In Search of Schaum Torte
A Once-Popular Wisconsin Dessert Is Now Hard to Find; plus Odds and Ends.
Nearly every region of the United States has its local food specialities. And it doesn’t take long for a newcomer to find them out. You just have to have a curious mind. If you’re in Columbia, South Carolina, for instance, and ask a few questions about the local eating situation, it will not be long before someone tells you about burgers topped with pimento cheese. And you won’t be in Binghamton, New York, for more than a few hours before an Uber driver urges you to try the local spiedie sandwiches.
But some regional foods lie deep under cover and are only sussed out by the most persistent of sleuths. Take the Schaum Torte.
I grew with all of of Wisconsin’s many regional specialties: bratwurst, cheese curds, Brandy Old-Fashioneds, custard, ice cream drinks, fried perch, kringle, fish boils, etc. But somehow, until recently, I had plum forgot about Schaum Torte.
The German dessert fell back onto my radar several years ago when my sister and her family took my father out to eat at the Nite Cap Inn in Palmyra, Wisconsin. The Nite Cap Inn is little more than a small dining hall connected to a tavern. It serves food a few nights a week and is famous for its Friday night fish fry. My sister took a picture of the wall menu featuring the nightly specials and shared it with my family. One of the specials was Schaum Torte.
The name was vaguely familiar. Had my mother ever made it? My grandmother? I couldn’t be sure. (It turned out that both had made it.)
I looked it up. It’s a simple treat, basically a stiff base of meringue topped with fresh fruit (often strawberries) and whipped cream and/or ice cream. You need a lot of egg whites and sugar to make it, assisted by salt, sometimes cream of tartar and sometimes vanilla and/or almond extract. The German name translates to “foam cake.” Think of it as strawberry shortcake with a backbone.
A little more digging revealed that the delicacy was a Wisconsin thing perpetuated mainly by people of German descent, and is largely unknown outside the state. When I searched “Schaum Torte” on Newspapers.com, a database of old newspapers, there were 3,948 results. Nearly half of them were from Wisconsin papers.
It’s not a dessert for every cook or for every eater. It seems like a simple construct on the surface, but there’s a delicate balancing act that must be achieved. A 1988 article in The Sheboygan Press stated, “At its best, it simply melts in your mouth. At its worst, it is an indestructible and inedible styrofoam puck.”
I consulted some of my vintage cookbooks and Schaum Torte popped up a couple times. There was a recipe in Be Milwaukee’s Guest, a collection of recipes put out by the Junior League of Milwaukee in 1959. The recipe came from one Marion Gross Van Deven. (The book actually has a whole section dedicated to tortes.)
There was also a recipe in the Wisconsin section of The United States Regional Cookbook, published by Ruth Berolzheimer in 1939. (Again, there were many other torte recipes, including Dobos Torte, Linzer Torte, Himmeltorte and Sacher torte. Wisconsin loved its tortes once upon a time.)
Finding restaurants that still serve Schaum Torte isn’t easy. I quickly found out that my best bets were going to be German restaurants and supper clubs. The first we pinpointed was Kegel’s Inn in the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis, a German restaurant founded in 1924.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a popular dessert,” Susan Kegel told a reporter in 2019, “as it surprises many visitors by even existing.”
I love Kegel’s Inn and had been looking for an excuse to go back. So, when my aunt and cousin asked to join us for dinner, I suggested Kegel’s.
The meal was good and filling, but it was all a prelude to the Schaum Torte.
The dessert came to the table as the very picture of “ugly delicious.” It was in a shallow glass bowl. The merigne was a pedestal in the center, whipped cream and ice cream piled upon it. Strawberries streamed down its sides. On all four sides of the merigne were dollops of more whipped cream. It was very sweet. Mary Kate thought the excessive ice cream was a bit of a cheat, Kegel’s way of making an old-fashioned dessert more palatable to modern tastes. However, some of the old recipes call for ice cream. I had to admit it lacked delicacy, both visually and in terms of flavor. But I kept nibbling at it until it was almost gone. It grew on me.
A few weeks later, we were headed out to Palmyra, Wisconsin, which is a 45-minute drive west of Milwaukee. The town is in the southeastern corner of Jefferson County, which is shaped like a square. I did not grow up in Palmyra—I lived in nearby Eagle—but I attended junior high and high school there.
