Weißwurst, Very Bavarian!

This is something I've periodically fixed over the years, and it's VERY Bavarian! This is a famous plate served in Bavaria before midday: Weißwurst (or "Weisswurst," literally, "white sausage"), pretzel (called "Brezn" in Bavarian dialect),* sweet mustard (süßer Senf) and wheat beer (Weizenbier). Before refrigeration became popular, Weißwurst was served before midday, as the sausages had no preservatives in them, so they needed to be eaten pretty quickly to keep them from spoiling. Similarly for the pretzels, which would begin to lose their soft inside texture after a time. So, the tradition began out of necessity, and it continues to this day.

Weißwursts (German plural: Weißwürste) are typically made with ground veal, some back bacon (German: Rückenspeck), and usually some ground cardamom, mace, onion and parsley, but each sausage maker has their own recipe, and ground pork is often used too, as well as some dried lemon peel and white or black pepper. Weißwursts are packed into natural hog casings and tend to be about 4 or 5 inches in length. They are prepared by placing the sausages in "hot water," where the water temperature remains at several degrees below boiling. The Weißwursts are kept in the hot water for about 10 to 15 minutes. The point made by the Bavarians is that the casing should not split. Why? So they can take the Weißwursts from the hot water, put them on a plate and then begin to remove the casing from the mildly seasoned meat filling. Ah, hey look, if you have any complaints, tell the Bavarians. So, Weißwursts are eaten with the skin removed and accompanied by sweet mustard, another Bavarian specialty. Also traditionally served with Weißwursts are "Brezn" (pronounced as if, "bray-tsn," with the "z" pronounced like the "ts" at the end of "hits"), which is the Bavarian dialect word for pretzel. Of course, you need something to wash this food down, and "Weizenbier" (pronounced as if, "vytsen-beeah"), also termed "Weißbier," is the drink. This is "wheat beer," and in Bavaria it generally is not filtered, so the beer remains a little cloudy, but there are filtered versions, which are, thus, clear.

For Americans, while nowhere near as common as "bratwurst," Weißwurst can sometimes be found in supermarkets or in specialty meat shops, or German/Austrian shops. Imported German sweet mustard can be found in supermarkets or ethnic stores, but there are some domestic products too.** The same with wheat beer, which is now commonly produced by the many local and regional breweries that have sprung up across the U.S. in the last couple of decades or so, but there are a number of German imports available too.   

* Standard German uses both "Brezel" and "Bretzel" as the spelling for the word for "pretzel."

** I'd guess about 35 years ago, I was returning from Germany and there was an American soldier (US Army) on the plane, a common occurrence in those times, as the U.S. had hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in West Germany. He was talking with many people and he was telling them how German mustard was simply the best. He was referring to standard mustard, not the sweet mustard type. He really lavished praise on German mustard, but I must say, I "like" mustard, I don't love it, so I can't really tell you if he was right (back then). I'm much more of a ketchup guy, which may cause some Germans, including my relatives, to faint, as they by far prefer mustard. But in those times, bratwurst was becoming increasingly popular in the U.S.  

WORD HISTORY:
Split-This word goes back to Indo European "splei/spley," which had the notion, "to separate from, to split off from." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "spaldanan," with the same meaning. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "splatan" and "asplætan," with the vowel sound and the "L" sound transposed, and both forms meaning, "to split, to cut or break parts off from the whole." These forms seem to have then died out in English ("cleave," then spelled "cleven," was the verb used to mean "to split"), and it wasn't until the mid 1500s that a form of the word was reacquired from Low German "splitten," which had the same meaning as the former English words, while Dutch seems to have used their form of the word, also spelled "splitten," at least occasionally, in reference to a "ship breaking up;" that is, "splitting apart" (wooden in those times). Other relatives in the Germanic languages: German has both "spalten" (to split),and "spleißen" (to split, to splice; that is, "bonding two split pieces together"), Dutch has "splijten" (to split), and the related, "spouwen (once spelled "spouden," and meaning, "to break up, break apart, collapse"), West Frisian "spjalte" (split), Old Norse once had the related noun "spjald" (piece of word), and Danish and Norwegian "splitte" (split, divide) seem to have been borrowed from Low German. Swedish has "spjälka" (split, cleave), while Swedish "splittra" (to splinter, to shatter, to divide) "may" be a borrowing from Low German (much contact between the Swedes and Low German speakers in the north of Germany over the centuries).