The Galapagos of Strudel
Štruklji and štrukli
Imagine we’re travelers far from home, engaged on a voyage of discovery, and given to pondering essential questions like, Can you still call it prosciutto if it’s made from beef? Or How can simple coffee with milk go under such a bewildering diversity of names?
We arrive in a new land, and we hear from the natives of a dish that sounds quite familiar: a type of pastry made from paper-thin sheets of supple, stretchy dough, rolled up around a fruit filling, and baked until golden brown. If we’re from North America or Western Europe, that will sound like the familiar Austrian dessert Apfelstrudel (“apple strudel”).
Then we encounter this in Ljubljana’s open-air market…
This is just a small part of an enormous marketplace. There are lots of stalls selling produce, cheese, and meat; in this section, you find prepared foods, some traditional and local, and many not (I saw vendors offering Chinese dumplings, Thai noodles, West African kebabs, and Indian snacks).
What’s strange is not just the wide variety of fillings (even Austrian Strudel isn’t limited to apples alone) or that the dish’s name has morphed into štruklji (we’re in a Slavic country, so consonants are going to run wild).
Slavic languages are so fond of consonants that they often leave out the vowels entirely. For example, z (“with”) is not a contraction but how the word is spelled in full. Longer words aren’t immune to this tendency, e.g., trg (“square, plaza”).
Wallnuts are the only commercially viable product of wallflowers, as wallgreens have an unpleasant medicinal taste, raw or cooked.
No, the surprising thing is that these štruklji are prepared in advance and then steamed to order, which is about as far from “baked until golden brown” as possible.
You make your selection from a refrigerated case. My plain Jane choice is on left side of the bottom shelf. I also really wanted to try the pistachio, but I didn’t get a chance before leaving the city.
Twenty minutes later, your štruklji come out of the steamer, piping hot and ready for topping (just a few of the options can be seen in the lower righthand corner of the picture).
Have we discovered a new species of dish? Or is this simply a bizarre local failure to understand the recipe? [1]
Štruklji (their name in Slovene; they’re called štrukli in Croatian) are hard to put in a familiar category. Sometimes, they present like dumplings, other times like a rolled pasta dish, and on yet further occasions (like the ones above) as a damp strudel.
The Strudel-štruklji-štrukli connection is pretty clear from the names; moreover, Strudel is most closely associated with Tyrol, a region now divided between Italy [2] and Austria, with historical and culinary ties to Slovenia. The range of fillings is essentially the same, with fruits, fresh cheese, nuts, and poppy seeds leading the way, followed by less frequently seen savory varieties.
But in Slovenia and Croatia, the dish has evolved numerous subspecies, like Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands. Some of these are so distinct from the iconic (and comparatively mundane) Apfelstrudel that their descent from a common ancestor isn’t immediately apparent.[3]
My choice that particular morning in Ljubljana was a classic savory cheese štruklji. After coming out of the steamer, I had it topped with breadcrumbs browned in pumpkin seed oil (a suggestion from the friendly woman behind the counter).
They’re really into pumpkin seed oil in Slovenia. I even saw (but didn’t have a chance to try) pumpkin seed oil ice cream.
In cross-section, you can see that štruklji have departed from traditional Strudel territory. I’m unsure if I could name another dish that looks quite like this.
A week later, in Ptuj, I had štruklji dumplings, also filled with cheese. These were poached and then served in a hearty wild mushroom sauce.
Domači skutni štrukli z gobovo omako — The only thing I didn’t understand in this dish was the caperberry. Why? Wherefore art thou here?
Finally, in Zagreb, I dined on Zagorski štrukli, a decadent recipe from northern Croatia. The familiar savory cheese štrukli are baked in clotted cream (in this instance, with black truffle), like the richest cannelloni imaginable.
At some point, I will remember to take pictures of what food looks like when you cut into it. It’s embarrassing that I struggle to match wits with even the most vapid Instagrammer.
Not shown: Because I still forget to photograph things I want to write about later, I have no picture of an unusual but very traditional Slovenian dessert štruklj. It’s one of the oldest recipes for a sweet cheese version and startlingly includes tarragon in the filling. This is the first (and only) time I’ve encountered that herb in a dessert, but it makes sense. Tarragon’s flavor has notes of aniseed, a spice common to Central European sweets. Once I got past my surprise, I thought it worked very well.
1 Sort of like what happens to Indian food in most American restaurants or German food in an Indian restaurant. The broad outlines are correct but little else. ↺ BACK
2 The spirit of Imperial Rome has not entirely perished, as Italy has declared lo strudel to be a protected traditional Italian food (under its P.A.T. designation). By that logic, the taco could receive a similar status in the United States. ↺ BACK
3 If we want to trace their lineage further back, it’s pretty clear they are part of the extended börek family of Turkish-influenced pastries and dumplings. All are constructed from an unleavened dough rolled and stretched into thin sheets—like giant dumpling wrappers or very springy pasta. Technically, this is filo (or phyllo) pastry, yet it’s far more supple than the easily fractured, dry tissue paper sold under that name. The cook layers filling on a sheet of dough, then rolls it up, creating a concentric spiral of pastry and contents when seen on its end. From that basic template, you get not only Turkish börek but Bulgarian banitsa, Albanian byrek, South Slavic burek, Hungarian rétes, and the northern Strudel genus. You’ll note that all these societies were either part of or bordering on the Ottoman Empire.↺ BACK