A strudel is a sweet baked thing from Austria and Germany, made by rolling very thin pastry around a filling — most often apple, with sugar, cinnamon and sometimes raisins. When you cut it, you see the filling in the middle and the pastry wrapped around it in layers, like a rolled-up mat. Almost always you will meet it as 'apple strudel' (Apfelstrudel), which is the famous one; other fillings exist (cherry, cheese, poppy seed) but English speakers rarely say the word alone without picturing apple. It is served warm, often with cream or vanilla sauce, in cafés rather than eaten from the hand. Two small things worth knowing. First, calling it a cake is close enough for a menu but not quite right — it has no cake batter, only pastry, so it sits nearer to a pie or a roll. Second, the German word Strudel really means 'whirlpool', which is exactly what the spiral of pastry looks like from the end; German speakers also use it as the name of the @ sign for the same reason.