Austrian Dumplings

Abstract

This chapter describes the history, ingredients, and preparation of various types of dumplings from different regions in Austria. They are based on either bread, wheat flour, or potatoes and used as main or side dish or in soups or as sweet desert.

1 History

Dumplings are a typical and traditional Austrian dish and are served there in a great variety, in soups and as appetizers, main dishes or side dishes with meat or vegetables, or even as sweat desserts. Therefore, dumplings are variegated and diversified. They can be made out of semolina, wheat, bread, potatoes, curd cheese, or yeast dough. There are also dumplings that are stuffed or unfilled, boiled, baked, or au gratin. They can be small, big, round, oval, flat, or in some other shape pressed loosely together or even longish. The dumpling traditionally came from Upper Austria, Salzburg, Tyrol, and Bavaria. Outside of the alpine cuisine “Knödel” are called “Klöße .”

Dumplings played a significant role in the historical development of Austrian cooking culture. The exact origin of the dumpling is unknown. The dumpling is not an achievement from a singular imaginative invention. It is a logical consequence of cooking and eating conditions. The history of the dumpling goes far back to ancient times. The primary, ancestral shape was not exactly like the dumplings we know today. It was a simple presentation of chopped meat mixtures. In the region around the “Mondsee” (Austria), archaeological excavations of Neolithic settlements and lake dwellings of the Bronze Age showed remnants of dough. Small round flat dough cakes were found. These flat cakes were made out of barley and wheat flour and they had an unusual curvature. In these flat cakes, meat and fruits were wrapped. The earliest written evidence is dated back to Roman times. It can be found in an old “cooking book,” “Notes from Gavius Apicius” which is from the occidental cultural area and was written in the time of the Roman imperator Tiberius around the time when Jesus was born. There existed dumpling-like foods because the Roman people ate while they were lying, and so it was easier for them to eat the food when it was formed in dumplings. The food was taken with the hands and pushed slightly balled into the mouth. In a fresco from twelfth century (1280) found in the chapel of the castle, Hocheppan in Meran, South Tyrol near Bozen/Bolzano (Italy), a woman is depictured, maybe a nun or the midwife, with Maria next to the child’s crib. The woman is holding in one hand a cookware over the fire with five round dumplings and in the other hand a pierced dumpling which she is leading to her mouth. The dumpling is skewered on a dumpling knife. This is the oldest illustration of dumplings outside of a book. Was there a dumpling tradition?

The oldest cooking and parboiling methods were smoking the food, barbecuing on a spit, cooking in a stock, or steaming and stewing in a pot. As far as traditional cooking cultures go, the so called boiler cultures (Kesselkulturen) can be found from the Northern Alps to the Baltic Sea. In these regions there were mainly boiled foods like boiled and cooked dumplings. In the Southern and Eastern Alps, there was the “pan culture” (Pfannenkultur). Here the food was mainly fried so they had lard pastries, strudel, “Teigfleck,” “Nockerl,” and “Schmarrn.”

Upper and Lower Austria were the “dumpling stronghold” and were influenced from the Bavarian “boiler culture.”

Until the seventeenth century, there existed no flatware like we know it today. The people ate the food with their hands. Only the kitchens of the upper class used knives as well as a few men that needed them for hunting. The foods were prepared like a ragout, or the raw meat, fish, or other ingredients were mixed with spices and binding agents, like cereals or bread, from which round balls were formed. This was an easier way of cooking and barbecuing and it was easier to eat with your bare hands. Therefore, in old cooking books, instructions can be found for this kind of cooking method. These were the prototypes of our dumplings today. The dumplings had their beginnings in meat dishes. There are many various types of dumplings today which can be traced back to this original kind of meat dumpling, for example, the liver, bacon, ham, chicken, brain, and various game dumplings as well as the fish, crab, and ray dumplings.

