Celery Root (Celeriac) Schnitzel: Old Vienna’s Naturally Vegan Classic. How Vienna’s Golden Calf Became Israel’s National Dish — and Returned, Vegan.

Viennese cuisine stands as a rare and resonant distinction—one of the few, world-renowned, city-named cuisines. This singular title is not mere marketing; it is an epochal stamp, speaking volumes about the city’s historic role as an imperial melting pot and a formidable shaper of global taste. Indeed, the Vienna that, at the fin-de-siècle, so profoundly shaped the very idea of the West—from the fractured psyche of Sigmund Freud to the crystalline modernism of the Secession—also had its palate shape the world’s ideas of indulgence. It gave rise to global, gilded icons like the Wiener Schnitzel (the quintessential fried veal cutlet), the Sachertorte (chocolate cake), and the Apfelstrudel.

This golden, puffed-up, and iconic dish, often simply called the “Wiener” or “Vinaï” (וינאי) Schnitzel in its adapted forms, is the central, shimmering pillar of this culinary history, and it is into this grand, slightly decadent tradition that the humble celeriac schnitzel steps. The schnitzel is more than a fried cutlet. It is a mirror of Jewish and Viennese history—a story of opulence, exile, reinvention, and now, ethical return. From veal to celeriac, from Vienna to Israel and back again, the schnitzel traces the paradox of survival through substitution.

The Golden Calf, Reimagined: Opulence, Paradox, and the Gilt of Tradition

The very context of Viennese culinary ambition is rooted, perhaps uncomfortably, in opulence. Frederick the Fat, said to have died of overeating, lies in monumental repose in St. Stephen’s Cathedral — a cautionary tale of imperial indulgence. His legend forms a fitting prologue to the “golden calf” of Viennese cuisine.

It is into this grand, sometimes guilt-ridden, culinary theatre that the humble celeriac schnitzel steps—a golden, breaded disc of winter root that presents a fascinating point of tension when discussed through the dual lenses of culinary tradition and contemporary ethics. It is a dish that seems to exist in a state of naturally achieved paradox.

Few acts command the Viennese stage with such puffed-up, golden majesty as the Wiener Schnitzel. Its very name, resonating with the crisp whisper of breading against hot oil, evokes an era of imperial grandeur and bourgeois delight. Its essence has long been defined by the tender veal from which it is fashioned—a culinary commandment carved, seemingly, in culinary stone: Only veal is the real deal! (For the full story of the veal original, its history, and the complete traditional recipe, see my essay, Golden Souffléd Schnitzel, Vienna’s Famous Puffed-Up Golden Calf Cutlet.) Yet, beneath that perfectly souffléed crust, this iconic dish harbors a surprising narrative of adaptation, reinvention, and a curious mirroring of the Jewish experience itself. Indeed, the trajectory of the schnitzel, from the gilded salons of Imperial Vienna to the bustling kitchens of a nascent Jewish state, and its remarkable return, transformed, offers a poignant and delicious tale of resilience.

The golden crust of the schnitzel evokes both opulence and idolatry—the Golden Calf reimagined in breadcrumbs. To make it anew, ethically and compassionately, becomes a small act of culinary tikkun olam (a repair of the world).

The schnitzel’s adoption by Jews across Central Europe was not merely culinary tourism; it was a defining act of cultural integration and substitution. Food writer Claudia Roden notes this perfectly, observing that the dish “was adopted by Jews all over Central Europe,” and crucially, “on Sundays, when gentiles had roast pork, Jews had Wiener schnitzel”.¹ This immediate, conscious substitution transformed the schnitzel from a mere luxury into a key symbol of belonging and an answer to the prohibition of pork, cementing its Jewish cultural status.

This logic of pragmatic adaptation was often documented early on: cookery books like Rebekka Wolf’s influential Kochbuch für Israelitische Frauen (Berlin 1851), and its Viennese successors, already contained “mock meat” recipes. These texts predate modern veganism yet anticipate its fundamental reasoning, providing early documents of how Jewish kitchens used resourcefulness and substitution to navigate the requirements of kashrut within a larger Central European culinary landscape.

