TourMyCountry

Dear Mr. Mandl
I am very sorry to have found on a webpage about Austrian culture a so called "traditional Austrian recipe" that is in reality not an Austrian but a Hungarian recipe. The cake I am speaking of is the Dobos torte which was developed by a Hungarian confectioner whose name was Dobos, as you rightly state in the recipe. In Hungary, you can buy this cake in almost every confectionery, and there also is a confectionery museum József Dobos in a small town called Szentendre near Budapest.
Thus, the "dobostorta" is a real Hungarian and not an Austrian specialty, even though Dobos developed it during the era of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This latter fact does not make it an Austrian invention however... Just as Sacher torte is not a Hungarian invention, even though it was developed during the same era... Therefore, even though you can buy and eat a Sacher torte in Hungary, we would never claim that Sacher would be a traditional Hungarian cake...
I was just wandering how you've got the idea that the cake would be Austrian. Maybe there is an Austrian cooking book in which Austrian people would claim the idea of this cake? It would not surprise me, because I also have a cooking book called "Austrian specialties" in which they present the "Szegediner Gulasch" recipe as their own. Even though it is generally known, that Goulash (gulyas) is a Hungarian specialty as well...
It would be just nice, if Austrian people would concentrate themselves on their own cultural inheritance and not on those of other nations...
Best regards

xxx