July 2026

Wafer

From the altar to the Mannerschnitte

The wafer is one of the oldest manufactured foods in the Western world, and one of the least examined. It has served as a sacred vessel, a street food, an edible container, and the structural backbone of a confection eaten by millions. This month, four angles on an object hiding in plain sight.

Company of the Month

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Manner

Since 1890, Josef Manner & Comp AG has grown from a small chocolate shop near Vienna’s Stephansplatz into one of Austria’s most recognisable confectionery houses. At its centre remains the Original Neapolitaner Schnitte: five layers of wafer, four layers of hazelnut cocoa cream, and an unmistakable pink wrapper.

Object of the Month

A packet of Mannerschnitte against the typical Manner pink background

The Mannerschnitte

Invented in 1898 and unchanged since, the Mannerschnitte is five layers of wafer and four layers of hazelnut cocoa cream in a pocket-sized format that has travelled the world. On why Austria's most beloved souvenir became a classic without ever trying to be one.

Feature

Eucharistic host engraved with the IHS monogram resting on a golden chalice, with a rosary and blurred cross in the background.

In the Beginning, the Host

Long before the wafer became a snack or a cone or a pink-boxed confection, it was a liturgical object of the highest order. On the thin unleavened disc at the centre of Catholic doctrine, and the journey it made from altar to confectionery counter without changing its basic form at all.

Feature

Close-up of a round medieval waffle iron, engraved with four crests and floral ornamentation

Eight Centuries, One Principle

The wafer iron is a medieval instrument: two hinged metal plates, an open fire, and a pattern pressed into everything it touched. On the tool that produced the Eucharistic host, the street vendor's wafer, and the industrial confection, and never fundamentally changed between them.

Feature

A pile of six hollow chocolate/cream wafer rolls

The Hollow Argument

The Hohlhippe is a crisp hollow tube whose only function is to look elegant beside a dessert. It contains nothing, does nothing, and is the direct descendant of the communion host in the most unexpected possible way. On the wafer in its most aristocratic and least necessary form, and the twist that many are no longer hollow at all.

Feature

The Cone Knew First

In 1904, a waffle vendor at the St. Louis World's Fair rolled his product into a cone to help a neighbouring stall that had run out of cups. More than a century later, food technologists are presenting the same idea as a solution to the plastic waste crisis. The wafer was there first.