The name came from the Romans : “nodus = der Knoten” and “nodulus = das Knötchen.” The Bavarian-Austrian ideogram for the dumpling—Knödel—is related etymologically to the Old High German chnodo, chnoto; Middle High German knode, knote; and New High German Knoten (a knot or small lump) (Helmreich and Staudinger 1993). The word “Knoten” can be translated into “Knötlein,” “Knötelein,” or “Knödchen” (Horn 1976). The dumpling has a great history of development since its existence. The name of this everyday food has changed a lot in the different dialects over periods of time.

Beginning in the eighteenth century, there were better technical possibilities. In the middle of the sixteenth century, producing firm and consistent dough became possible because of developments in milling technology. The equipment for sifting and sieving improved so the flour could be better separated into its finer and coarser compounds. By then the dumplings was only known regionally, but it soon became the most common food of people in many places in Bavaria, Habsburg Austria, here in much greater variety. Habsburg Austria also included Bohemia and Hungary.

Since the 30 Years’ War (1618–1648) and in the following two centuries, meat was a luxury good. So the people used alternatives like vegetables and especially dumplings made out of brown or white bread before the potato was brought to Europe. Since meat was expensive, not everyone could always afford it. As a result people developed different types of meals with ingredients like bread, oats, millet, barley, corn, peas, beans, and mushrooms. Some meat and giblets were supplemented to these ingredients and then formed into dumplings. These were either cooked in water or lard, steamed, or fried. After cooking the dumplings, they were often put in a stock. The dough was always made of the same raw consistency that was chopped and after that pressed together. There was practically no kind of food that was not used to make some kind of dumpling. Dumplings can include almost every kind of meat, fish, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, and cheeses. So there is a great variety of recipes.

Around the dumpling there developed gradually fixed traditional cooking and eating habits and something like a myth. The larger filled meat dumplings or also napkin dumplings were usually eaten on Sundays. Thursday was dumpling day and in some southern region Tuesday was another dumpling day as well.

Before the dumplings are cooked, a test dumpling should be made to make sure the dough is suitable and the meal will be a success. The ability of a woman to cook dumplings was a qualification to marry because it meant she had a good judgment with her eyes and hands to form a perfect dumpling. Dumplings were served in special bowls and plates. These were especially beautiful bowls with pot handles and arched tops that had steam vents. These bowls were made out of tin or heavy stone. Only when dumplings were being served did everyone have his own plate. Otherwise the people ate together from the pan or bowl. There is a legend that the dumpling was invented in the town hall in Tyrol. The legend tells the story of a landlady and her tavern which was invaded by a mob of wild journeymen. They demanded a meal from her. But the pantry of the landlady was empty. Therefore, she decided to take old leftovers like bread, bacon, sausage, eggs, milk, salt, and onions that she had and cut these ingredients into small cubes, mixed them, and formed the first Tyrolean bacon dumplings. There is another special eating habit in regard to eating dumplings. They should never be cut with a knife but only ripped open, for example, with a fork so that they stay fluffy and the sauce can soak in.

1.1 The Dumpling Knife

In the medieval times, specially designed dagger knives were developed to eat dumplings. The dumpling knife is a serving knife, “Vorlegemesser,” with a large blade and an extension that looks like a dagger. It was used to spear meat pieces and dumplings. The earliest description of the dumpling knife is from the eleventh century, but it is believed to be much older than that and was used for a long time after that. It was called “Knödelwürger ” or “Knödelhenker ” (dumpling executioner). A slightly changed version of the dumpling knife with a smaller knife point was still known in recent times. Then the fork adopted this function in the eighteenth century and has kept it until today.

2 Types of Dumplings

An overview of typical dumplings sorted by Austrian regions is given in Table 10.1.

Table 10.1 Typical Austrian dumplings by region

2.1 Bread Dumplings

As meat became too expensive for the ordinary population, the quantity of meat in meals decreased and instead more bread was used. So the bread dumpling was developed. This was the prototype of the bread dumpling we know today. It evolved from the old meat dumpling. Meat was more and more replaced by other foods and the bread ratio was increasing until a pure bread dumpling was invented.

