The big bratwurst brawl: why is this simple sausage so sizzlingly controversial?
Age: It depends.
Appearance: Again, it depends.
Depends on what? On where you are: the Coburger bratwurst, for example, is longer than those of other regions – measuring up to 25cm (10in).
You know what they say: size matters. It's not the only thing that matters in Thuringia. They have their own bratwurst museum celebrating their distinctively average 15- to 20cm-long sausages.
But what about age? How old, exactly, is the bratwurst? That's hotly contested: an early written reference is found in a 1404 bill for bratwurst casings, levied in the Thuringian city of Arnstadt.
So bratwurst was invented in Thuringia some time before 1404. Not so fast. The world's oldest sausage shop – the Wurstkuchl in Regensburg, Bavaria – claims to have been selling bratwurst since at least 1378.
So bratwurst was invented in Bavaria in the late-14th century, or thereabouts? Wait. Some years ago the Bavarians unearthed their own documentation: a decree from Nuremberg council declaring that only pork loin could be used to make sausage – from 1313.
So the bratwurst was legislated into being in Nuremberg in 1313? Well, the Thuringian version of bratwurst has protected geographical status under EU law.
So it's the real thing, and therefore takes precedent? It's messy, because the Nuremberg version – which is only 8cm long – also has protected status.
Eight centimetres – you call that a sausage! I'm guessing Nuremberg wins though, as it has the older sausage. Well, there's a new document in town: researchers in the Thuringian capital of Erfurt recently discovered a reference to a brathütte (a meat-roasting stand) doing business on the Merchants' Bridge in – get this – 1269.
Rubbish. That's more than 40 years before Bavaria's oldest claim – history must be rewritten!
A meat-roasting hut is not evidence of someone inventing bratwurst. That's certainly the view over at the Bratwurst Museum. 'I consider it very bold to conclude from this that bratwursts were cooked there,' says managing director Thomas Mauer.
To be honest, I can't believe I'm even pretending to have an opinion. Mauer also insists the 1404 document contains the earliest unambiguous reference to bratwurst.
I don't care. But this debate has been raging for 25 years.
It can carry on for another 25, as long as it's without me. Aren't you concerned about the decline in Bratwurst consumption, which has fallen to just 2.4kg per German per annum?
I am not. Fair enough.
Do say: 'Despite its obscure origins, the bratwurst deserves to be celebrated as a product that's truly German and deeply ancient.'
Don't say: 'Not these though. These were made this morning.'
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