Bayerischer Süßer Senf

Munich's coarse sweet mustard, caramel-brown and made for Weisswurst before the noon bell

Origin: Munich, Bavaria, Germany

From the journey of Mustard.

This mustard exists because of one sausage, and the two have not been separated since. Weisswurst is a pale sausage of veal and pork back bacon, seasoned with parsley, lemon, mace, and cardamom, made fresh in the morning and poached rather than fried. It is delicate and faintly citrus, and it is completely flattened by an ordinary sharp mustard. Bavarian tradition holds that it should be eaten before the noon bell, from a time before refrigeration when a sausage made at dawn without preservatives had a short and honest life; the rule survives as etiquette long after the reason for it has gone. Johann Conrad Develey, a Munich mustard-maker, produced süßer Senf in 1854 specifically to solve the problem of what to put beside it. His answer was to grind the brown seed coarse rather than fine, to heat the mash gently, which deliberately blunts the pungency, and to sweeten it heavily with sugar and caramelised sugar syrup. The result is brown, grainy, sticky, and closer to a chutney than to a condiment, sweet at the front with only a low warm mustard note behind. That gentle heating is the interesting part, because everywhere else in this entry heat is the enemy. Here it is used on purpose: warming the mash partly destroys the enzyme before it can finish its work, which is precisely how the sweetness is allowed to dominate. It is the one mustard in the atlas made deliberately mild by breaking the rule that governs all the others. Eating Weisswurst has its own etiquette. The skin is not eaten: the sausage is either cut lengthways and the meat lifted out, or, in the traditional manner, sucked out of the casing, an operation called zuzeln that visitors are encouraged to attempt and locals enjoy watching.

Ingredients

Mustard

80 g brown mustard seed
40 g yellow mustard seed
150 ml water
100 ml cider vinegar

Sweetening

80 g dark brown sugar
60 g granulated sugar, for the caramel
3 tbsp water, for the caramel

Seasoning

1 tsp fine sea salt
0.5 tsp ground allspice
0.25 tsp ground cloves
1 pinch ground ginger

Method

Toast the brown mustard seed in a dry pan over a medium heat for two to three minutes, shaking, until it smells nutty and a few seeds begin to pop. Tip out and cool.
Grind both seeds coarsely, in a mortar or in short pulses in a grinder. This mustard is meant to be visibly grainy, so stop well short of a powder.
Make the caramel: heat the 60 g granulated sugar with the 3 tbsp water in a small pan without stirring until it turns a deep amber. Take off the heat and very carefully add 50 ml of the measured water; it will spit violently. Swirl to dissolve.
Combine the ground seed, the remaining water, the vinegar, the brown sugar, the caramel, the salt, and the spices in a saucepan and stir well.
Warm over a low heat, stirring, for fifteen minutes, keeping it well below a simmer. Do not let it boil.
Take off the heat, cool completely, then pot into sterilised jars and refrigerate.
Leave for at least 48 hours before eating, and preferably a week.

Notes

It keeps for three months refrigerated and thickens over time; loosen with a spoonful of water if it stiffens too far. The correct partner is Weisswurst, poached in water held just below the boil for ten minutes, never boiled, and served in the water in a tureen with a fresh pretzel and a wheat beer. Do not eat the skin. It is also excellent with Leberkäse, with roast pork, in a potato salad, brushed onto a ham before roasting, and, less traditionally, with a strong cheddar. Halving the sugar gives something closer to a mild Franconian mustard and is worth doing if the Bavarian version reads as too sweet, which for many people outside Bavaria it does.

The Gastrographer

Name: Bayerischer Süßer Senf
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 48 h
Yield: 16
Cuisine: Germany
Ingredients: 80 g brown mustard seed; 40 g yellow mustard seed; 150 ml water; 100 ml cider vinegar; 80 g dark brown sugar; 60 g granulated sugar, for the caramel; 3 tbsp water, for the caramel; 1 tsp fine sea salt; 0.5 tsp ground allspice; 0.25 tsp ground cloves; 1 pinch ground ginger

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control