Vienna's Sweet Empire
By
Credit: Landon Nordeman
For a few years leading up to that trip, I had devoured every mention of Demel in glossy food and travel magazines. But nothing could have prepared me for the sensory overload of encountering all the Viennese classics—dense chocolate sachertortes, jam-filled linzertortes, strudels wrapped in papery-thin pastry, pastel-frosted petits fours, and more—housed inside gleaming glass cases trimmed with polished brass and wood. For every familiar dessert there was an unfamiliar one, covered in buttercream, meringue, marzipan, or chocolate glaze, as well as trays of cream-filled buns and puff pastries. I stood there, agog, until I started to wonder why none of the black-clad hostesses were offering me a seat. It dawned on me that, in my jeans and leather jacket, I wasn't exactly dressed for the occasion. Most of the men in the dining room wore suits, and many of the women donned pearls. Had I known then that Demel was the drawing room of Vienna's high society and that the staff had a reputation for ignoring those who didn't fit the mold, I might have packed a sport coat. I respectfully took my leave.
Once outside, I snapped as many photos of Demel's elaborate window displays as my Instamatic camera would allow; they were decorated for autumn's hunting season with forest logs and leaves fashioned out of sugar and meringue. Right then and there, I vowed to return to Demel in the future, not only as a customer but as a serious baker. Someday, I told myself, I would get inside that bakeshop and learn how Europe's most extraordinary sweets are made.
Founded in 1786, Demel is a living vestige of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which came to power in the 13th century and reached its peak during the rococo era, when the house of Hapsburg, based in Vienna, rose to dominate not just Austria but also Slovakia, Hungary, and most of what we now refer to as eastern Europe. Beginning in the 1870s, under Emperor Franz Joseph, Vienna, as well as Budapest and Prague, became a hotbed of culture and the arts. A flourishing of the culinary arts ensued, the empire's cooks drawing from both western and eastern European traditions. The emperor and his wife, Elisabeth, hosted elaborate feasts at the Hofburg palace, where savory courses were followed by intricately prepared sweets that were often richer and even more elaborately decorated than those found in France.
Vienna's supremacy in the pastry arts derives from those regal traditions and the lively exchange of ideas between cultures within the empire. Another factor was the city's love of coffee, epitomized by a rich Kaffeehaus tradition, which blossomed during the 18th century. Pastry shops during that period served coffee too, sealing the everlasting bond between coffee and sweets and establishing themselves as social institutions.
Demel was one of those pastry shops. Originally called Burgtheater Zuckerbäckerei (Burg-
theater Sugar Bakery), for its location near the city's main theater, it was founded by one Ludwig Dehne and became known for rustic süßspeisen (sweet dishes) and the more elegant mehlspeisen (flour-based dishes) on which Austro-Hungarian pastry chefs were beginning to build their reputations: cakes, dumplings, puddings, and a vast array of boiled and baked treats. The bakery was sold in 1857 to one of Dehne's bakers, Christoph Demel, whose sons relocated it to a street near the imperial palace 30 years later. The move was a strategic one: soon Demel had become one of a handful of pastry shops (along with Sluka, Heiner, and Gerstner, which also still exist) allowed to supply the palace with sweets. Empress Elisabeth was famously fond of Demel's candied violets and its coffee, which she had sent to her room each morning.
Demel also became the social center of Vienna's upper crust, and its popularity continued to grow even after the Hapsburg empire collapsed, in 1918.
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