Let’s first set aside the popular 19th-century nationalist myth that Austrian Field Marshal Radetzky brought the schnitzel to Vienna from Milan. Current historical research largely debunks this legend. The schnitzel’s true “golden” origin is far more resonant: the breaded crust is a culinary echo of 15th-century Venetian aristocratic food that was literally adorned with gold leaf. When real gold became too precious, resourceful cooks substituted it with humble breadcrumbs, creating the shimmering, affordable façade that became the dish’s signature. This golden cutlet, often made of veal, thus quickly became the “golden calf” of Viennese cuisine—a shimmering symbol of imperial indulgence and material worship. This indulgence in deep-frying, however, is a tradition the Viennese and Jews (with the celebratory oil of Hanukkah’s latkes and sufganiot) have always embraced. This is the opulent tradition that the humble celeriac, breaded and fried, steps into, embodying a new, ethical form of the golden calf, reimagined in breadcrumbs.

The claim that celery root schnitzel is simply a modern vegetarian “substitute” for its canonical veal cousin is a historical oversimplification. In truth, the practice of breading and frying vegetables (gebackenes)—including celeriac (or Zeller, as it’s known in Vienna and Austria, in contrast to the German Sellerie), cauliflower, and mushrooms like the delicious parasol, and even the giant bovist mushroom (which, in my childhood memories from a stay not far from Vienna, were sometimes as big as a soccer ball, allowing one to prepare big cutlets)—has long been a fixture of traditional Viennese and Central European cooking. Indeed, 19th-century Austrian and Czech cookbooks already feature fried celeriac slices, proving that “Zeller-Schnitzel” belonged to the same core culinary imagination as its veal cousin. It is a dish born of seasonal pragmatism rather than contemporary virtue-signaling; a testament to how local root vegetables were honorably prepared long before vegetarianism became an international movement. It stands as a traditional vegetarian classic in its own right, not merely a latecomer to the schnitzel plate.

The Question of “Naturally Vegan” and the Uncomfortable Ease of Adaptation

It is precisely within this traditional vegetarian context that the delightful—or perhaps uncomfortable—paradox of the celeriac schnitzel emerges.

The celery root itself is, of course, an inherently vegan gift from the earth. This aligns with historical Ashkenazi food, which was largely plant-based, as meat and fish were expensive rarities until industrialization, despite the current reputation of Jewish cuisine for stacked deli sandwiches. Consequently, many of our ancestors were “de facto vegetarians,” making dishes full of fresh, regional, and seasonal vegetables.

This long tradition of Ashkenazi Jewish vegetarianism is now being revived by a new crop of cooks and authors. For example, a new school of vegetarian Jewish cookbook authors and chefs has since rediscovered the work of Fania Lewando, the pre-World War II kosher caterer, chef, and author of The Vilna Vegetarian—a foundational, turn-of-the-last-century text that tied traditional Jewish values to vegetarianism. Lewando herself operated a kosher dairy restaurant and a kosher cooking school and supervised a vegetarian kosher kitchen on an ocean liner. She even connected vegetarianism to Jewish values, writing in her introduction, “From the humanitarian principle of tsar baaley khayim (not killing living creatures), it would be desirable to replace meat with a purely vegetarian cuisine.”² Lewando pushed this further, seeing vegetarianism not just as ethical renewal, but as a form of Zionist preparation—a new discipline for Jewish life in the Land of Israel, making the pareve schnitzel an instrument of national rebirth.

However, the traditional schnitzel breading process, regardless of the vegetarian context, universally relies on egg as the necessary, sticky liaison between the flour and the breadcrumbs. This reliance on egg is a consistent thread across Central European and Jewish vegetarian cooking of the past. Lewando’s own recipe for Celeriac Schnitzel, as detailed in The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook, is particularly revealing: it calls for cooked celeriac mixed with bread crumbs and a large egg to form a batter which is then fried in butter. This mixture and serving method—more akin to a root vegetable fritter or patty than the classic Viennese celeriac cutlet—serves as an authentic, old, traditionally Jewish source for the dish. Crucially, it is notably served topped with one whole fried egg, garnished with stewed cabbage and a gratin of carrots. The stark contrast resides precisely in these trimmings: Lewando’s use of egg both in the preparation and as the main garnish, fried in butter, firmly anchors the dish in the dairy (milchik) side of the kosher culinary spectrum, in sharp contrast to the blanched, sliced, breaded celeriac cutlet (often served simply with lemon and potato salad), which is inherently parve and can thus serve as a neutral vegetable pendant to the meat (fleishik) Wiener Schnitzel.

