sacher kept his recipe a secret and named the
cake after himself. He went on to found his own famous hotel and cafe.
Today, hundreds of thousands of hungry customers, most of them tourists,
come each year to eat the same cake, baked to its original recipe.
Demel, founded in 1793, was one such
business. Demel himself, who was baker and confectioner for the
Emperor's palace, claimed that Sacher worked for him and that their
Sacher torte was the true original. A court of law decided otherwise,
and only Sacher may call the cake original. The Demel Sacher torte, as
it is now known, differs minutely from the Sacher, but both cakes are
made with secret blends of home-made chocolate.
One contender is the Imperial Hotel in
Vienna, whose Imperial torte is also sold online, and has a myth and a
chef to go with it. This time it is 1873, and Emperor Franz Josef is
about to inaugurate the Imperial and Royal Court Hotel. Junior cook
Xavier Loibner wishes he could bake a cake for his Emperor like all the
magnificent creations donated by the monarchy's top chefs.
Judging by the date, the milk
chocolate would also have been a first. According to "Chocolate: The
Definitive Guide", milk chocolate was not invented until 1875, when a
Swiss confectioner mixed chocolate with the condensed milk made by his
friend Henri Nestle. Whatever the origin of the story, it is said that
the Emperor noticed the unusually-shaped cake. He tried it, went back
for more, and so the legend of the Imperial torte was born. Now
Loibner's recipe, a secret in keeping with Viennese tradition, has
recently been rediscovered and, deep in the recesses of the hotel, a
dedicated production kitchen churns out thousands of these delicate
cakes for dispatch all over the world.
So the chocolate cake wars are set
to continue well into the twenty-first century. Only time will tell who
wins the next round of the battle. In the meantime there is plenty of
opportunity to test the market.
