Recipe
🍳 BREAKFAST
Wiener Frühstück
A Viennese breakfast of a crusty Kaisersemmel, soft-boiled egg, butter, jam, and a milky Melange.
Austrian · easy · serves 2
prep 8 min · cook 6 min
~485 cal · 17g protein · 54g carbs · 22g fat · 2g fiber · 19g sugars · 12g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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The Wiener Fruhstuck is the Viennese coffeehouse breakfast in miniature, and it carries all the unhurried civility of that institution. At its centre are a crusty Kaisersemmel, the crowned Viennese roll, split and spread with good butter and apricot jam, and a soft-boiled egg served upright in its little cup.
The coffee is not incidental but essential. Classically it is a Melange, Vienna's gentle answer to the cappuccino, espresso softened with steamed milk and a cap of foam, served on a silver tray with a glass of water, as the Kaffeehaus tradition demands. Everything arrives without hurry.
More than the food, it is the tempo that defines it: a Viennese breakfast is meant to be lingered over with a newspaper on a wooden dowel, in a marble-topped cafe where no waiter will ever rush you. Modest in its parts, it is a small daily lesson in taking one's time.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian and nut- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 2
2 Kaisersemmel rolls
2 eggs
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp apricot jam
1 cup coffee (for Melange)
1 cup steamed milk (for Melange)
Instructions
1
Soft-boil the eggs (or slice the avocado).
2
Warm the rolls so the crust crisps, then split.
3
Set out butter and apricot jam.
4
Make the Melange: coffee topped with steamed, foamed milk.
5
Serve the egg in its cup with the roll and coffee, unhurried.
Viennese café tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Vienna. Pastry here is a trade with its own vocabulary. Strudel dough is stretched by hand until print can be read through it, the coffee list is a set of ratios rather than flavours, and the question of who could call their Sachertorte the original went through the Austrian courts for the best part of thirty years.
🗺️
Austria. Two Viennese facts worth having straight. The city's coffee house culture was inscribed by UNESCO in 2011, listing the newspapers, the marble tables and the waiter as much as the coffee. And Wiener Schnitzel is legally veal in Austria; a pork one has to be sold under a different name. The story that Radetzky brought the dish back from Milan is a twentieth-century invention.
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Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Austria
Wiener SchnitzelVienna’s golden icon: a thin cutlet in a puffed, wavy breadcrumb crust, fried in butter and finished with lemon.
FrittatensuppeClear beef broth poured over ribbons of sliced savory pancake, a classic Viennese starter and light lunch.
SachertorteA dense chocolate sponge with a thin layer of apricot jam under a glossy dark chocolate glaze, Vienna's famous cake.
Browse all Austria recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Steamer.
Storing it: Best the day it is made. Wrap well and refresh in a warm oven, or freeze and reheat straight from frozen.
Make it a Austria meal
KaiserschmarrnDessert
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Cuisine
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Frequently asked questions
What is Wiener Frühstück?
A Viennese breakfast of a crusty Kaisersemmel, soft-boiled egg, butter, jam, and a milky Melange.
Where does Wiener Frühstück come from?
Wiener Frühstück is a Austrian dish from Vienna, Austria.
Can Wiener Frühstück be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Wiener Frühstück recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Wiener Frühstück safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Wiener Frühstück take to make?
About 14 minutes total (8 minutes prep, 6 minutes cooking), serving 2.
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