In search of the perfect chocolate cake

What Victoria is to a jam sponge, so is Sacher to chocolate cake. It’s a man, a hotel and a cake and, indeed, shorthand for a city. The lines of people outside the Sacher Hotel café in Vienna for chocolate cake with whipped cream on the side are looking for a Viennese experience, like schnitzel, Strauss waltzes or pictures by Klimt. Sacher cake is something you find everywhere, but this one is grounded in a particular place, the Café Sacher. The 360,000 Sacher tortes of varying sizes that are made yearly in its manufactory and dispatched in classy wooden boxes are the exemplars of a formula that has taken over the world.

The cake predates the hotel. The story goes that in 1832 Prince Metternich was giving a grand dinner, but his chef, Chambellier, fell ill on the day. Tragic, obviously, but fortunately his underling, one Franz Sacher, aged 16, stepped in, and created a chocolate cake for the guests.