Knedle: A Potato Dressed for Dessert

The old part was new to me

Plum-filled knedle belong to a wider tradition of sweet dumplings across Central and Eastern Europe. The name itself comes from the German Knödel; in Vojvodina, plum-filled ones often go by gomboce, from the Hungarian gombóc. The potato dough was not a recent experiment. It was the part that had been there all along.

So were the breadcrumbs. Plum knedle are traditionally rolled in breadcrumbs toasted in butter and sweetened with sugar. Potato, then breadcrumbs: in Japan, the next stop would have been the fryer.

Ferdinand uses a traditional dough made with fresh potatoes, then expands the possibilities with fillings such as chocolate, nut creams and fruit. The familiar plum still has a place.

Tradition, apparently, did not object to chocolate.

The shop was finding new things to put inside an old sweet. I was still catching up with the outside.

My choice was Čoko-narandža, chocolate and orange. The label next to it offered yuzu and blueberry. I had come all the way from Japan to choose the other citrus. On the pale plate, it stood as a large brown ball with a little golden topping. The fork beside it gave a useful indication of scale. This was a sweet for which providing a knife did not seem excessive.

Beneath the coating

Cutting it open revealed a thick layer of pale dough around the filling. The colourful display had offered plenty to look at; the cross-section explained rather more about what I was going to eat.