Dumplings were increasingly made out of leftover bread, to such an extent that the Semmelknödel (dumpling made from breakfast roll bread cubes) became one of the most typical forms—isolated mentions can be found in the eighteenth century. And we should not forget that it is old and dry rolls or other white bread which provides the cubes which can be used as the material for dumplings but especially to bind a considerable number of meat, fish, vegetable, and other dumplings and when fried in butter provides a cushion for sweet dumplings (curd cheese, apricot, plum, etc.) and by contrast enriches the flavor (Helmreich and Staudinger 1993).

Basic Recipe for Bread Dumplings (Neuhold and Svoboda 2001)

• 250 g bread cubes

• 20 g butter

• 2 tablespoons chopped onion

• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

• 2 eggs

• 250 mL milk

• 2 tablespoons flour

• Salt

Whisk the eggs, milk, and salt and then pour the mixture over the bread cubes. Pour in the butter-fried onions and parsley over the dumpling dough and stir everything well so all bread cubes can soak in liquid. Let it stand for about 10–15 min. During this, loosen up, stir, and compress the dough several times. The dumpling dough should be moist and sticky after this but not dripping wet. If it looks too wet, flour can be added to bind the spare moisture. With hands dipped in warm water, form dumplings and put them in plenty heated salted water for about 10 min. The dumpling water should be steaming and slowly boiling. When they are ready, they tend to float up to the surface. The finished dumplings are lifted out of the dumpling water with a slotted spoon. At this moment the odor says more than a thousand words.

2.2 Potato Dumplings

The potato was originally cultivated in Peru and Chile, but after the discovery of America, the potato was brought to Europe, where at first the potato was hardly noticed and not accepted other than a mire botanical interest. At first they were very expensive and only the fine middle-class cuisine used them. In the rural areas the potato was discovered much later and was used especially for the fruit dumplings which are still very popular today. As the cultivation of wheat, rye, oat, and barley declined in the eighteenth century, the potato had its triumphal march. The first recipe in Germany was published by the reformer of the cuisine, the cook Marcus Rumport in his work Ein new Kochbuch, published in 1581. He called the potato “Erdepfel ” which much later found its way into German. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the potato was only occasionally mentioned in the literature. Later potatoes were found in the modern cookbooks of those times. In 1826 a special potato cookbook was published in Kaschau (Bohemia). It included three recipes for potato dumplings. About 1800 potato dumplings were mentioned in various cookbooks with variegated types and shapes. The potato dough was much different than the dumplings that were developed previously.

Potato dumplings, as unfilled dumplings, are favored to eat as a side dish with meat and sauce. In addition they are used as doughy wrapping for many filled dumplings with such stuffing as sausages, vegetables, mushrooms, crackling, etc. The good taste of the potato dough is very enhancing when used as wrapping for filled dumplings and makes the production fast and easy.

Basic Recipe for Filled Potato Dumplings (Neuhold and Svoboda 2001)

• Ingredients for the potato dough:

• 800 g floury potatoes

• 200 g flour

• 2 eggs

• 20 g butter

• Salt and nutmeg

• Flour for preparing

• Stuffing depends on the recipe

The hot, cooked, and peeled potatoes which are chased through the potato ricer are mixed together with flour, eggs, melted butter, salt, and nutmeg. Everything is put into a bowl and kneaded to a smooth dough. Cut off the amount of dough for one dumpling with floured hands stretch and flatten it in your hands to a circular disk. Put a little bit of the stuffing in the middle of the dough disk and press up the edges of the dough and seal the dumpling carefully. Roll the dumplings between the palms of your hand until they are round and cover them in flour. The dumplings are put in boiling salted water and simmered with medium heat for 20 min without the lid.

The rural cuisine in Austria has its typical Austrian specialties. Well-known classics are pressed cheese dumplings, Tyrolean dumplings, spinach dumplings, and yeast dumplings filled with plum sauce. The eccentric ones are zucchini dumplings, pheasant dumplings, dumpling lasagna, sweet bread dumplings, and prune-almond paste dumplings. An extended list of typical Austrian dumpling types sorted by regions is given in Table 10.1 in the annex of this paper.

