The Wiener Schnitzel: Typically Viennese?

What could be more typical of Austrian cuisine than the Wiener Schnitzel? You see it on just about every menu in just about every type of establishment, from the most modest to the most elegant. And you’ll find it as Vienna’s culinary calling card well beyond Austria’s borders. Chances are you’ve ordered one in a Bavarian Wirtshaus or Gaststätte as ballast for your beer. (Maltier styles that run the gamut from golden Festbier to amber Märzen and all manner of Bock beers pair particularly well with Schnitzel, in case you’re wondering.)

But just how “Viennese,” let alone Austrian, is this breaded veal cutlet ?

The short answer: it’s complicated.

Radetzky in Milan

Perhaps you’ve heard that Wiener Schnitzel originated in Milan as Cotoletta alla Milanese. If so, you wouldn’t be the only one. When food scholar Ingrid Haslinger polled chefs and food writers in Austria, she found that six in ten believed that Wiener Schnitzel originated in Milan.

So what’s going on here? As the story goes, Count Radetzky, who was stationed as Field Marshall in Lombardy in 1848, submitted a report on the political and military situation in the region. The report sent back to Vienna apparently included a marginal note mentioning a veal cutlet pounded flat, then dipped in beaten eggs and coated with bread crumbs before being fried in butter. Delicious, it was. This description is said to have impressed Kaiser Franz Joseph so much that he pressed Radetzky on his return to Vienna to give the court chef the exact recipe.

It’s a tasty morsel of a story, and one that has been repeated so often that it has taken on an air of reality.

But not only did this method of preparing and cooking cutlets not originate in Milan, scholars have found references to Wiener Schnitzel in cookbooks published as early as 1831 — seventeen years before Radetzky sent home his report. (Complicating matters all the more, researchers have yet to find the alleged marginalia in any archive.)

A Byzantine Origin Story

Where, then, did the schnitzel originate? We have archival evidence indicating that breaded and fried cutlets were already popular among Jews in Constantinople in the in the twelfth century.

By the time of the Renaissance, the custom of gilding food had become popular in Venice, not only as a means of displaying wealth, but also for health reasons long since disproved. During the sixteenth century this custom spread from Venice to all of northern Italy, including Milan. The Venetians had their gilded confectionaries, and the Milanese decided to gild meat as well.

The practice of gilding food was forbidden in 1514, but the popularity of “golden food” lived on. Intrepid chefs borrowed the Jewish Byzantine custom of covering meat in bread crumbs and frying it in fat so that it took on the golden appearance of the forbidden gold leaf. Plainly, the preparation associated with today’s Wiener Schnitzel was already widespread, stretching from the former Byzantine lands to the Italian peninsula by the Renaissance.

All the Way to Flanders

Schnitzel seems to have crossed the Alps during the Baroque era. In 1719, Conrad Hagger mentions a dish in his Saltzburgisches Kochbuch prepared thus: “Dip the cutlet in eggs that have been beaten, then quickly sprinkle the cutlet with bread that has been grated into crumbs. Fry the cutlets in hot schmaltz.” All that’s missing is an explicit reference to veal.

That explicit reference came in 1774, when Jean Neubauer of Munich called for veal in a recipe he dubbed “Gebachenes auf flamändisch” — “fried à la Flanders” — a recipe and preparation that, despite its Flemish name, is starting to look a lot like today’s Wiener Schnitzel.

Now comes the coup-de-grace for latter-day schnitzel aficionados who claim that the dish originated with Radetzky in 1848: Anna Maria Neudecker furnished a recipe in her 1831 cookbook bearing the title “Wiener Schnitzel.” Not long after, Josepha Kraft published a recipe in her 1835 Die wirthschaftliche Wiener Köchin that reads like any contemporary recipe for Wiener Schnitzel.

Typically Viennese / Quintessentially European?

Where does that leave our Cotolleta alla Milanese?

According to linguist and food historian Heinz Dieter Pohl, this Milanese origin story is of recent vintage. It goes like this: Leftist progressives of the sixties (generally) took a dim view of nationalism as a force that creates and reinforces boundaries between peoples. As a means of destabilizing the foundations of national identity, some in Austria turned to cuisine, searching for the origins of “quintessentially Viennese” foodstuffs elsewhere — in this case, in Italy.

This made sense. If you could find the origins of a national dish beyond the borders of the nation-state, you were that much further along the path of eroding the linkages between cuisine and national identity.

But here’s the inconvenient rub for those who sought to critique Austrian national identity by pointing to the origin of Wiener Schnitzel beyond Austria’s borders: In relying on the story of Radetzky’s Milanese meal recounted in Felice Cùnsolo’s Guida gastronomica d’Italia (1969), it seems they seized upon something apocryphal.

**

So there we have it: A “typically Viennese dish” that has assimilated a range of influences from Constantinople to Venice to Flanders, a dish that you’ll find on menus across Europe and beyond. A dish that pairs with a range of beers, including Märzen, Bock, and — you guessed it — Vienna Lager. A dish that also goes well with Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Austria’s most popular white wine varietal, Grüner Veltliner.

And a dish that apparently pairs well with conversations about history, politics, and national identity.

**

Final Notes On the Way Out

*Only schnitzels made from veal can be called Wiener Schnitzel. Otherwise, you’ll see it on Central European menus as “Schnitzel vom Schwein” (pork schnitzel), which is often just as tasty — and almost always cheaper.

*The point above raises a salient question: How is it that the Viennese have a claim on a particular way of preparing veal cutlets? At what point does something that originates elsewhere — and has a long history to boot — become “Viennese” or “Austrian”?

**

This article originated as lecture notes for a course I teach at IES-Vienna on the cultural history of food and drink. A shorter version saw the light of day a few years back in an issue of my Beerscapes Newsletter. I haven’t included footnotes here (I’m in Vienna while my books are far, far away in Oklahoma), but if you’d like chapter and verse at some point, let me know. I’d be happy to send that info along when I’m back Stateside.

Speaking of my Beerscapes Newsletter, subscribe here for more on the fascinating world of beer culture, along with travel tips about where to find the best beer experiences in Europe and beyond.

Sources

Ingrid Haslinger’s Die Wiener Küche: Kulturgeschichte und Rezepte (Mandelbaum Verlag, 2018) includes an astute history of the pillars of Austrian cuisine and a fascinating section on the history of cookbooks in the Habsburg lands. It’s in this section that Haslinger sheds light on how breaded veal cutlets entered the lexicon of Viennese classic dishes.

Linguist and food historian Heinz Dieter Pohl illuminates the history of what has become a quintessentially Viennese dish in his “Rund ums Wiener Schnitzel: Ein Betrag zur Sach- und Wortgeschichte,” making short shrift of the spurious Radetzky connection along the way.

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All images by F.D. Hofer.

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