A cake once started a lawsuit in Vienna that dragged on for years. Two of the city's most famous names went to court over who was allowed to call a chocolate sponge with apricot jam "the original", and over something as small as whether the jam goes in the middle too. The cake is the Sachertorte. It looks plain, it's dark brown, and it comes with a blob of unsweetened cream that tells you it isn't trying to be sweet. Here's where it came from, who won the fight, where to eat a slice, and how to bake something close at home.
What a Sachertorte Actually Is
A Sachertorte is a dense chocolate sponge, brushed with apricot jam and sealed under a smooth, shiny chocolate glaze. In Austria the name is even regulated: the food codex says the batter is made from butter, flour, eggs, sugar and at least 15 percent chocolate, and that the filling is apricot jam. Strawberry, raspberry or peach versions exist in Vienna, but they can't be called Sachertorte.
The cream matters. It's served unsweetened, on the side, and it isn't optional. The cake is dense and not very sweet, so the cold, plain cream is what makes it work. Eaten without it, the cake can seem dry, which is one reason it has a mixed reputation abroad. Food writers say Americans often find it dry and the French often find it too sweet, and defenders answer that it's usually been badly made or served without the cream.
Franz Sacher and the Prince, 1832
The story every guidebook tells goes like this. In 1832, Prince Klemens von Metternich wanted a special dessert for his guests, and a teenage apprentice named Franz Sacher got the job. The hotel's own history page tells it that way, with chocolate, apricot jam and whipped cream as the brief.
Treat it as a good story, not a documented fact. The 1832 date comes from comments by Franz's son Eduard, made in 1888. Franz himself, in a newspaper profile in 1906, placed the cake in the 1840s, at the business he ran in Pressburg, today's Bratislava. Nobody has found a document from either period. What is solid is that cookbook writer Katharina Prato printed a recipe for a chocolate cake "a la Sacher" in the late 1860s or around 1870, and that when Eduard opened Hotel Sacher in 1876, the cake was on the menu.
From there it grew fast. By the late 1880s the cake was being shipped to Paris, Berlin and London, and in 1894 it was written into the Austrian food codex. Eduard's wife Anna ran the hotel for decades after his death, known for her cigars and her French bulldogs, and the cake became part of the hotel's identity.
The Court Fight: Hotel Sacher vs. Demel
In the 1930s the hotel ran into money trouble and went bankrupt. Eduard Sacher junior sold the hotel but separately sold the right to make an "Eduard-Sacher-Torte" to Demel, the court confectioner on Kohlmarkt, which had been supplying the Habsburgs since the 1870s. That left two cakes with the same family name on them. The hotel's new owners registered "Original Sacher-Torte" as a trademark, and in 1954 they sued Demel for using it.
The fight went on for years, and by one count about seven years of it were spent in court. It was about the name, about whether there should be a second layer of jam in the middle of the cake, and even about whether the cake should be made with butter or margarine. The writer Friedrich Torberg, a regular at both places, testified that in Anna Sacher's day the cake was never cut in half and filled. It ended in 1963, and sources disagree on whether it was a judgment or an out-of-court settlement. The result was clear: "Original Sacher-Torte" belongs to the hotel, and Demel sells its own as "Demel's Sachertorte", with a triangular chocolate seal.
The old rule of thumb was that the hotel's cake has two jam layers and Demel's has one. That stopped being true around 2020, when Demel added a middle layer too. Today the easy way to tell them apart is the seal: round and marked "Hotel Sacher Wien" on the hotel's cake, triangular on Demel's. Both keep their recipes secret.
Where to Eat It in Vienna
At the hotel, the cafés are on Kärntner Straße 38, a few steps from the State Opera. The hotel's restaurant page lists Café Sacher and Café Bel Étage for a slice with coffee, and the Confiserie next to the hotel sells boxed cakes daily from 9 am to 10 pm. Demel is a short walk away at Kohlmarkt 14, a neo-baroque room with white-aproned waitresses, and it says plainly that it doesn't take reservations.
Expect a wait at popular hours, since the cafés are on every tourist's list. Prices change so check the current menu before you go. Two ways around a queue: go at an off-peak hour, or buy a slice "to go" at the Confiserie, which sells exactly that.
If you want one to take home, the hotel recommends keeping the boxed cake at 16 to 18 degrees Celsius, not in the fridge, and it ships worldwide to most countries from its online shop. It has been a travel souvenir since the late 1880s, when it was already being shipped to other cities. The hotel also has a branch in Salzburg, on the Salzach, with its own Confiserie, so the 5 days in Salzburg guide has a Sacher stop too.
Bake Something Close at Home
The hotel's recipe is a closely kept secret, and so is Demel's, so nobody outside can bake the original. What follows is a classic home version in the same style, not the hotel's recipe. It makes one cake in a 24 cm (9.5 inch) springform pan.
Cake
- 125 g (4.5 oz) dark chocolate, 55 to 70 percent
- 125 g (9 tbsp) soft butter
- 125 g (1 cup plus 1 tbsp) powdered sugar
- 6 egg yolks and 6 egg whites, at room temperature
- 100 g (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
- 100 g (3/4 cup plus 1 tbsp) all-purpose flour
- A pinch of salt
Jam and glaze
- About 250 g (3/4 cup) apricot jam, warmed and strained
- 200 g (1 cup) granulated sugar and 125 ml (1/2 cup) water
- 200 g (7 oz) dark chocolate, chopped
Heat the oven to 170 C (340 F) and grease and line the pan. Melt the 125 g of chocolate and let it cool until lukewarm. Beat the butter with the powdered sugar until pale and fluffy, then add the yolks one at a time and stir in the chocolate. In a clean bowl, whip the whites with the salt, adding the granulated sugar slowly, until you have stiff, glossy peaks. Fold a third of the whites into the batter to loosen it, then fold in the flour and the rest of the whites gently, so you don't knock out the air.
Bake for about 50 to 60 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Cool it in the pan for ten minutes, then on a rack. Slice it in half, spread jam in the middle and put it back together. Brush the top and sides with warm jam, and let it set for an hour. That thin jam coat is what keeps crumbs out of the glaze.
The glaze is the hard part
Boil the sugar and water for a few minutes, take it off the heat, and stir in the chopped chocolate until it's smooth. Let it cool, stirring now and then, until it's thick enough to coat a spoon but still pourable, usually somewhere around 35 C (95 F). Too hot and it runs off and looks thin. Too cold and it won't flow smooth. Put the cake on a rack over a tray, pour the glaze in one go from the center, and help it over the edges with a palette knife, touching it as little as possible. Let it set at room temperature. Serve with unsweetened whipped cream.
A few tips: the cake tastes better the next day, and it doesn't belong in the fridge, where the glaze goes dull. If you want a Demel-style or hotel-style seal, a piece of chocolate with a name piped on it is enough. Nobody will sue you.
Plan Your Own Slice of Vienna
If you're going to eat the cake where it started, our 5 days in Vienna guide has the rest of the city around it, and the Austria country page is a good place to start planning. Going in December? Our best Christmas markets in Europe post has more for a winter trip, and the hotel's Christmas edition boxed cake is on sale this season. Want to learn where Vienna and Salzburg are first? Try them in a round of the Pinpoint game.