Small dumplings are used for the soups, middle-sized ones with vegetables, and large dumplings as main dishes called napkin dumpling . The dumplings are filled, breaded, backed, spiced, or sweetened, and they can be eaten with meat, fish, or fruits as side or main dishes. You can also use dumplings as leftovers as a salad with oil and vinegar or by frying them, “G’röste Knöd’l,” “Knödelschmarrn,” etc. Dumplings could be a full meal with a soup or steamed vegetables. Today they are mainly served as a side dish or dessert. In the rural and middle-class cuisine, there are mainly semolina and potato dumplings, and in the fine cuisine there are fish and fruit dumplings.

2.3 Soup Dumplings

Soup dumplings in general are less voluminous than dumplings that are a garnish or a course for themselves and therefore should be called “Knöderln .” Almost all soup dumplings depend for the development of their full and true flavor on an accompaniment or availability of an appropriate soup. There is no limit to the list of ingredients that may be used for soup dumplings, so they are means of making good use of leftovers.

Pressed Cheese Dumplings (Helmreich and Staudinger 1993)

• 200 g cheese

• 4 rolls

• Flour as necessary

• 2 medium-sized boiled potatoes

• 250 mL milk

• 2 eggs

• Onion

• Salt

• Pepper

• Nutmeg

• 1 tablespoon fat

• Oil for frying

Whisk the milk, eggs, and spices and pour over the diced rolls. Mix the chopped browned onions, cover, and let rest. Thicken the thinly cut cheese and mashed potatoes if necessary with flour and mix into the dumpling mass. Form the dumplings, press it flat, and brown it in floating hot oil. These dumplings taste delicious in all clear soups (Fig. 10.1).

Fig. 10.1

Smoked ham semolina dumplings in beef soup

Smoked Ham Semolina Dumplings: Speckgriessknödel (Neuhold and Svoboda 2001)

• 125 mL milk

• 50 g wheat semolina

• 50 g smoked ham

• 20 g butter

• 20 g stripped white bread

• 1 egg

• Salt

Boil up the milk with the salt, add the wheat semolina, and stir constantly so that it can thicken by boiling. Take it off the oven and let it cool down. Bark the white bread and cut it into small cubes like the bacon. Heat the butter in a pan, add the bacon, and briefly roast it gently. Then add the white bread cubes and roast both ingredients until the white bread cubes have a gently brown color. Separate the egg. Stir the egg yolk under the semolina pudding. Stir the egg whites until a stiff foam and fold it together with the roasted bacon and white bread cubes under the semolina pudding. Mix gently and let it rest for ten minutes. Form small dumplings from the mass with wet hands. The quantity of ingredients should be enough for eight dumplings. Add the dumplings in boiling salt water and steep them for 15 min by medium heat. Lift the dumplings out of the water with a slotted spoon, allow the water to drip off, and serve them in a hot beef broth sprinkled with freshly chopped parsley.

Liver Dumplings (Pernkopf and Wagner 2010)

• 40 g creamy butter or butter lard

• 250 g beef or pork liver (alternatively lamb, canard, fowl or game liver)

• 50 g onion cubes

• 2 eggs

• 220 g stuffing bread or bread cubes

• 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

• Salt

• Marjoram

• Pepper

• Optional: garlic, rosemary, sage, allspice, pimento, coriander, lemon zest or juice, or Worcester sauce

Mix the minced liver and butter-sweated onion cubes with the other ingredients when they are cooled down. The dough is spiced and then rest for 30 min. Form dumplings out of this dough with wet or oily hands. Boil them in salt water or beef soup. Another possibility is to roll them in bread crumbs and fry them in hot fat until they are golden brown. Serve the liver dumplings with a beef soup or with sauerkraut or with a mixed salad. As filler for canard, game, or fowl liver dumplings, caramelized apple pieces can be optionally mixed in. For game liver dumplings, use deer or venison and season it with marjoram, thyme, ground juniper, garlic, and coriander.