Beyond the ingredients of the dish itself, a major contrast between the schnitzel’s Jewish and Gentile preparation throughout Central Europe lay in the frying medium. Traditionally, the quintessential Wiener Schnitzel was fried in clarified butter (known as Butterschmalz) or sometimes beef tallow or even pork fat (Schweineschmalz). The Jewish tradition, dictated by the laws of kashrut (prohibiting pork fat and the mixing of meat and dairy), replaced these with vegetable oil, though sometimes in kosher homes beef or goose fat was used for meat dishes. This early adoption of vegetable oil—a practice Gentiles have since embraced for health reasons—ensured the dish was kosher and established a key difference in the Jewish version’s flavor and texture. When clarified butter gave way to more affordable sunflower oil, it marked not a moral decline but a process of democratization: the scent of frying fat left the palaces and entered every apartment. What had been imperial luxury became domestic warmth.

Thus, for a piece of authentic Viennese tradition to qualify as “naturally vegan” in its final form, it requires a deliberate, modern intervention—the simple, yet necessary, exclusion and replacement of the egg binder. The schnitzel, like Jewish identity itself, survives by adaptation — each substitution an act of remembrance. In the humble celeriac slice, blanched and breaded, we glimpse not only a recipe, but a redemption: the golden calf made kind.

From Danube to Diaspora: The Schnitzel’s Exodus and Supplementarity

For Jewish Viennese households, the schnitzel, in its various guises, was more than just a meal; it was a testament to integration, aspiration, and the persistent ingenuity of the diaspora. While the “echte” (real) Wiener Schnitzel of veal often remained an indulgence for special occasions, necessity, that ever-inventive mother of culinary adaptation, paved the way for more accessible iterations. Hausmeisterschnitzel of chicken, or even pork (though certainly not for the kosher kitchen), emerged from the pragmatic kitchens of the less wealthy. The chicken version of the dish, in particular, owes its inception to European Jews who were seeking a more affordable but still kosher spin on veal- and pork-based versions. This culinary pliability, this inherent capacity to absorb and adapt, echoes a deeper strain of Jewishness itself – a historical imperative to maintain identity and tradition while integrating into diverse host cultures. The schnitzel, in this light, becomes a culinary midrash, a constant reinterpretation of a core text.

Moreover, the entire history of the schnitzel in a kosher context is one of Supplementarity (bear with me here, philosophers!), a concept central to Jacques Derrida’s thought. The kosher chicken or turkey schnitzel does not just replace the veal; it acts as a Supplement—something added to the original that, in a profound sense, also makes up for a lack in the original. The original veal cutlet lacked the purity of kashrut and the resilience required for diaspora survival. The endless substitutions (turkey, celeriac, soy) reveal that the “authentic” schnitzel was always a placeholder, an original defined by its capacity to be endlessly supplemented and adapted.

Then came the dark shadow across Europe. As antisemitic decrees tightened their grip, escalating to the horrors of Nazi persecution, countless Jewish families were forced to flee Vienna, their cherished home. They carried little with them, but among the intangible possessions were the tastes, the recipes, and the culinary memories of their Viennese lives. The crisp, golden schnitzel, a symbol of their once-integrated existence, emigrated too, carried in the collective culinary memory to distant shores, particularly to what was then Palestine.

The schnitzel’s emigration followed the refugees. German-Jewish “Yekkes” brought it to Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s and ’40s, where veal was scarce and chicken or turkey took its place. On the kibbutz, it became a weekly ritual—egalitarian, affordable, and protein-rich. In Vienna it signified distinction. In Israel it symbolized equality. The literal flattening of the meat mirrored a social one.

In the nascent State of Israel, particularly after the harrowing extermination of the Jews of Europe, the memory of the past collided with the pressing demands of the future. Though many outside observers initially imagine Israeli cuisine as primarily Middle Eastern, it is here that schnitzel—a thinly pounded, breaded, and fried cutlet—established itself as a “de facto national dish,” alongside falafel. Food historian Gil Marks writes that schnitzel “became to Israelis of all ethnic backgrounds what hamburgers, fried chicken, and pizza are to Americans”.³ The dish is so ubiquitous that, in a testament to the German word schnitzel simply meaning cutlet, one of the common words for boneless chicken breast in Israel is, simply, “schnitzel,” because, as one might ask, “what else would you use that cut of meat for?”.

Beef was scarce, and turkey, robust and readily available, stepped onto the stage as the unlikely star of the “Israeli Schnitzel.” This adaptation was so profound that, in the words of Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food, one might “Ask anyone in Israel to name a wholly Israeli dish and the answer will be turkey schnitzel”. This adaptation was so profound that, in a charming act of culinary repatriation, turkey schnitzel even found its way back to Vienna, a testament to the dish’s fluid identity across continents and cultures. Indeed, the schnitzel has become so popular in Israel that it is regularly described as one of the nation’s “national dishes,” a striking sign of its successful adoption and reinvention.