Palmyra was founded in 1846. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, it was well known for its mineral springs, which were thought to confer health. People traveled from all over to take the cure. It’s been a sleepy town for the last century. Its population is currently 1,719.
Dining options were always few in Palmyra. But the Nite Cap Inn held a special place among the town’s inhabitants. It is located just outside of town, across the railroad tracks. The restaurant is housed in a long, two-story building made of the blonde brick so common to southeastern Wisconsin structures. The building, which dates to the 1850s, was a railroad hotel.
The current restaurant opened in 1962 under the ownership of John and Betty Betenz. Betty Betenz was renowned for her potato pancakes, so much so that they were frequently written up in local papers. Even then, the Friday night fish fry was the big attraction. Signs inside today say “since 1988,” which must be a reference to current ownership of Helmut and Sue Nestler. (That means that the Nite Cap Inn I knew as a kid was the Betenz Nite Cap.)
The Nite Cap Inn is open only on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The front door leads you to a small room dominated by a classic Midwest-style, keyhole-shaped bar with seats on all four sides. But look to the right and you’ll find a doorway leading to a small dining room with about ten tables.
As we entered, I saw “Schaum Torte” clearly written on a dry erase board near the door, along with other specials. I asked the hostess if it was indeed on the menu that night. “Unless we run out,” she said. When we expressed our worries that the kitchen might run out before our 45-minute wait for a table, the bartender took our name and slipped a note to the kitchen. However, when we finally sat down, the server knew of no such note. No matter: there were still tortes available. Were they popular? “All our desserts are popular,” said the waitress.
The Nite Cap Inn torte was a much more subdued and disciplined affair than the one at Kegel’s Inn. The meringue sat on one side of the glass plate, a single scoop of vanilla ice cream on the other. Strawberries were in between and all was topped with a dollop of strawberry whipped cream. It was a DIY dessert. You tried to get a bit of all four components in each forkful. There wasn’t a weak link, ingredient-wise; every part tasted right.
On the way back to Milwaukee, we stopped at Joey Gerard’s, one of the few modern restaurants that makes a big deal out of serving Schaum Torte. Joey Gerard’s is a modern facsimile of a Wisconsin supper club, the work of prominent local restaurateurs Joe and Paul Bartolotta. And, let me tell you, there are few things worse. You can’t replicate the atmosphere of an old supper club any more than you can open a new dive bar. The effort just comes off as false. Case in point: Joey Gerard’s charges for their relish tray, an appetizer that usually comes free at real supper clubs.
We had the torte at the bar. I asked the bartender why more restaurants didn’t serve the dessert. “Maybe because they’re difficult to make,” the bartender said. “It’s an old-fashioned dessert. Young people don’t know what it is.” A 2019 article said Joey Gerard’s served 100 Schaum Tortes a week, which is, quite frankly, not a lot for a restaurant as huge as Gerard’s is.
I told the bartender my mother used to make them. She told me her mother used to make them and that they were popular with Polish families as well as German ones. Schaum Torte seems to be the kind of dish that people’s mothers and grandmothers made. While doing research for this article, many of the articles that came up when I searched the term “Schaum Torte” were obituaries for old ladies who were remembered for their excellent versions. Here are two such notices, both from this year:
The meringue took the form of a donut with ice cream in the middle. On top was whipped chantilly cream with the consistency of soft serve. There was an artful drizzle of something encircling the dessert, as well as on top. The rim of the plate was accented by a light snowfall of confectioners sugar. It was very much a fancy, plated Schaum Torte.
We had trouble identifying the fruit in play. As first we thought it was the traditional strawberry. By the end, we were pretty sure it was raspberry. I thought the meringue a bit stale, and I missed the dominant strawberry flavor. Somehow tart raspberries don’t have the homey, comforting taste that strawberries do. But, as usual, we finished it.
The next day, we stopped in a vintage shop looking for bargains and I found a cookbook assembled by Gordon Hinkley. Hinkley was a hugely popular radio personality who spend 42 years on the Milwaukee AM station WTMJ. He died in 2013. Sure enough, there was a recipe for Schaum Torte. This dessert was once deeply in Wisconsin’s bones, but at this point it’s more of a phantom limb.
