Sachertorte

Sachertorte in the Hotel Sacher in Vienna

The Sachertorte is a chocolate cake made from Sachermasse with apricot jam and chocolate icing . It is considered a specialty of Viennese cuisine and is entered in the register of traditional foods as this .

description

The cake consists of a Sacher mass . The term "Sachertorte" is not a registered trademark and is used by numerous confectioners and in recipe collections. For this reason, there is no single binding recipe, but different recipes are in circulation. For products with the name Sachertorte or similar (e.g. Nuss-Sacher ) different criteria apply in Austria and Germany:

The Austrian food book does not contain any requirements for Sachertorte as such, but describes more general confectionery products that are placed on the market with a reference to “Sacher”. Accordingly, these consist of Sachermasse, which must contain flour, butter or butter fat / concentrated butter, eggs, sugar and chocolate, whereby the proportions of the ingredients are not specified, only the chocolate content must be at least 15%, the chocolate must contain at least 35% cocoa solids.

A fruit filling or apricot is not necessary, but only apricot jam may be used. As a coating, cocoa-containing sugar icing and chocolate are permitted, but not cocoa-containing fat icing.

The German food book requires a fruit filling with at least 45% apricot content for Sachertorte ( extra apricot jam is an option ). The ingredients of the Sachermasse are essentially the same as according to the Austrian standard, but the proportions are determined as follows: 100 parts of flour contain 100 parts of chocolate or a corresponding amount of cocoa, 100 parts of butter or a corresponding amount of butterfat / concentrated butter and 200 parts of whole egg. Only sugar icing and chocolate containing cocoa are permitted as coatings. Coatings that can be confused with types of chocolate are not used.

Two variants are common for filling with jam: In the first variant, there is only one layer of jam, which is located directly under the chocolate coating. For this purpose, a layer of jam is applied to the cake before it is covered with chocolate (technically speaking, the cake is apricotized ). In the second variant, there is also a second layer of jam in the middle of the cake; To do this, the baked base is cut open (in the pastry shop with a garrotte- like stainless steel wire loop), the lower part is coated with jam, and then the cake is reassembled.

Couverture or cocoa-based sugar icing can be used to coat the cake . Often the surface of the cake is further decorated, common are the writing “Sacher” or the letter “S”, an incision of the imaginary pieces of cake or ornamental patterns. So-called cake toppers made of chocolate with the inscription "Sacher" are also available in specialist shops.

history

Origins

Franz Sacher

The forerunners of the Sachertorte can be found as early as the 18th century, for example in Conrad Hagger's cookbook (1718) or in Gartler-Hickmann's “Wienerischem bestem Kochbuch” (1749).

The story of the actual Sachertorte begins when Prince Metternich commissioned his court kitchen in 1832 to create a special dessert for himself and his high-ranking guests. "That he doesn't shame me tonight!" He said. But the head chef was sick and so the 16-year-old boy Franz Sacher (1816–1907), then a second year apprentice, had to take on the task and invented the basic shape of the Sachertorte.

Although the guests apparently liked the cake, they paid no further attention to it for the time being. After years in Pressburg and Budapest, Franz Sacher returned to Vienna in 1848, where he opened a delicatessen with a wine shop.

His eldest son Eduard (1843-1892) completed an apprenticeship at the kuk Hofzuckerbäcker Demel and, during this time, completed the Sachertorte in the form it is known today. The Sachertorte was first offered at Demel and then also in the Hotel Sacher founded by Eduard in 1876 . Since then, the cake has been one of the most famous culinary specialties in Vienna .

Litigation

Demel pastry shop, Vienna

A legal dispute broke out between the Hotel Sacher and the Hofzuckerbäcker Demel about the use of the name “Original Sacher-Torte”.

Eduard Sacher had completed the Sachertorte in the Demel and since then an “Original Sacher-Torte” has been offered there. After the death of Edward's widow Anna Sacher (1859–1930) and the bankruptcy of the hotel in 1934, Edward's son of the same name moved to Demel and gave the confectionary the sole right to sell an "Eduard-Sacher-Torte".

In 1938 the first differences of opinion arose with the new owners of the hotel, who no longer only offered the Sachertorte for consumption in their own premises, but also for street sales and had the name “Original Sacher-Torte” registered as a trademark . After interruptions due to the Second World War and the subsequent occupation, the hotel owners filed a lawsuit in 1954, insisting on their trademark rights, against the Demel producing and selling the "Original Sacher-Torte".

For the next seven years there was a dispute over the use of the name, the second layer of jam in the middle, and the use of margarine instead of butter. Friedrich Torberg , a regular in both houses, testified in this trial that during Anna Sacher's lifetime, the Sacher cake was never cut in half and coated with jam. In 1963 an out-of-court settlement was reached: the name “Original Sacher-Torte” was reserved for the Hotel Sacher, while Demel decorated his cake with a triangular seal with the inscription “Eduard Sacher-Torte”. In the meantime, the latter, popularly known after 1963 as the “Echte Sacher-Torte”, is called “Demel's Sachertorte” in the parlance of the Demel company.

Special features of the Viennese providers

Cakes in the sales display of the Hotel Sacher in Vienna

The "Original Sacher-Torte" and "Demel's Sachertorte" differ mainly in their layers of jam. The "Original Sacher-Torte" has two layers of jam, below the couverture and in the middle of the base, while "Demel's Sachertorte" has only one layer of jam underneath the couverture. Both suppliers provide the cakes with a seal-like chocolate topper. At the Hotel Sacher this is round with the label “Hotel Sacher Wien”, while the Demel label is triangular and bears the label “Eduard Sacher Torte Product Ch. Demel's Sons”.

Sacher shop, Vienna

The “Original Sacher-Torte” is only available in the Sacher Hotels in Vienna and Salzburg , in the Sacher Cafés in Innsbruck and Graz , in the Sacher Shop in Bolzano , in the duty-free area of Vienna Airport and in the Hotel Sacher's online shop .

The Hotel Sacher emphasizes that the recipe for its cake is a "closely guarded secret". However, there are no indications of any special secrecy that goes beyond the common practice that food manufacturers do not publish the recipes of their products. Production is still done by hand today, but on an industrial scale with a production volume of more than 360,000 cakes per year. On September 22, 2016, the production of the largest Sacher cake to date with a diameter of 3.5 meters was successful. The largest wedding Sachertorte, in turn, had 12 floors.

Some company information on the production and sale of the "Original Sacher-Torte"

The Hotel Sacher currently produces around 360,000 cakes a year. This requires the processing of 1.2 million eggs, 80 tons of sugar, 70 tons of chocolate, 37 tons of apricot jam, 25 tons of butter and 30 tons of flour every year. Since 1999, production has not been located in the basement of the hotel, but in a low-rise building near Vienna's central cemetery in Simmering . 21 confectioners and 25 packers are currently required to produce the cakes by hand. One employee is busy breaking up up to 7,500 eggs a day. There has only been an automatic cutting machine since 2003, before the hundreds of thousands of cakes had to be divided by hand. In addition to the Sachertorte also variants such as those Sacher cuts , the Sacher Cube and other confectionery produced. The cake is delivered daily in two portions to the hotel, where a third of the annual production is consumed. Another third is purchased in the sales outlets, the last third in turn is sent all over the world.