Semolina Dumplings (Gössl 2003)

• 50 g butter

• 1 egg

• 100 g semolina (durum wheat)

• Salt

• Nutmeg

• Some oil

Stir the butter until it is creamy; add the egg, semolina, and salt; make it spicy with nutmeg; and let the mixture stand for about 10–15 min. Form “Nockerln ” with a wet teaspoon and drop them in boiling salt water. Let them simmer for 10 min. Strain them and chill them, covered for another 10 min. Semolina dumplings are served in a beef soup.

2.4 Dumplings as Garnish or Main Dish

When dumplings are served as garnish or main dish , they usually take up more space. They cannot really be distinguished in this function as main or subsidiary matter and the capability of bread crumb or potato dumplings to serve as main dish. When they are of top quality, they stand in, with absolutely no need of roast pork, beef goulash, mushroom sauce, etc. They can be served with a refreshing salad as contrast demotes these to mere garnishes. Bread dumplings or dumplings in a napkin are a typical form of dumpling served as garnish or main dish. The basic dough for both of them is similar to the basic recipe for bread dumplings which is mentioned in Sect. 10.2.1. But there is a small difference concerning the “Klosterneuburger” and Tyrolean bacon dumplings (Fig. 10.2). Both of them are additionally made with meat. The “Klosterneuburger” dumpling is a special kind of napkin dumpling.

Fig. 10.2

Tyrolean bacon dumplings

Tyrolean Bacon Dumplings (Hierl 2004)

• 150 g (5½ oz) bacon, cut in cubes

• 6 plain bread rolls

• 3 eggs

• 250 mL milk

• Salt

• 50 g wheat flour or grit

• 150 g fatless chopped ham

• ½ bunch of parsley

• 1 onion

• 40 g butter

The diced bacon and bread rolls are fried in a hot pan until the bacon gets glassy and the bread rolls are soaked full with fat. Pour the whisked eggs, milk, and salt over the cooled bread rolls and bacon. Stir in the flour or semolina and let it rest for 15 min. Then the chopped parsley and ham cubes are mixed together. Take a piece as big as a spoon from the dough and push it flat. Put a little bit of the ham parsley mixture in the middle of the dough and form dumplings out of it. Put them into salt water and boil them for 15 min. The peeled onions are cut into rings and fried with butter in a pan. Break the dumplings with a fork in two pieces and spill the roasted onions over the dumplings.

“Klosterneuburger” Dumplings (Obermann and Kröpfl 2009)

• 5 traditional Austrian bread rolls

• 250 mL milk

• 250 g cooked and smoked meat

• 4 eggs

• 140 g margarine

• Fresh parsley

• 30 g bread crumbs

• Salt

Cut the bread rolls into cubes, add the milk, and let it soak. Slowly mix the eggs, the cubed meat, and cut parsley into the bread rolls and add salt. Stir the margarine until it is creamy and mix it to the bread roll dough. If the dough needs to be more compact, add bread crumbs. Then grease a cloth napkin, fold the bread mass into the napkin, and tie it up with a string. Cook it in salted water for 1 h. The dumplings can serve with salad and a mushroom sauce (Fig. 10.3).

Spinach Dumplings (Pernkopf and Wagner 2010)

• 200 g mashed, well-drained spinach

• 200 g boiled, cold passed through potatoes

• 100 g very fine bread crumb

• 25 g melted butter

• 1 egg

• 1 egg yolk

• Salt

• Pepper

• Garlic

Fig. 10.3

“Klosterneuburger” dumplings with salad

Mix the egg and spinach together and then add the other ingredients. Let the dough rest for a short time. If the dough is too smooth, add more bread crumb. Form dumplings and place them in almost boiling salt water for about 10–12 min. Either arrange them with a cream sauce or sprinkle with Parmesan. Another option is to escallop them with ham stripes and cheese and serve them with chives butter.

