Trdelnik

Trdelník is a strip of yeast dough wound around a wooden or metal roller 8 to 10 cm across, called a trdlo, and turned over charcoal while it's brushed with milk. When it's golden it slides off the roller as a hollow tube and gets rolled in sugar, cinnamon, vanilla or chopped nuts. The word trdlo names the roller, and in Czech it also means a simpleton.

Sources disagree about where it began. English Wikipedia places its origin in the northern part of the old Kingdom of Hungary, and Czech Wikipedia thinks it probably came from Transylvania. Both agree on its later homes: Slovakia and Moravia, where 19th-century weddings and fairs served it. Czech writers mention trdelník from 1813, in poems published in Múza Morawská.

The traditional Czech claim is the contested part. Prague stalls sell it as a traditional Czech cake or an old Bohemian pastry, and English Wikipedia says the literature mostly calls it a Slovak or Moravian dish and dates its spread in Prague to the early 2000s. The journalist Janek Rubeš has criticised the stalls as tourist traps that present it as traditional, and Czech Wikipedia calls the label staročeský trdelník, old Czech trdelník, a marketing trick.

The Slovak town of Skalica holds the EU's protected name for its version, Skalický trdelník, registered in 2007. Local tradition credits the Transylvanian cook of Count József Gvadányi, who lived in the town from 1783 to 1801, with bringing the recipe. The town runs its own bakery for it in the Franciscan monastery and holds a Trdlofest every May.