The Linzer Torte is an Austrian torte

Torte

A torte is a rich, usually multilayered, cake that is filled with buttercreams, mousses, jams or fruits. Ordinarily, the cooled torte is glazed and garnished . A torte is made with little to no flour, but instead with ground nuts or breadcrumbs, as well as sugar, eggs, and flavorings.- Origin...

 with a lattice design on top of the pastry. It is named after the city of Linz

Linz

Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

.

Linzer Torte is a very short, crumbly pastry made of flour, unsalted butter, egg yolks, lemon zest, cinnamon and lemon juice, and ground nut

Nut (fruit)

A nut is a hard-shelled fruit of some plants having an indehiscent seed. While a wide variety of dried seeds and fruits are called nuts in English, only a certain number of them are considered by biologists to be true nuts...

s, usually hazelnut

Hazelnut

A hazelnut is the nut of the hazel and is also known as a cob nut or filbert nut according to species. A cob is roughly spherical to oval, about 15–25 mm long and 10–15 mm in diameter, with an outer fibrous husk surrounding a smooth shell. A filbert is more elongated, being about twice...

s, but even walnut

Walnut

Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...

s or almond

Almond

The almond , is a species of tree native to the Middle East and South Asia. Almond is also the name of the edible and widely cultivated seed of this tree...

s are used, covered with a filling of redcurrant

Redcurrant

The redcurrant , Ribes rubrum, is a member of the genus Ribes in the gooseberry family Grossulariaceae, native to parts of western Europe...

 jam

Lekvar

Lekvar is a thick jam or fruit butter. Lekvár is a very thick, sometimes coarse jam of pure ripe fruit. Lekvar is of Central and Eastern European origin....

 or, alternatively, plum butter

Lekvar

Lekvar is a thick jam or fruit butter. Lekvár is a very thick, sometimes coarse jam of pure ripe fruit. Lekvar is of Central and Eastern European origin....

, thick raspberry, or apricot jam. It is covered by a lattice

Lattice (pastry)

The criss-crossing pattern of strips in this pastry is reminiscent of latticework.The idea of latticed pastry is used as a lid to many different tarts or pies....

 of dough strips. The dough is rolled out in very thin strips of pastry and arranged to form a criss-cross design on top of the preserves. The pastry is brushed with lightly beaten egg whites, baked, and sometimes decorated with sliced almonds.

Linzer Torte is a holiday classic in the Austrian, Hungarian, Swiss, German, and Tirolean traditions, often eaten at Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

. Linzer Torte is often made like small tarts or cookies in North American bakeries.

Linzer sablés

Sablé (biscuit)

Sablé is a French round shortbread biscuit, originates in Caen, in the province of Normandy.-History:According to the "letters" of the Marquise de Sévigné, the biscuit was created for the first time in Sablé-sur-Sarthe in 1670....

  are a cookie-sized version, made by cutting a circle of a similar dough, covering it with jam, placing a donut-like circle with a hole in the center piece of dough on top, and dusting with confectioner's sugar.

History

The Linzer Torte recipe is the oldest-known in the world. For a long time a recipe from 1696 in the Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 Stadt- und Landesbibliothek was the oldest one known. In 2005, however, Waltraud Faißner, the library director of the Upper Austria

Upper Austria

Upper Austria is one of the nine states or Bundesländer of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders on Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as on the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, and Salzburg...

n Landesmuseum and author of the book "Wie mann die Linzer Dortten macht" ("How to make the Linzer Torte") found an even older Veronese

Verona

Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...

 recipe from 1653 in Codex 35/31 in the archive of Admont Abbey

Admont Abbey

Admont Abbey is a foundation of the Benedictines on the River Enns in the town of Admont in Austria and is the oldest remaining monastery in Styria...

.

Besides, the invention of the Linzer Torte is subject of numerous legends, reporting on a Viennese confectioner named Linzer (as given by Alfred Polgar

Alfred Polgar

Alfred Polgar was an Austrian-born journalist, one of the renowned wits of the Vienna coffeehouses. He left Austria in 1938, and later worked in Hollywood.He was known as a drama critic, in Berlin 1925 to 1933, and an essayist...

) or the Franconia

Franconia

Franconia is a region of Germany comprising the northern parts of the modern state of Bavaria, a small part of southern Thuringia, and a region in northeastern Baden-Württemberg called Tauberfranken...

n sugar baker Johann Konrad Vogel (1796–1883), who about 1823 at Linz started the mass production of the cake that made it famous around the world.

The Austrian traveller Franz Hölzlhuber in the 1850s allegedly brought the Linzer Torte to Milwaukee, from where the recipe spread over the United States.

Read also

• Marshall Faye: Now that's a Linzertorte. Stowe, Vt. 2007, ISBN 978-0-9747-8720-6.