2.5 Sweet Dumplings

In 200 B.C. the consul Cato mentioned sweet dumplings. These sweet dumplings were similar to our curd cheese dumplings today. The dumplings were a compound made of a special kind of barley—barley groats—and fresh sheep cheese (curd cheese). The formed dumplings were fried in fat and served with honey and poppy seeds .

In the medieval times, apple dumplings were popular, as well as rice dumplings with cinnamon and ginger. But there were also dumplings made out of white bread and filled with fruit. There were also sweet dumplings with chicken meat. Later on plum, cherry, and apricot combined with potato dough were included. Fruit dumplings of those days were much different from the fruit dumplings which are known today. They were made from chopped, steamed, or boiled apples and stewed sour cherries or pears. These ingredients were mixed with butter or lard and roasted bread crumbs and were seasoned with sugar and cinnamon. From this dough small dumplings were formed, dusted with flour, and fried in lard. Sweet dumplings are esteemed mostly as dessert but also can be enjoyed as main dish. Curd cheese dough, potato dough, glazed dough, strudel dough, and noodle dough are used for wrapping (Fig. 10.4).

Fig. 10.4

Fluffy curd cheese dumplings with vanilla sauce and strawberries

Fluffy Curd Cheese Semolina Dumplings (Obermann and Kröpfl 2009)

• 100 g butter

• 2 egg yolks

• 2 egg whites

• 500 g curd cheese

• 100 g semolina

• 100 g flour

• 1 tablespoon salt

• 50 g butter

• 100 g bread crumbs

Whisk butter and egg yolks until foamy and add in the curd cheese, semolina, flour, and salt. Beat the egg whites stiff and fold them slowly into the mixture. Form small dumplings and simmer in salted water for ca. 15 min. Melt 50 g butter in a pan and fry the bread crumbs carefully in it. Put the cooked dumplings in the pan and fry them in the browned bread crumbs . You can serve them with strawberries and vanilla sauce.

Apricot Dumplings (Hohenlohe 2005)

• 1 kg mealy potatoes

• 1 pinch of salt

• 3 egg yolks

• Flour

• 750 g equally sized apricots

• Lump sugar

• 150 g butter

• 100 g bread crumbs

• Sugar for sprinkling

The apricots are skinned, sliced, and pitted after blanching in boiling water. Cook the potatoes in their peel, peel them, and pass them through a strainer or potato press. Mix salt with the egg yolks and the flour to a smooth dough. Cut the dough into squares and put an apricot which is prepared with lump sugar into the middle of each square, fold the dough around the fruit, and form a dumpling. Simmer the dumplings in plenty of boiling salt water for 10 min. Meanwhile roast the bread crumbs in butter until they are golden brown. Lift the dumplings out of the water with a slotted spoon, allow the water to drip off, and roll the dumplings in the bread crumbs. And then they are sprinkled with icing sugar and served.

Yeast Dumplings (Gössl 2003)

• Yeast dough:

  • 25 g fresh yeast

  • 250 mL milk

  • 100 g sugar

  • 1 pinch salt

  • 1 pinch vanilla sugar

  • A little bit grated lemon zest

  • 1 tablespoon rum

  • 4 egg yolks or 2 eggs

  • 500 g flour

  • 80 g butter

• Filling: Plum sauce

• For basting:

  • Butter

  • Powdered sugar

  • 150 g poppy seed

Crumble yeast in lukewarm milk; add sugar, spices, egg yolks, sieved flour, and then the gently heated butter. Beat to a smooth dough until it can be lifted easily from the dish in one piece.

Let the yeast dough rise for about 60 min. Fill palm-sized pieces with plum sauce and close it carefully and form dumplings. Leave the dumplings to rest on a floured board. Put them in boiling salt water for about 10 min. Remove the dumplings from the water, douse them with hot, golden brown butter and sprinkle them with powdered sugar and poppy seeds.

Yeast dumplings also can be steamed: fill the pot half full with water, clamp a clean cloth over the pot rim, lay the dumplings on it, close the lid, and let rise in the steam.