We thought we were done with our torte hunt. But my Aunt Sandy had other ideas. We went to her house for dinner and what had she prepared for dessert but Schaum Torte! The recipe came from a softcover cookbook put out in 1977 by Mader’s, Milwaukee’s most famous German restaurant. I asked Sandy if making it was hard. “No, it’s easy,” she said. (For her, maybe it is. She worked at the Taste of Home kitchens for many years.)
Sandy surprised us by serving her torte with fresh peaches from Michigan. This opened my eyes as to the alternate fruit possibilities of the dessert.
Inspired by Sandy, we decided to try and make our own homemade Schaum Torte. By this point we had several recipes to choose from, including some I had found in old newspapers. They varied mainly in the advised oven temperature and how long you were supposed to cook the meringue. We settled on the recipe in the Hinkley book because it was the easiest and took the least amount of time.
Recipe: Individual Schaum Tortes
Since other Schaum Torte recipes called for leaving the cake in the oven overnight or something equally as daunting, like making a whole cake in a springform pan (I can tell you the only thing scarier than making an individual Schaum Torte is making an entire cake!), we made Gordon Hinkley’s version, which seemed to be dumbed down for us first-timers. One piece of advice I can give you came from an old article where the elderly lady said to use room temperature eggs. I think that is a good tip. Now we’re off!
Ingredients:
1 1/2 teaspoons of cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon of salt
3/4 cup egg whites
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 packages (10 ounces each) frozen raspberries, thawed and drained. (You can use any fruit. We substituted fresh strawberries.)
1 cup heavy cream whipped
Add cream of tartar and salt to egg whites and beat until foamy; add sugar gradually, beating until stiff enough to hold its shape. Add extracts and mix well. Shape into eight mounds on baking sheet covered with greased brown paper. Bake in preheated 275°F oven for about 50 minutes. Cool five minutes, then remove from paper and cool thoroughly on wire racks. Fill with whatever fruit you choose and top with whipped cream. Yields eight servings.
Mary Kate here! Now, I’d like to add my own pointers, if I may. Use a hand mixer or stand mixer. We don’t have one and I beat the egg whites by hand, which is okay if your making Tom and Jerrys, but once you add the sugar it’s more like quicksand and my arms are still sore. Also, I drew circles on my brown paper to give me a template for the meringue shape. And finally, like my mother always said, “cook it until it’s done”— don’t be afraid to touch the little tortes while they are baking to make sure they are firm and cooked through.
As with most of these “home made” cookbooks, they leave out a lot here. Hinkley’s recipe doesn’t talk about macerating the fruit and I believe you should. There are so many liquids you can use to impart flavor into the fruit, but I just did what my mother did: a few teaspoons of sugar and a little water, sprinkled over the sliced fruit, then stirred and kept in the fridge. When it’s time to use the fruit, I strained it over a bowl so it wasn’t sloppy and kept the juice for another use.
Finally, Hinkley doesn’t talk about whipping the cream either (maybe this is why this recipe was so easy, lol). I’ve been doing this since I was a child. For a cup of whipping cream, you’ll need a cup of cream, a couple tablespoons of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla. Beat the whipped cream (some people choose to chill their bowls and beaters first) until stiff, but watch out—a lot of people go too far and make butter. Usually I put my whipped cream in the fridge in a ziplock bag. When it’s time to decorate the dessert, I clip the corner of the bag and squeeze it out. This way it will keep its shape more. (I actually put the Shaum Torte batter in a ziplock bag too, that helped to “pile it up” on the sides.)
Good luck! If you have any questions, please email me at marykatemurray@me.com.
