Strudel

A strudel (/ˈstruːdəl/, German: [ˈʃtʁuːdəl]) is a type of layered pastry with a filling that is usually sweet. It became popular in the 18th century through the Habsburg Empire. Strudel is most often associated with Austrian cuisine but is also a traditional pastry in the whole area of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The oldest strudel recipes (a Millirahmstrudel and a turnip strudel) are from 1696, in a handwritten cookbook at the Vienna City Library (formerly Wiener Stadtbibliothek). The pastry descends from similar Near Eastern pastries (see baklava and Turkish cuisine).

Etymology

Strudel is an English loanword from German. The word derives from the German word Strudel, which in Middle High German literally means "whirlpool" or "eddy".

In Hungary, it is known as rétes, in Croatia as štrudel, štrudla or savijača, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia as štrudla or savijača, in Slovenia as štrudelj or zavitek, in the Czech Republic as závin or štrůdl, in Poland and Romania as ștrudel, and in Slovakia as štrúdľa or závin.

Strudel (ice)

A strudel /ˈstruːdəl/ (plural: strudel) is a vertical hole in sea ice through which downward jet-like, buoyancy-driven drainage of flood water is thought to occur. This feature is less than a few tens of meters in size and typically occurs within 30 km from a river mouth, in the sea ice expanse that is fastened to the coastline (known as fast ice). Once the water that flooded the ice has completely drained off the ice surface, strudel become recognizable by a radial pattern of feeder channels that lead to the hole. They are elongated and irregularly spaced, with the larger ones up to several kilometers apart. Their distribution tends to be controlled by weak areas in the ice — in places, they line up along fractures or refrozen extensional cracks. The ice sheet where they occur may be 2 m in thickness, at water depths (below the ice) in the order of a few meters.

The term strudel is German, and designates a whirlpool, in reference to the water vortex that forms above these features during drainage. It has been suggested that this vortex could present a hazard for investigators wishing to study this phenomenon in the field, and that this would explain, at least partly, why little is known about strudel.