Further cementing its status, Leah Koenig, in her book Modern Jewish Cooking, simply states that, “Schnitzel is straight-up Jewish comfort food!”. This declaration perfectly encapsulates the emotional and cultural weight the dish acquired in the diaspora.

The introduction of schnitzel to Israel came via immigrants from Central Europe who brought the simple dish to early kibbutzim in the beginning of the twentieth century, where it could easily be made in a pan and served as a common Shabbat meal. But beyond the famous turkey cutlet, the very foundations of Israel’s early food industry, particularly within the communal ethos of the kibbutzim, fostered a deeply practical and often plant-centric approach to sustenance. After the devastating privations of the Holocaust and the immediate challenges of state-building, scarcity defined the plate. As Israeli food writer Janna Gur explains, the shift to chicken or turkey breast was “an invention born out of necessity, when veal was nonexistent and poultry was government-subsidized and more readily available.”⁴ This grim reality, coupled with the inherent kashrut demands of a diverse immigrant population, led to remarkable ingenuity in creating wholesome, pareve, and often vegetarian staples. The importance of this period is underscored by the fact that during the food shortages and rationing of the 1940s and the War of Independence, the new Ministry of Absorption formally taught diverse immigrant housewives simple recipes from inexpensive items, including schnitzel, cementing the tradition. Its ultimate success is undeniable: surveys suggest that 40 percent of families rank chicken schnitzel as their No. 1 choice for a family meal, and Israeli owners note that for “every Israeli kid,” it’s a childhood dish.⁵

Indeed, from the fertile fields and nascent industries of kibbutzim, particularly those dotted along the coast and in the verdant North (like Gan Shmuel or Lohamei HaGeta’ot), emerged a quiet but profound pioneering spirit in plant-based food production. Without the fanfare of modern food tech startups, these communal settlements became incubators of practical innovation. Faced with limited access to meat and dairy, and driven by a need to feed a rapidly growing population with diverse dietary needs, they perfected the art of processing local vegetables, grains, and legumes into satisfying, nutritious, and undeniably pareve alternatives. Long before “veganism” became a global fashion, these communities were producing what could truly be called the first generation of pareve, vegetarian, and even proto-vegan frozen “meat” schnitzels of all kinds—made from soy, mushrooms, seitan, or tofu—readily available in stores across Israel. These were not just substitutes; they were foundational elements of a distinct Israeli culinary identity, born of necessity, guided by kashrut, and imbued with the spirit of pioneering resourcefulness. The very ground on which these communities toiled, so often within a stone’s throw of the Mediterranean Sea, became the crucible for a future where food production was as much about ingenuity and collective well-being as it was about traditional agriculture.

Today, while chicken and turkey remain subsidized and the most common forms of schnitzel (with breading adapted for Passover using matzoh meal), the custom of adapting the dish persists. The breadcrumbs can be doctored with various spices, including paprika, and the now-signature inclusion of sesame seeds. The use of matzo meal as a standard breading substitute by Jewish cooks, particularly those from Poland, further highlights the ongoing quest for kosher and pragmatic solutions.⁶

Full Circle: The Return of the Vegan Golden Calf

The profound historical trajectory of this dish—from the Old World, to the New Land, and back—is, in fact, the recognized story of the schnitzel itself. As Gil Marks notes, “Turkey schnitzel eventually made its way to Austria and became common in the land of the schnitzel”. This confirms that the return of a Jewish-adapted schnitzel to its Viennese home is the culmination of its long, circuitous history.

And now, we stand on the cusp of another radical reimagining. The journey of the pareve cutlet had a subtle prelude: long before the current plant-based trend, Israeli-made frozen vegetarian schnitzels began appearing in Vienna’s small kosher supermarkets and stores decades ago. Today, however, the vegan schnitzel—often a local brand—has fully crossed over, striking a “striking resemblance” to the original as a mainstream contender in the aisles of major Viennese supermarket chains (and beyond). This plant-based ingenuity has even caught the eye of the mainstream Austrian press; indeed, the widely-read daily newspaper Der Standard recently published its own vegan schnitzel recipe, confirming its status as a recognized part of contemporary Austrian culinary life.⁷ Globally, schnitzel is having a moment, with the Israeli chicken version successfully reaching the U.S. fast-casual scene, sold alongside falafel and featured as a bestseller in “modern Israeli” fine dining from New York to New Orleans. This is not the adaptation born solely of scarcity, but of a new abundance – an abundance of ethical consideration, environmental consciousness, and a burgeoning scientific mastery of plant-based proteins. Where once the challenge was to create a satisfying schnitzel without veal, the contemporary quest is to create one without any animal product, yet without sacrificing that cherished crispness, that savory chew, that elusive “golden” quality. This trajectory, from the pragmatic adaptations of early Israeli kibbutzim to today’s sophisticated food-tech firms, forms a compelling narrative of continuous culinary evolution driven by Jewish resilience and ingenuity.

