The World’s Oldest Recipe for Brats (Sausages, That Is) (ca. 1432 AD)
In October 2007, 75-year-old hobby historian doing research in the German town of Weimar stumbled across something rather unexpected – as he paged through the town’s archives, he noticed something written inside a heavy tome of parchment that appeared to have been inscribed with pen and ink.
The contents of the inscription? A 600-year-old recipe for the German sausage commonly referred to as Thuringian bratwurst! The inscription dates back to 1432, and actually presents guidelines for Thuringian sausage makers – it turns out that only the purest and unspoiled meat could be used for the sausages, and anyone who broke the guidelines would be slapped with a fine of 24 pfennigs, the equivalent of a day’s wages.
Although it was known that Medieval town markets in Germany often formed committees to be in charge of monitoring produce quality, these sausage regulations confirm the strict commitment to consumer protection laws during the Middle Ages. It is perhaps this adherence to quality that allowed the Thuringian bratwurst to become one of the most ubiquitous symbols of German’s cultural heritage!
Prior to this discovery, the oldest known recipe for bratwurst dated back to 1613 and was also kept in the Weimar State Archive. A smoked variety of the sausage was mentioned in a document from 1797, though the oldest known reference to bratwurst – without listing any details on the production process – comes from a transcript of a bill from an Arnstadt convent in 1404. Undoubtedly, the bratwurst’s history dates back even further, but unfortunately, there are no surviving grocery lists or trade records in Ye Olde High German that mention this strictly regulated meat product.
The 1432 bratwurst recipe is scheduled to be kept on display in the historic Bratwurst Museum in the capital of Thuringia.
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