Fränkische Bratwurst

Every Friday the butcher shop Storchenfischer sets a grill on the pavement at Marktplatz 30 in Gunzenhausen, and the smell of it carries across the square: pork fat dripping onto coals, marjoram, a sweet edge of allspice. What comes off the grill goes into a Semmel. The sausage is a short, fat, pale-banded link of coarsely ground pork, and it arrives in the roll still spitting, its casing blistered dark in patches and tight as a drumhead. The first bite splits it with a small crack, a jet of hot juice follows, and the crust of the roll has to catch it. This is the big Franconian bratwurst, and the roll exists mostly to give the hand something to hold.

The texture comes from the grind. The pork is cut to roughly the size of a pea and minced through a grinder, with no cutter to turn it into a smooth emulsion, so each bite breaks into distinct pieces of lean meat and fat instead of one springy mass. A link weighs 80 to 100 grams, about four times the Nuremberg finger, which is why one or two fill a roll. The seasoning is salt, pepper, marjoram, nutmeg and often allspice. Many butchers stuff the meat loosely into Bändel, the fat-streaked outer skin of a pig's small intestine, and the thin fat seam along it melts on the grill and bastes the sausage from the outside, which is what keeps coarse pork from drying into crumbs.

A sausage this loose and juicy punishes a bad roll. A soft bun collapses under the first rush of fat, and a stale one shatters into crust. The Brötchen that works has a thin shell that crackles when it is pressed and a crumb that drinks the juice without going to paste, split deep enough to cradle the link and leave its ends showing. A line of sharp mustard along the cut cools the richness, and the allspice and marjoram come up through it. A sausage taken off the heat too early arrives pale and rubbery with the fat unrendered, so stands grill until the casing is mahogany. At a table in a Franconian inn the same sausage is ordered by number, zwei mit Kraut or drei mit Kraut, with sauerkraut or potato salad. The roll is the same sausage taken out of the dining room.

Franconians read the grind of a sausage as a map of religion. The coarse method is the older one: everything goes through the grinder and into the casing. Fine, springy Brät came with the meat cutter in the nineteenth century, and the cutter needed ice, which brewery cellars supplied, so the technique spread first among wealthier, mostly Catholic towns. A regional rule of thumb says the higher the share of fine emulsion in a bratwurst, the more Catholic the place, and the old prince-bishoprics of Würzburg and Bamberg do sell fine ones. Protestant Upper Franconia and the south of Middle Franconia kept the coarse sausage. One theory ties the preference to Protestant suspicion of finely minced meat as a luxury, and the economic explanation of cutter and ice is the other. Which one is right is argued, and both leave the same sausage in the same roll.

The sausage sold in Gunzenhausen goes by many names around southern Middle Franconia: Ansbacher, Gunzenhäuser, Spalter, Weißenburger, Treuchtlinger, or just fränkische or grobe Bratwurst. The region also pan-fries it with sauerkraut or simmers it in a vinegar broth with onions as Saure Zipfel, and the grilled sausage in a roll is the quick form, eaten out of the hand with mustard on the fingers. Storchenfischer, which calls itself the oldest surviving butcher in Gunzenhausen, runs a snack counter with seating beside the shop and does its cooking in front of the customer. Its sausage is sold as the Original Gunzenhäuser Bratwurst.

Origin and history

The earliest firm date for this coarse sausage is 1928. A textbook of the Bavarian butchers' school in Landshut, Fleisch- und Wurstwaren, collected regional recipes and labelled each with the town of the butcher who sent it in, and the coarse pea-sized bratwurst in a folded-over Bändel appears there as the Treuchtlinger. Southern Middle Franconia had made the same sausage for longer than that, under the other town names.

No record explains why the textbook chose Treuchtlingen, and local writers note that the recipe had no particular connection to the town. The Landshut school is thought to have taken it from a butcher there. The label stuck, and a sausage that Gunzenhausen, Ansbach and Weißenburg also made for themselves began to carry Treuchtlingen's name in print.

The many names were tidied in the 2010s. Around 2012 the regional development body Zukunftsinitiative Altmühlfranken settled on one, Altmühlfränkische Bratwurst, to match the region where the sausage is made, and sent the product to Brussels for review with the aim of a protected European designation. In Gunzenhausen the shop on the market square still sells it under its own name, the Original Gunzenhäuser, and still grills it on Fridays at the door.