strudel is the German name for a pastry composed of thin sheets of dough around a soft filling (the word literally means ‘eddy’ or ‘whirlpool’). German strudel is relatively dry, a long roll, holding raisins and chopped apples, bent in a horseshoe, baked, and cut across in slices. Similar pastries are popular in much of C. and E. Europe, and are closely related to various Balkan and Middle Eastern confections also based on the same type of thin dough. This is known in English either as strudel pastry, or by its Greek name, filo.
