Kaiserschmarrn (Austrian Torn Pancakes With Plum Jam)

These pancakes are buttery, airy, and intentionally imperfect, so every bite gets crisp edges and tender crumb.

Beating the egg whites with sugar (rather than using egg whites alone) creates a quick and easy meringue, which has a softer, more spreadable texture that incorporates more easily into the batter without deflating.
A rapid caramel formed in the pan after cooking the pancake coats the torn pieces, giving them a crispy, crackly crust.
Two cooking methods in the recipe let you prioritize the results you want: in the oven for less active cooking and a fluffier pancake, or fully on the stovetop for more deeply browned and crispy bits and a shorter cooking time.

At night, the city of Vienna queues up. Lines radiate from the city's many würstelstands, offering a quick sausage and beer to cap off the night, or fuel an even later one. One line, though, smack dab in the city center under the imposing spire of St. Stephen's Cathedral, is for a different, sweeter snack: kaiserschmarrn at Demel, a cafe and bakery dating to 1786 that still proudly boasts a royal warrant that has technically been defunct since the end of the First World War. There are mostly tourists in this line, but it offers them a glimpse into (or, really, a taste of) one of Vienna's iconic dishes.

Kaiserschmarrn, which I have to check how to spell every time I write it, is a fluffy, crispy, buttery pancake that's been deliberately torn to shreds, then (usually) showered in powdered sugar and served with a bright and fragrant plum compote or jam. The torn pieces of pancake are cloudlike, thanks to beaten egg whites in the batter, and glazed with a shattering layer of caramel made directly in the pan. Depending on your preference, the pieces are sometimes studded with rum-soaked raisins.

Kaiserschmarrn has quickly become my favorite of all sweet pancakes because it is easy to prepare, far more nuanced in flavor and texture than most such pancakes, and, in a wonderful twist for the cook, totally screwed up on purpose. Flipping the pancake so it ends up a broken, batter-splattered mess is not just fine here—it's actually the goal.

There's an inherent duality to kaiserschmarrn. Its refinement of flavor and texture nods to its royal origins ("kaiser" means emperor in German, as it's said to be named after Franz Joseph I, who ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire until his death in 1916), while its torn bits ("schmarrn" means a mess) seem humble and plain, the kind of kitchen mistake you wouldn't normally present to der Kaiser.

This is fancy food for the people, or maybe the people's food fit for a king, which means everyone is going to love it. In this way, kaiserschmarrn is not merely a dessert, but at times a meal unto itself: A culinary tour guide in Vienna told me it's considered a viable dinner option, a smile spreading across her face as she remembered all the times during her childhood that her mother had declared it a kaiserschmarrn night for dinner. It makes me wonder if I should at least occasionally hit pause on the nutritious dinners we routinely put in front of my own kids and serve them pancakes instead.

Viennese Kaiserschmarrn: A Closer Look

Earlier this fall, I was one of those tourists in the line at Demel. I was determined to eat kaiserschmarrn while on a trip hosted by the Vienna tourism association, so I snuck off after hours with a few others to grab an order from Demel's street-facing takeaway counter. Right behind the ordering point is the cook, allowing you to watch your kaiserschmarrn being made while you wait. That was helpful to me as a recipe writer, because I could study his technique.

He melted what looked like pounds of yellow butter into three large metal pans, each the size of a washtub—then poured deep containers of thick batter into them, filling the pans from edge to edge. As the bottoms of the giant pancakes slowly browned, he used putty knives to cut and lift sections to slide more butter underneath. When the bottom side was ready, he flipped the gooey, half-cooked mass in sections, with the batter oozing onto the cooked parts, and added yet more butter. The final step was to chop the pancake pieces into even smaller chunks, push them to the edges of the pans, and spoon granulated sugar onto the exposed metal to melt into a quick caramel. A final toss to coat the pancake pieces, and they were ready to hand out in paper cones.

Since then, I have cooked up batches of kaiserschmarrn at home, I've watched dozens of Austrian instructional videos from both home cooks and chefs, I've analyzed several of the most famous recipes, and I've come up with my own version that borrows a bit of this and a bit of that from all of it. It is, if I may say so, pitch-perfect.

My recipe is written with two cooking methods: fully on the stovetop or baked in the oven. I will explain the advantages of each below. It also gives you the option of the rum raisins, if that appeals (from what I gather, it's a divisive topic in Austria; you're free to decide for yourself if you're team raisins or not). I also offer a recipe for homemade zwetschkenröster, the lightly spiced plum compote commonly served alongside the pancakes. You're free to use store-bought jam or even applesauce, which some do, though others find it as objectionable as raisins.

