The Wiener Schnitzel Love Book!. Severin Corti
SEVERIN CORTI
Two ways of describing the Wiener Schnitzel.
A culinary genius knows what makes the schnitzel an art form
PETER KUBELKA
The Wiener Schnitzel and its accompaniments.
Original recipes from Meissl & Schadn
JÜRGEN GSCHWENDTNER
Meissl & Schadn = Vienna & Schnitzel
When a dish has become the culinary landmark of a city, it is only right and proper that a celebratory temple should be dedicated to it. Many world-famous delicacies have already been honoured in this way. True carpaccio is only available at Harry’s Bar in Venice. The legendary “Petit Nice” in Marseilles is the original home of bouillabaisse, and in order to enjoy proper steak “Café de Paris” you will need to visit the establishment of the same name in Geneva.
Outstanding Viennese food can be savoured at many locations here in our city. However, one thing remained missing over a period of many years. The world capital of the Wiener Schnitzel lacked a single address to define this unique dish and to provide the devotion and awareness needed to raise it onto the pedestal it deserves to occupy. Meissl & Schadn on Schubertring is dedicating itself to this noble task.
Our restaurant bears a traditional name, and in a sense it represents a perfect reminder of everything which made Viennese cuisine great and famous in the first place. When the historic Meissl & Schadn Hotel and Restaurant opened in 1896, fin-de-siècle Vienna was effectively the centre of the world. Stefan Zweig, Gustav Mahler, Arthur Schnitzler and Sigmund Freud were the great spirits of the age. They all came to dine at Meissl & Schadn because it was a place where food was served up with quintessential elegance and ease. We are delighted that artists and creative people still hold Meissl & Schadn in high regard today. Some of them have helped to shape this book.
But let’s get back to the Wiener Schnitzel. At Meissl & Schadn, our schnitzels are not simply prepared in some corner of the kitchen. They take centre stage and a prime position at the very heart of the dining room, which provides a huge shop window out onto the Schubertring. We want everyone to see how conscientiously and neatly we work. Our aim is to present an approach that is adored by guests and gourmets alike. Since we took the decision to operate in this way, the background music in the restaurant has been determined by the rhythmic “bang, bang, bang!” of the schnitzel hammer. This is a sound which is enough to whet the appetite of anyone immediately, including those not from Vienna. Perhaps you will pick up a few hints on how to prepare schnitzel at home. This side effect is by no means unintended.
In reality, however, the Wiener Schnitzel is so much more than Vienna’s most familiar culinary offering. It has long since become an icon of Austrian identity and has served as a source of inspiration to poets and painters. For all of these reasons, it seemed high time to explore the essential nature of this specifically Austrian object of fascination and to produce a book dedicated to the Wiener Schnitzel which highlights all the facets of its splendour and allure. After all, some people maintain that the relationship between the Viennese and their schnitzel borders on the religious. Indeed, some of the articles in this book certainly seem to suggest this. You will have to decide the truth of the matter for yourself, but it’s definitely an amusing theory. If you wish to explore this question further, then I heartily recommend the “Ten Commandments of the Wiener Schnitzel”, which Wolfgang Kralicek lists on pages 48 ff!
I hope you enjoy reading the book. We are ready to meet all your needs should you be assailed by a ravenous hunger for schnitzel. If you fancy having a go yourself, then the original recipes used at Meissl & Schadn are set out in every detail on page 160.
Enjoy your meal!
Florian Weitzer
True Viennese have a genuinely religious relationship with their schnitzel – argues
SEVERIN CORTI
Schnitzel is a religion
When a priest celebrates the rite of transformation at Mass on a Sunday, he will hold up the bread and state: “This is my flesh.” Proper Viennese Catholics – and the overwhelming majority of the population has at least grown up in the faith – will certainly tend to view this transubstantiation with a lesser degree of wonder than the rest of humanity. After all, one of the essential aspects of the dish which defines their home city is a capacity to look like bread whilst actually being meat. The central tenet of Christianity becomes reality in the Wiener Schnitzel, at least from a culinary point of view. Turning meat into bread – or vice versa – is part of the daily business of life for a chef in Vienna.
There was, however, another reason why Catholicism’s numerous fasting rules and its inherent aversion to joys of the flesh made Vienna an ideal breeding ground for the emergence of a delicacy such as the schnitzel. The sins of the flesh come mercifully wrapped in a shell of egg and breadcrumb. They thus reward the palate of the connoisseur in a chaste and yet crispy manner. Meat is by no means the only thing to be baked in a concealed way within such a coating. In Vienna, fish, meat loaf, sausage, thick slabs of Emmental cheese, various kinds of vegetables including cauliflower, asparagus, mushrooms and sliced and blanched celeriac and even goulash and rissoles are all likely to find themselves rolled in breadcrumbs. The same goes for virtually anything else which does not move. This opened up plenty of opportunity for deliberate confusion during times when the fasting laws were still taken seriously. When a neighbour lustfully swallowed a golden brown parcel on a prescribed fasting day, who could really tell whether it contained meat or not?
The Wiener Schnitzel consists of veal, flour, egg and white breadcrumbs (plus the highly important addition of a large amount of cooking fat). It is a living legend of Austro-Hungarian cuisine and therefore also constitutes an object of religious debate in its own right. Quite a few Viennese even advocate that status of a separate religion should be conferred on the schnitzel. This notion would include blasphemy, schism and all other related elements. Simply to state that a Wiener Schnitzel must be made of veal and should exhibit a rich sheen when correctly breaded is an insufficient explanation for the rationale behind this particular biblical dance around the Golden Calf. Whereas the rest of the world indulges in schnitzel on two or three occasions a year only, an average inhabitant of Vienna is likely to do so twice or three times a week. The Viennese are thus able to deal with this Holy Sacrament in a highly familiar way. The Wiener Schnitzel is often derided in common turns of phrase used in everyday speech (“breadcrumb carpet”). But the power of faith becomes apparent once such defamation descends into blasphemy.
It is now high time to define what this object of adoration actually represents and to consider its orthodox preparation. The starting point is a piece of meat from the leg of a suckling calf. This needs to weigh around 140 grams and should not be sliced too thinly. It should also definitely