Central Europe · Volume 18, Lye, the Purity Myth and the Alp Next Door
Weisswurst
Munich
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 45 minutes
- Researched
- 11 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Popularly dated to 1857 and a specific inventor, though the city's own archivist has found an 1814 engraving of people eating it, decades earlier. See the history above for why the legend and the evidence disagree.
As tradition built it
Makes about 12 sausages. Serves 4 to 6. About 45 minutes plus chilling.
Ingredients
- 750 g veal shoulder, well chilled, cubed
- 250 g pork back fat, well chilled, cubed
- 150 g cooked pork rind, cold
- 200 g crushed ice
- 18 g fine salt
- 1 small onion, very finely diced
- 1 tbsp chopped parsley
- to taste white pepper, a pinch of ground mace, grated zest of half a lemon
- as available natural hog or beef middle casings
Method
- Chill the bowl, blade and all equipment thoroughly before starting; the emulsion must never rise above 12°C or the fat will split rather than bind.
- Blend the veal, pork fat and ice in a food processor or high-power blender in short bursts until a smooth, pale, sticky paste forms.
- Blend the cooked pork rind through separately until fully incorporated, since this is what gives the sausage its characteristic soft bind.
- Fold through the salt, onion, parsley, pepper, mace and lemon zest by hand.
- Pipe into casings and twist into 12 cm links.
- Bring a large pan of water to 70°C, no hotter, and poach the sausages uncovered for 25 minutes. A lid traps steam against the cold skin and can split it.
- Serve the same morning: tradition holds the Weisswurst should not hear the noon bells. Peel the skin at the table, or suck the filling out directly, with sweet mustard, a pretzel and a wheat beer.
What a modern chef changes
Precise temperature control over the whole cook, not just the poach
Rung 2
Method
- Hold the emulsion in an ice-jacketed bowl throughout blending, checking the mixture's own temperature with a probe rather than by feel, since the fat-splitting failure point is a specific, checkable number, not a guess.
- Poach in a water bath held exactly at 70°C by thermostat, not stovetop guesswork, for the full 25 minutes, which removes the single biggest cause of a split skin in a home kitchen: a pan that creeps past a simmer while unattended.
- Make the mustard itself, brown and yellow mustard seed cracked in a dedicated spice grinder, then simmered briefly with cider vinegar, brown sugar and a splash of the same wheat beer served alongside, rather than reaching for a shop jar; Develey's own 1854 formula is the template this recreates, not a departure from it.