Vienna's Sacher-Torte - recipe still secret 175 years on - Yahoo! News

Vienna's Sacher-Torte - recipe still secret 175 years on - Yahoo! News: "Vienna's Sacher-Torte - recipe still secret 175 years on "


by Gabrielle Grenz Sun Apr 22, 2:37 AM ET
VIENNA (AFP) - What may be the world's most celebrated chocolate cake, Vienna's Sacher-Torte, is feting 175 years since its creator produced a recipe that still remains as closely guarded as a state secret.
"Aside from me, only my pastry chef and his assistant know the recipe, which is kept in a safe," said Elisabeth Gurtler, the dynamic 57-year-old businesswoman who took over the reins of the Hotel Sacher group in 1990, following the death of her husband.
"All that I can say is that we use butter, sugar, eggs, flour, chocolate and jam," she said coyly, adding that ingredients are "all natural" and all from Austria -- except for the chocolate that comes from Belgium and Germany.
The story started in 1832 when the Austrian chancellor at the time, Count Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, asked for a new desert that would impress his guests. His requirement: "don´t make me look a fool tonight!"
When the master chef took ill, a 16-year-old apprentice, Franz Sacher, was entrusted with the task. "He came up with a recipe that would make his job easier," said Gurtler.
The demands of Metternich's daily banquets meant that large quantities of desserts had to be prepared in advance - in the days when there were no refrigerators and no preservatives.
"Even then, we could make Sacher-Torte that would keep for at least a fortnight," said Gurtler.
The dessert consists of two layers of dense chocolate cake with a fine spreading of apricot jam in between. Rich, dark chocolate icing coats the top and sides.
From the few details offered by pastry chef Alfred Buxbaum, it seems the icing makes all the difference. "I use three types of chocolate and we work with about 2,000 litres (quarts) of liquid chocolate on hand at all times," he said, adding he'll be slapped with a "six-figure fine if I say more."
Buxbaum and his partner are the only ones who know the exact proportions for the icing.
Thanks to the success of Franz' creation, his son Eduard opened the Hotel Sacher behind the Viennese opera house in 1876 - not only a showcase for the city's best-known culinary speciality but a landmark in its own right whose notable guests once included John Lennon and Yoko Ono who gave one of their "bed-in" press conferences here on their 1969 peace tour.
Today the Sacher group owns four five-star hotels and produces 360,000 cakes a year, though only the 13 pastry chefs in Vienna are allowed to whip up the "Original Sacher-Torte," now a registered trademark.
Despite others' attempts to tap into the cake's fame, the Sacher group, which was bought by the Gurtler family in 1934, "has won every single copyright infringement case ever brought to trial," 40 to date, according to Gurtler.
The latest incident occurred this month when Irene Sacher, the great-great-granddaughter of Franz Sacher, published what she asserted to be the original recipe in the Austrian newspaper, Kurier.
Gurtler remains unperturbed. "There is only one original Sacher-Torte," she said. "In fact, this is going to be our new advertising slogan."
"No one ever knew the recipe for Coca-Cola and for us it is the same thing."
She also refuses to disclose the company's turnover, saying only one-third of annual production is sold abroad with 40 percent going to neighboring Germany, a hefty 18 percent to the United States and four percent as far away as Japan. Britain also imports seven percent and France five.
In 1998, the Sacher-Torte even made it into the Guinness World Records when Hotel Sacher produced a cake measuring 2.5 metres (just over eight feet) in diameter.