Engadiner Nusstorte

Walnuts are bound together with caramel and enclosed in a tender, crumbly pastry laid over the base and sides, then covered with a pastry lid. The Engadiner Nusstorte, a representative confection of the canton of Graubünden, is also known as the Bündner Nusstorte. It bears the name of a high valley, and its history also involves craftsmen who worked abroad.

Wrapping the walnut filling in pastry

The outer crust is Mürbteig, a dough that brings together flour, butter, sugar, egg and a small amount of salt. Rather than being kneaded at length, it is gathered together quickly, chilled, rolled out and fitted into the pan. In one method, about two-thirds of the dough is used for the base and sides, and the rest is set aside for the lid.

Once the filling is in, the lid is placed over it, the edges are pressed to seal, and the top is pricked with a fork. Crust thickness, pan depth and baking conditions vary with the recipe and process, but the structure of enclosing the walnut filling on all sides is common to all. This lid is also a distinguishing feature when the Nusstorte is compared with the tarte aux noix of southwestern France.

Making a caramel soft enough to bite through

The filling is made by heating sugar until it colors, then combining it with cream and coarsely chopped walnuts. Rather than trapping the nuts in a hard candy made of sugar alone, the water and fat of the dairy are added to bring it to a consistency that can be sliced and bitten through. Because scorching the sugar heavily brings out bitterness, the cook proceeds while watching the color and aroma.

In one recette (a recipe’s ingredient proportions and method), honey is warmed first and caramelized with the sugar, then the pan is taken off the heat and the cream is added, followed by the walnuts. Another method colors the sugar, briefly toasts the walnuts in it, adds cream, and adds the honey once the sugar has dissolved. The differences lie not only in whether honey is used but also in whether the walnuts are toasted directly in the sugar.

As an example made in Japan, Tsumagari in Hyogo Prefecture uses walnuts from Grenoble, France, and wraps a caramel made with honey and fresh cream in a cookie dough containing almond flour. It is the shop’s own interpretation, keeping the walnut and caramel filling while adding the aroma of another nut to the crust as well.

A local butter pastry and walnut confections from abroad

The Engadin has fuatscha grassa, a sweet baked good made with butter, whose name also appears in a Romansh-language document from 1773. The Nusstorte crust is a dough similar to this, made with somewhat less butter. Today’s Nusstorte suggests connections both to the walnut confections that craftsmen encountered while working in southern France and to the sweet dough handed down in their home region.

Imported walnuts and cultivation within Graubünden

The high valley of the Engadin is not a warm place suited to growing walnuts. The confection’s name is tied to the craftsmen’s home region rather than to the land where its ingredients grow. Imported walnuts have long been used, and in recent years ingredients from abroad have still accounted for a large share.

That said, it is not the case that walnuts cannot grow anywhere in Graubünden. In places within the canton such as Malans, there are efforts to expand cultivation and processing, and some confectioners use local walnuts. A 2022 report by the public broadcaster, based on interviews with growers and confectioners, stated that local walnuts are more expensive than imports and limited in supply, and that they remain a small market.

From Toulouse to Samedan

According to Swiss culinary heritage materials, Heinz & Tester in Toulouse made a caramel-filled walnut confection from 1881, and Fausto Pult, who worked there, began selling it in Samedan in 1926. This is one route by which Graubünden craftsmen working abroad brought their skills back to their home region.

According to his grandson Fadri Pult, his grandfather did not invent the confection but was the one who marketed it on a large scale. The historian Dolf Kaiser traces its origin to his ancestors’ shop in Toulouse, while the Ribi family of Chur traces it to their own family’s sales within the canton, which predated Pult’s. In 2013 reporting, too, each family told a different origin story, and who first made it remains uncertain.

Later commentaries also pass on the story that Pult introduced it widely at the 1934 Basel trade fair. The overlapping roles of those who devised the confection, those who learned the technique and brought it home, and those who sold and spread it locally and elsewhere made it the specialty it is today.

From the late 1950s, a souvenir beyond the canton

It was from the late 1950s that it spread widely beyond the canton’s borders. In 1968 it was described as a sweet export product. Travelers who bought it in the Engadin took it home to the lowlands, and the confection, sold to tourists in both summer and winter, eventually appeared in retail shops throughout Switzerland.

While it became a signature product that local bakers sell to travelers, some people locally bake it at home to their own taste. Because it is made both in shops that sell it as a souvenir and in homes, differences in recipe also persist, such as whether one prefers the dairy richness of the caramel or the deep aroma of the walnuts.

Serving it with tea, and how it differs from the Engadiner Torte

A whole torte packed with walnuts, caramel and butter is cut into small wedges once it has cooled and the filling has settled, and served with coffee or tea. It is made regardless of season, and because it is enclosed in its crust and keeps well, it has also long been popular as a travel souvenir.

The Engadiner Torte, which shares the same regional name, is a different confection. It is a cake of thin layers and vanilla buttercream topped with a florentine lid, and it is made differently from the Nusstorte, which encloses caramel-bound walnuts in a crust.

In Bulle, in the Gruyère region, the chocolate-coated “gâteau bullois” is said to have been created, inspired by this Nusstorte. It is an example of a walnut confection encountered while traveling being taken up by craftsmen in another place, who changed its finish.

Glossary