—Mary Kate
Odds and Ends…
Dante is behind the New York Cocktail Company, which is putting out four elegantly packaged Negronis (Classic Negroni, Chocolate Negroni, Mezcalito Negroni and the Espresso Negroni). NYCC was founded by industry veterans Linden Pride, Rodrigo Leme and Malte Barnekow, and the drinks were crafted by Dante bartender Renato Tonelli. The company was inspired by Dante’s early work during the pandemic putting out bottled cocktails to go. Each 375 ml bottle makes about four full cocktails and costs $26.99. They are available for purchase in select New York wine and spirit retailers. The cocktails employ several local spirits, including Brooklyn Gin and bitters by Forthave and Faccio Brutto. I recently stopped by Dante to taste test the quartet and found them among the most balanced and polished of the many RTD cocktails I’ve tasted over the past four years. The Negroni, in particular, is flawless. New York Cocktail Company plans to release additional cocktails fashioned by noted New York bartenders, including Jeff Bell (PDT) and Masahiro Urushido (Katana Kitten)… I wrote something for Vinepair about the very particular house Martini created by Sarah Morrissey at Le Veau d’Or and the history, both old and new, of the use of sidecars with stirred drinks… Former Chicago Tribune beer and travel writer Josh Noel has written an entire book about the much loved/maligned bitter liquor Jeppson’s Malört. It’s called Malört: The Redemption of a Revered & Reviled Spirit. A New York launch party will be held at Porchlight on Sept. 16 at 6:30 p.m. I will conduct a Q&A with Noel at the event. Tickets can be purchased here… Bar pro Maxwell Britten (Maison Premiere) and award-winning filmmaker Don Hardy (Citizen Penn, Linda Perry: Let It Die Here) have collaborated on the new documentary, BAR. It’s about the famous Beverage Alcohol Resource’s 5-day intensive spirits and cocktails Certification Program. (I took and passed the course back in 2008.) Among the bar world figures featured in the documentary are Dale DeGroff, Doug Frost, Steve Olson, Paul Pacult and David Wondrich. The film will have its premiere at the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sept. 18. A Q&A after the screening with Britten and Hardy will be conducted by yours truly… The Dukes Martini cult spreads. There is a version of the lethally strong English take on the Martini now on the menu at Red Hook Tavern… Beyoncé Knowles-Carter caught the attention of all the spirits world last week when bottles of her new whiskey, Sir Davis, were sent through the mails. The Texas-bottled whiskey, which is aged in Sherry casks, is a collaboration between the singer and Dr. Bill Lumsden, the acclaimed master distiller behind of such Scotch brands Glenmorangie and Ardbeg. Though trumpeted as an American whiskey, it drinks more like a Scotch or Japanese whisky—no surprise given the involvement of Lumsden—and a silky smooth one at that. The price is $90 … There is a new steak house option in midtown Manhattan for those who keep kosher. It is called Reserve Cut and it opened yesterday, Sept. 8. Among the cocktails, the Truffle Delight certainly draws your attention by its use of black truffle and its price: $45. But the mixture of Clase Azul tequila, Luxardo bianco vermouth and saffron vodka truly works as a potent sipper either during or before dinner… Playwright, librettist and critic David Cote will hold a reading of his new play on Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. at The Wild Project, 195 East 3rd St., between Aves A and B. It’s called Saint Joe and “rewrites ancient myth as a modern-day story of adoptive families and the tragic distance of divinity.” It is performed by Tom Staggs and Moira Stone… I finally got to check out Good Guy’s, the wine bar opened by the Attaboy team and situated right next door to their classic Lower East Side cocktail bar. It’s a narrow, cozy place, as light as Attaboy is dark. In a way, it’s a mirror image of Attaboy, a small bar with a few seats opening up to a few charming booths in back. I tried a Wimbledon, a fizzy spin on a Pimm’s Cup, and a tasty Espresso and Tonic from the N/A section. We stationed ourselves at the front window, where we were treated to a unique show of New York street life in the form of people waiting to get into Attaboy… Tip Top Cocktails, the RTD drink, continues to get into the modern classic cocktail game. A month after they launched a canned version of the Naked & Famous, they have introduced a canned Paper Plane and Penicillin… Great Bars of New York City: 30 of Manhattan's Favorite Storied Drinking Establishments, a new book by James and Karla Murray, will be released on Sept. 9. Watch this space for an upcoming interview with the authors.
I love Schaum Torte! One of the partners at work just alerted me to a German restaurant in Whitefish Bay that has Schaum Torte! We’re going!
Mary Kate’s stylized torte looks to be the best of them all! 👏 👏