Spanischbrödli: The making of the railway

Before «Gipfeli and Weggli» conquered the Swiss breakfast table the «Spanischbrödli» defined Zurich‘s collective daily desire. The Painter Johann Martin Usteri wrote: «Praise the most glorious pastry ever invented by the culinary arts! Spanischbrod you are the cake that the finest tasters seek.» (1)

The flaky pastries that were longly banned in Zwinglian Zurich had to be imported from Baden, the historic health resort with thermal springs of Zurich’s upper class. David Hess, author of Badenfahrt form 1818 calculated 720‘000 «Brödti» to move from Baden to Zurich in a seven month bathing season. (2)

When the first railway in Switzerland connected Baden with Zurich, the fatiguing delivery was reduced from a five hours walk to 45 minutes and the flow of the delicacies raised to the point that the train received the well-known name «Spanischbrödlibahn».

As Carolyn Steel argues, the city of London was carved by the flow of goods. «…animals may no longer walk to Smithfield, but their memory lingers in its physical fabric. The names of local streets - Cowcross Street, Chick Lane, Cock Lane - recall a time when the area was full of living beasts, and St John‘s Street, the chief route into the market from the north, is a broad, curving thoroughfare that still has something of the air of a country lane, its sweeping contours carved by the ‚sea of brute life‘ that once flowed down it like a river.»(3)

The flow of the goods and the mechanism of the food system shape territory. One could argue that the sheer demand of pastry did not only define the history of the railways but also the city of Zurich that is marked by the broad railway tracks in the city center.

(1) - Spanischbrötli und Badener Chräbeli, Badener Neujahrsblätter (60) 1985, Münzel, Uli / G.H on e-periodica
(2) - Das Spanischbrödli: Ein Leckerbissen mit Geschichte, 2017, Standortmarketing Stadt Baden, backparadies.ch
(3) - Steel, Carolyn. Hungry City : How Food Shapes Our Lives. [Reprint]. London: Vintage, 2013.

images
1 - Spanischbrödli around 1860 - collection Ernst Ludwig Rochholz, around 1860 - Copyright: Staatsarchiv Aargau 2003 (NL.A-0136/0013a Nr. 48)
2 - traditional costume girl around 1840. - Copyright: Historisches Museum Baden
3 - Spanischbrötlibahn Zürich - Baden - Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich