The pink packet. If you have ever sat in a Viennese coffee house, one of these arrived on the saucer.
Manner has made Neapolitan wafers in Vienna since 1898, and the recipe has not changed into the twenty-first century. Five wafers, four layers of hazelnut cream, 49 millimetres by 17 by 17. Sold in blocks of ten, as they always have been.
The name misleads almost everybody. It has nothing to do with Neapolitan ice cream. The hazelnuts came from the hills around Naples, and the wafer was named for the nut rather than for the city's confectionery.
We stock it because of where the Austrian School did its arguing. Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Wieser and later Mises worked out marginal utility, capital, and time preference in Viennese coffee houses — Mises held his famous Privatseminar in that city, and the coffee house itself is now recognised by UNESCO as a cultural practice. This is what was on the saucer.
Crisp, not sweet, and structurally sound for dunking. It goes best with something dark and low in acid.
