Nürnberger Bratwurst

At the Christkindlesmarkt the order is shouted in four syllables, Drei im Weggla, and the stallholder answers by laying three sausages on a hot steel grill and splitting a roll. Beechwood smoke carries across the square before any of it is ready, a sweet, resinous smell with marjoram riding on top. The sausages are tiny, 7 to 9 centimetres long and 20 to 25 grams each, which is why three of them lie side by side in one roll and why they cook in a few minutes. They go on hissing, the casings blister brown, and the whole thing arrives in a paper napkin that is already going translucent with fat.

The small size sets the eating. A thin casing around finely ground pork leaves little between the teeth and the filling, so each sausage snaps on the first bite and then gives way to a soft, tightly packed interior. Marjoram leads the seasoning, green and faintly floral against the pork, and it stays clear through the last bite because the sausages are never thick enough to go heavy. Three in one roll means three snaps in a single mouthful and three small bursts of hot juice, with the medium-hot mustard cutting through each one. Hands warm up on the paper, and the first roll is usually gone before the Glühwein beside it has cooled enough to drink.

The Weggla is the Franconian word for the Brötchen, and a good one has a thin crackling crust and an airy crumb that soaks up fat without collapsing. The vendor slits it most of the way through so the hinge holds, sets the sausages parallel in the groove and runs a stripe of mustard down the length at the last second, since mustard laid on early turns the crumb soggy. A stale roll goes leathery at the edges and cannot grip three round sausages, which slide out onto the cobbles. Sausages lifted off the grill too soon look pale and slack, and the skin chews where it should snap.

Off the stand, the same sausages are sold by the plate in sixes, eights and twelves, with sauerkraut, potato salad or a spoon of grated horseradish. The Bratwursthäusle near St. Sebald's church grills them over an open beech fire and runs its own butcher shop, so the links come from its own counter. The quick standing version at a market stall is the one most visitors know, and the plate is the sit-down order.

The sausage itself is built for the grill. Butchers use pork trimmed of tendons and rind with a little bacon for fat, season it with marjoram and stuff it into narrow sheep casings. Links go onto the grill cold from the shop, and the fat that renders out drips into the beech embers and comes back up as smoke, which is why a bratwurst eaten at the grill tastes of marjoram and wood together. Sold in bunches of three or six, they are turned constantly and pulled the moment the skins are mahogany and beginning to split.

Origin and history

The date usually attached to the Nuremberg sausage is 1313, the year a city document mentions sausages being made, and the Handwerkerhof restaurant Bratwurstglöcklein gives the same year for its own line of descent. Whether that entry describes the grilled finger-sized bratwurst or sausage meat in general is argued. A separate undated council rule told butchers to chop only good pork loin into their sausages.

The smallness came later. The sixteenth century is the likely period when butchers shrank the sausage as the price of meat climbed, holding quality steady at the same cost, and the mid nineteenth century is named as the heyday of the little links. The plate of six or eight and the roll of three both count in that unit, and the Bratwurstglöcklein is where the sausages were first served in even numbers with sauerkraut, potato salad and horseradish.

In 2003 the European Union registered the name Nürnberger Rostbratwurst as a protected geographical indication. From that year a sausage sold under the name has to be made inside Nuremberg's city limits, at 20 to 25 grams and 7 to 9 centimetres with marjoram in the meat, so the three in a Christkindlesmarkt roll come from a butcher inside the city.