Strudel

Strudel with cream.

“Have you tried the strudel here?”

―Hans Landa

A strudel is a type of layered pastry with a sweet filling.

In Inglourious Basterds

At the Chez Maurice restaurant, col. Hans Landa is ordering two strudels, one for himself and the other for Shosanna. When the waiter brings the two strudels, he quickly excuses himself, as he forgot the cream and tells her to wait for the creme and only after the waiter adds some cream, he tells her to enjoy it. Shosanna takes one bite out of the strudel, and agrees that it's good when the colonel asks how was it. She doesn't eat the rest, instead just fiddles a bit with the fork in it. Landa however, eats most of the strudel, and before he departs, he extinguishes his cigarette in the strudel creme.

Trivia

• Since puff pastries (what strudels are) during WWII were made with pig lard (not Kosher) due to wartime butter shortage, Landa's choice of dish for Shosanna could be seen either as a test to see if she's Jewish (as she'd normally reject the food) or he knows who she is and is forcing her into eating non-kosher. The additional cream he orders is another contravention of Kosher rules.
  • However, this is not coherent with the movie scene, as Shosanna tried to eat strudel before cream was brought out, and Landa specifically stops her from eating it without cream. Thus, if Shosanna is following kosher strictly, she should not have shown any sign of trying to eat strudel, or at least hesitate when the strudel was brought out. But there was no such movement, and hence, this hypothesis should go under scrutiny.
    • More additions to criticism of this point. A high end French Restaurant serving VIPs would be able to get butter, even during WWII. Also, a "traditional" strudel wouldn't use a laminated dough at all, just a dough stretched super thin and rolled up. If it did use a laminated dough, filo would be preferred to puff pastry - and that uses oil, not lard. Anyway you look at it, there's little chance the strudel served in that scene would use lard. The cream is kosher as long as the cow it came from was kosher and the bowl used to milk it was clean, which all but the most orthodox Jews would accept. And even if she was told to eat a spoonful of lard point blank - no Jewish dietary law would prevent her since all those are suspended when the situation requires you do it to protect your life.

• The strudel seen in the film is known as "Apfelstrudel".
• One YouTuber cooked the strudel from the film.

Gallery

In Film

Other

External links

• Strudel on Wikipedia