Considering the large number of Germans in the United States it seems strange that they do not insist on having as good sausage made here as on the other side. But they do not. The home-made sausage is usually compounded of worthless scraps, and is apt to be indigestible. As for the "imported" Cervelat and other kinds, they are often so in name only—which explains that wail, de profundis, of Freiherr von Wolzogen.
American sausages made after English or original recipes are generally spoiled by an excessive amount of sage. Sage should always be used homœopathically, else it overpowers all other flavors. Were I Czar in the realm of gastronomy I should forbid the use of sage altogether.
The next time you go to Europe do not forget to make an automobile trip from Munich to Berlin, taking in Nuremberg on the way. We did that, with some friends, in the summer of 1912, and when we reached the city of Hans Sachs we steered straight for the Bratwurstglöcklein, a little eating shop, known by name at least, to epicures the world over, though only one dish is cooked in it, and that dish, as the name indicates, is sausage.
Five Würstchen, no bigger than your thumb, are served with a portion of sauerkraut. The cost is half a mark—twelve cents—a portion and you can have as many encores as you like. Some of us took four, and so tender and tasty were the little things, as well as the kraut that we had no occasion to regret it. After all, we were mere tyros, as our waiter informed us; he has known many a man to eat a dozen portions or more and not send for an ambulance—at least, that's what he said. The number of portions served daily vary from 3,000 to 5,000; the record is 25,000 served on a day when there was a Sängerfest.
Nuremberg has two other eating places similar to this, but the Bratwurstglöcklein maintains its preeminence, owing to its traditions; for it was in its little rooms that the men who (with the aid of the Bratwurstglöcklein) made that city famous—among them Sachs, Welleland and Dürer—used to gather for food and drink.
After we had paid our bill—not a ruinous one for an automobile party—we started for the next town on our list, after buying a few boxes of the world-famed honey cakes (Lebkuchen) of the town. We all had seen the other sights of Nuremberg before. Besides, we were on a gastronomic trip, and discipline had to be preserved.
Observation has convinced me that Americans would be as enthusiastic sausage eaters as the Germans are if they could get them as well made and cooked. In a large New York down-town restaurant you can see, on certain days, half the guests ordering "country sausages," which, though good, are not to be mentioned on the same day as those of the Bratwurstglöcklein. The inference is inevitable that a lunch-room serving honest duplicates of the German delicacy would prove a gold-mine.
The proprietor of another down-town restaurant who provides excellent little Frankfurters informed me he got them at a certain shop in which two butchers had successively made their fortune by simply manufacturing these honest little sausages and really smoking them instead of using "liquid smoke." It makes such a difference to the palate as well as the stomach.
Genuine Frankfurters are made of solid meat (not lungs) and they are always smoked. They are known as Frankfurters throughout the greater part of Germany and Austria, but in Frankfort they call them Wiener Würstel, to dignify them, presumably, as exotics.
Smoked sausages and other meats are in great vogue among the Germans, whose addiction to them gives them the right to pose as true epicures. Do they not provide the whole world with smoked goosebreast, Hamburger Rauchfleish, and the best of all hams, the smoked Westphalian?