Most poignantly, these transformed schnitzels, now explicitly vegan, are making their way back. This return, “full circle,” to Vienna, a city tragically emptied of most of its Jewish population, resonates deeply. As a new kosher Jewish community re-establishes itself in Vienna, finding its footing and rebuilding its heritage, these modern iterations of the schnitzel – born from the ashes of persecution and nurtured in the ingenuity of a new land – are available in its kosher stores. They represent not just a culinary trend, but a living testament to continuity, a flavorful bridge connecting a painful past with a hopeful future. The “golden calf” of Viennese cuisine, once a symbol of opulence, then a dish carried into exile, and later a staple of Zionist pioneers, now returns, transformed, to its original home, embodying a resilience that extends far beyond the plate.

What, then, does “golden” signify in this brave new culinary world? As I’ve explored elsewhere on this blog, the original schnitzel’s sheen is linked to the Biblical “golden calf”—a symbol of material wealth, power, and perhaps even a cautionary tale of misplaced worship. If the traditional schnitzel represented a certain worldly indulgence, does the rise of the plant-based version offer a form of tikkun olam? Can this new “golden calf”—crafted from soy, pea, or humble celeriac—become a symbol not of the Biblical disaster, but of bal tashchit (avoiding waste), of tza’ar ba’alei chayim (reducing animal suffering), and of a more sustainable, mindful consumption? It’s probably the only golden calf an atheist can comfortably worship, and a vegan can eat!

Here, bal tashchit joins tza’ar ba’alei chayim: together they outline a theology of restraint. In the humble celeriac slice, blanched and breaded, we taste not scarcity but a new kind of abundance—a small act of tikkun olam in the kitchen.

This contemporary shift forces us to re-examine the very notion of “authenticity.” Is a vegan schnitzel, however convincing its texture, however perfectly golden its crust, truly “authentic”? Within Jewish culinary discourse, the concept of authenticity has always been fluid. Indeed, the schnitzel’s entire Jewish history is a study in Supplementarity: a concept where an addition doesn’t just replace the original, but makes up for a lack in it. Every substitution—from veal to turkey, from fat to vegetable oil, and now from egg to slurry—was an addition that made up for a lack (such as the lack of kashrut in the original) in the original. This confirms that the “authentic” dish was always defined by its capacity to be endlessly adapted and resourcefully substituted. The resurgence of plant-forward eating among modern Jewish cooks, who are embodying the resourceful techniques of their ancestors, underscores that this ongoing process of resourceful substitution is “part of our culinary lineage.”

A traditional meat cholent is authentic, but so too is the pareve cholent—a long-standing tradition in synagogues and yeshivas (as documented in my past recipes)—which allowed it to be eaten with anything. Similarly, a pareve mushroom pâté designed to be served alongside a meat meal is also authentic. Kashrut itself has historically been a powerful driver of culinary innovation, creating a universe of substitutions and ingenious adaptations. The vegan schnitzel, therefore, is not an aberration, but rather the latest chapter in a long, vibrant narrative of culinary ingenuity. It is a testament to the idea that Jewish food, like Jewishness itself, is not a fixed monument but a dynamic, ever-evolving conversation between tradition and innovation, memory and aspiration.

So, as we contemplate the glorious, puffed-up, golden schnitzel, whether it be of veal, chicken, turkey, or plant-based glory and ingenuity, we recognize it as more than just a fried cutlet. It is a culinary palimpsest, bearing the layered imprints of history, economics, ethics, and identity. From the imperial kitchens of Vienna to the pioneering kibbutzim of Israel and back to the bustling vegan eateries of today, the “golden calf” has been thoughtfully, even whimsically, re-imaged. It gleams with a new kind of light, inviting us not to idolize the past, but to savor the ongoing, delicious evolution of tradition.

The modern evolution, however, has deep roots in an original classic. This recipe revives that tradition. Entirely vegan and pareve, it brings back the old Austrian “Zeller-Schnitzel” — once praised in early 20th-century vegetarian circles from Vienna to Prague — now reimagined as an ethical Viennese classic. Serve hot with lingonberry jam and lemon, or cold in pita with hummus. Either way, its golden crust tells the story of Vienna remembered, redeemed, and reimagined.