Food chronicles: Krapfen

I have in mind the glimmerings of a series about Austrian food.  Let's start with Krapfen!

Look familiar?  A jelly doughnut!  Yum!  But with apricot jam inside.  Apricot is 'Marille' (pronounced 'marilla').  Krapfen are found all over the place - in the nearest grocery store to us, Billa, they're the first thing you see when you walk in, and typically if it's toward the end of the day, only the 6-packs are left, if even those.  The dough is not overly sweet, a little bit dense, and the apricot has a little bit of a floral tinge, which can verge on perfumey and be a little startling.  Also, the jam can be  elusive, in a large glob at one edge.  You have to do some planning to balance out the filling with the dough, so that you don't end up with a mouthful of just jam at the end.

You can see how that's the case with the one in this photo.  This was maybe our second day in Graz.  You understand I waste no time in diving into food culture, especially where there are sweets involved! You'll notice in the photo that this is a 3-pack.  I was late to the store, and there were no more singles left.  Of course, you can get them singly at a bakery, of which there are tons around the city.  The best best Krapfen I have had yet was at breakfast at the famous Cafe Tomaselli (since 1705) in Salzburg.

Now here's the slightly complicated (and amusing) part about food names when you start to move around.  You know what a jelly doughnut is called in Germany, right, after Pres. Kennedy called himself one in a speech in Berlin? ("Ich bin ein Berliner!") But in Berlin, a jelly doughnut is not called a Berliner, it's Pfannkuchen.  But Pfannkuchen, in the rest of Germany, means pancakes.  Confusing? Yes.

What's even more amusing to me is how at every meal we have had with friends, this whole what-is-this-food-called-where topic never fails to come up.  Everyone tends to be from somewhere different (mostly in Germany and Austria), and this regionality of names is so pervasive.  And while my language understanding is getting better and better, at the start of a new conversation topic I usually need some time to catch the drift.  Well, when I start recognizing various names for the same thing going around the table, I know it's the what-do-you-call-it-where-you're-from name game.