The Key Techniques for the Best Kaiserschmarrn

Kaiserschmarrn is a soufflé pancake, meaning the whites are beaten to aerate them and then folded into the batter. This creates a much fluffier, airier, tender crumb, though one of the strengths of kaiserschmarrn is that it is not merely a soufflé pancake, all fluff and softness with no contrasting texture to add depth and interest. Because it's torn up and well browned all over, then tossed in a crackly caramel glaze, you get the full spectrum of texture from cloud to crispy crunch and everything in between.

A few key steps are essential to nailing this panoply of textures, and it all starts with the eggs.

The Hidden Meringue

The first time I made kaiserschmarrn at home, I separated the yolks and whites, beat the whites, and made a custard base with the yolks by whisking them with milk, vanilla, and sugar. Then I whisked the custard into the flour to make a batter, and finally folded the whites into that. It worked very well.

Later, though, I watched a couple videos of some of the best bakeries in Austria preparing the dish and noticed that they add the sugar to the whites, not the yolks, and beat them only to soft—not stiff—peaks. I tried it out, and I think it helps. By adding sugar to the whites while they're being beaten, you create a softer, more easily manipulated foam that folds more readily into the batter and weathers all the tearing and tossing in the pan without collapsing or degassing as much. It may not be as light and airy as stiffly beaten egg whites alone, but it will hold up better, and anyway, the point isn't to make a soufflé here—we don't need maximum loft, just lightness.

Oven Versus Stovetop

Another point at which views diverge is the cooking method. Some melt butter on the stovetop, add the batter, then move it to the oven to bake until just set, while others cook the kaiserschmarrn on the stovetop from start to finish, as one would with buttermilk pancakes. I've tried it both ways and I see advantages and disadvantages to each.

Oven Method: There are a couple of clear benefits to using the oven. One is that it's easier: You add the batter to the skillet, then bake it until it's ready to tear and serve. There's no futzing with drippy batter and a half-cooked puffy pancake, no careful heat management to avoid burning the kaiserschmarrn as it cooks. Plus, the oven method produces a more dramatic oven spring (it's kinda right there in the name), leading to a puffier, more soufflé-like texture that carries through to the serving plate. If lightness is your goal, the oven method is for you.

On the flip side, cooking in the oven takes longer than the more intense direct heat of the stovetop, and the oven's more gentle heat also means you will likely get fewer dramatically contrasting bits of crispy browned exterior on the torn pieces. In a sense, you trade drama and depth for a more refined lightness.

Stovetop Method: On the stovetop, the pancake cooks more quickly and browns more deeply, though it can burn more easily. You won't get as dramatic a rise as it cooks, leading to pieces of kaiserschmarrn that are denser but also, at times, custardier. The process requires more constant attention and runs a higher risk of going off the rails, especially if you accidentally scorch the food. Still, the payoff is a gutsier, more deeply flavorful plate of shredded pancake with a broader range of textures, though none quite as light and fluffy as the oven can produce.

Additional Recipe Tips

While the idea of separating eggs and beating the whites into a meringue may sound more laborious than your average pancake, I’ve found that in practice, kaiserschmarrn actually feels easier (and I beat my egg whites by hand!). The time added to beat and fold in the whites is saved in the cooking, because instead of having to make batch after batch of individual pancakes, the kaiserschmarrn batter all goes in at once, an ample pool of it, and cooks in a short time. The built-in sloppiness of the stovetop method relieves you of all the fretting pancakes require: spacing them perfectly to maximize the batch count but not have them flow into each other, carefully separating them if they do flow into each other, and then carefully flipping each without it splatting on top of an adjacent pancake or the side of the pan.

Here are a few more tips for the best kaiserschmarrn:

Use a real vanilla bean, if you can. Pure vanilla extract works just fine if you don't have a bean, but the scraped seeds add a more complex aroma to the pancakes that carries through to the plate and makes it seem more special. Plus, you can drop the scraped pod into the compote to flavor it as well.
Choose your pan wisely. I've tested this recipe in a few different pans with success. A nonstick pan will be the easiest to work with, but you may not get as much crispiness. A well-seasoned cast iron or carbon steel pan can work great, though you'll need to be careful with heat management; they don't conduct heat as well, which means you'll have to pay attention to hot spots, and they hold heat well, which means that if things start to burn, you may have trouble hitting the brakes fast enough. A stainless-steel pan can also work, though sticking will be a bigger risk; make sure to get the butter nice and hot before the batter goes in, which will help it form a cooked skin on the bottom before it has a chance to fuse to the pan.

Tear with a fork for the best texture. The cook at Demel chopped the pancake with his putty knives, and you can do something similar with spatulas at home, but when it comes time to break the pancake down to the smallest pieces, you'll get the most interesting irregular shapes and jagged edges if you tear them with a fork instead of just cutting them up.