It’s warm, sweet, sticky, and sells like hotcakes in Prague. Yet the origins of the city’s favorite edible souvenir probably lie in the mysterious east.
Prague long ago was dubbed the “city of a hundred spires” for the abundance of pointed roofs on its churches and palaces. Today, architectural masterpieces are no longer the only canonical structures that are synonymous with the city. The distinctive cylindrical pastry called trdelnik can be found in the hands of most of the millions of annual visitors to the Czech capital.
The sweet chimney cake is baked on an open charcoal fire at any of dozens of stands and kiosks dotted around the historical center of Prague. Dough is spun around a wooden rod, or trdlo, to give the finished pastry its hollow shape, and when baked it’s sprinkled with sugar, cinnamon, and a mix of nuts. There are also variations where the pastry is stuffed with whipped cream, ice cream, or chocolate spreads.
The ubiquity of this treat probably gives many visitors the impression that the delicacy is infused with rich Czech history and culture, but they couldn’t be further from the truth. Despite its raging popularity, the only definite thing known about the trdelnik seems to be that it is delicious.
EU Honors Slovak City’s Non-Crumbly Cake
Transylvania’s claim to be the original home of the trdelnik looks strong, yet the legal right to the name belongs to a town hundreds of kilometers to the west. In 2007, just three years after Slovakia entered the European Union, the European Commission granted “protected designation of origin” status to the chimney cake made in and around the city of Skalica, just a stone’s throw from the Czech border. Known as Skalicky trdelnik, the delicacy “has been baked on rollers since the beginning of the 19th century and is still baked in the same way today,” in the EC’s expert opinion.
The genuine Skalica chimney cake must have a soft consistency, not hard or crumbly. The EC further defines its odor and taste as “delicious, pleasant, of baked produce, chopped nuts, apricot kernels, and vanilla; must not be yeasty, stale, or smoky.” Detailed instructions for large-scale production are helpfully given in the Official Journal of the European Union.
Vaamika Shrivastava, 20, tried chimney cakes for the first time during a visit to Prague. She still believes it to be native to the city.
“It is kind of the highlight of my trip to Prague, if I am being honest,” she says. “Once I took the first bite of the warm, doughy, cinnamon-y cake, I was in love. My brother and his friends made me try it with ice cream, and it was like a party in my mouth.”
Paternity Disputes
While the vendors who sell countless chimney cakes in Prague may not have researched its history in depth, their claims for its Czech origin may not stand up to scrutiny. A Florida-based boutique bakery suggests that the first recipe for what Hungarians call kurtoskalacs appeared in a cookbook in 17th-century Transylvania. Still others stick to the story that a Hungarian general brought the recipe to Slovakia when it belonged to the Hungarian kingdom.
Mark Baker, a travel writer who has lived in Prague for over 30 years, says, “I don’t remember trdelnik from the 1990s at all.” For sure, the trdelnik wasn’t around before the ’90s, he continues.
“So, it’s about as traditional as baseball in the Czech Republic.”
As for the “tradition” that local trdelnik-makers claim for their product, “most people have no idea about traditional dishes in any country in Europe when they’re traveling outside of their home country,” Baker says.
Drawing on his experience, Baker, too, leans to the theory that the treat originated in a Hungarian-speaking region in the days when Hungary spanned a wide swath of Europe.
Himal Pandey, 23, an exchange student in Budapest, would probably agree.
“You can find flavored chimney cakes everywhere [in Budapest], mostly near tourist spots. But, if you want ones with different cream fillings, you’d have to go to an area targeted for tourists,” he observes.
The blur around the history of the trdelnik only serves to highlight the colorful territorial tapestry of Central Europe throughout time. Politics has also played a role in shaping the pastry’s career.
“I will tell you my theory,” Baker says. With no barriers to entry after the fall of communism in 1989, Prague and Czechoslovakia faced a swelling tide of mass tourism. “This left a lot of business opportunities for people to develop traditional things to sell and give to tourists. In this vacuum, that’s when trdelnik came.”
“There are legitimate traditional Czech pastries, sweets, savories, things that could be compared to a chimney cake like a kolac or even baked gingerbread,” he adds. “These are more closely identified with Czech culture and Prague and those are being squeezed out of the market by trdelnik.”
“The next generation that is coming up, kids who are born in the Czech Republic, see all the trdelnik stands,” Baker says. “It’s a great food for kids. It’s about dough, sugar, and ice cream. What’s not to like when you’re a kid? So, I have a feeling that the next generation of Czechs will actually just accept trdelnik as a part of their own culture. That’s how traditions are actually made.”
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Story and photos by Anudit Basnet, a student of journalism at Northwestern University in Qatar and currently an editorial intern with Transitions.
