Glarner Kalberwurst is the white veal sausage of the small Alpine canton of Glarus: veal and a little pork fat, worked with milk, egg and white bread into a pale, tender, delicately spiced sausage — pepper, mace and nutmeg — that is scalded, never smoked or cured. It is eaten heated in a white onion sauce with mashed potatoes and stewed dried plums, the traditional meal on Landsgemeinde Sunday in May, when the canton votes in the open air. The diagnostic is the bread and milk: almost half the sausage is veal, about a third is milk, and a few percent is white bread, which makes it softer and more delicate than a bratwurst or a Weisswurst. That bread gave it a legal history. The Glarus Landsgemeinde fixed the recipe in 1920, but Swiss federal food law of 1905 and 1936 banned non-meat fillers in sausage; Glarus needed a special permit from 1957 until the 1992 law allowed bread, and the sausage became a Swiss IGP in 2011. Keeping a milk-heavy veal paste cold and smooth is the whole technique. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from the Swiss culinary heritage description and the IGP figures, and is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 1816 g (4 lb) lean veal (shoulder or leg), sinew removed — 80%
- 454 g (1 lb) pork back fat (Wurstspeck) — 20%
MILK, BREAD, EGG (% of meat weight)
- 1203 g whole milk, very cold — about 1.2 litres (53%)
- 182 g white bread or rolls, crusts removed, torn (IGP 4–8% of the mix) (8%)
- 114 g whole egg — 2 large eggs (5%)
SEASONING (% of meat weight)
- 52 g fine salt (2.3%)
- 6.8 g white pepper (0.3%)
- 2.7 g nutmeg (0.12%)
- 1.8 g mace (0.08%)
- 45 g onion, very finely chopped and sweated in butter, cooled (2%)
- 35–38 mm beef rounds (beef casing), about 15 ft (4.5 m)
TO SERVE
- 60 g butter, 2 sliced onions, 40 g flour and 600 ml stock or milk, for the onion sauce
- 1.5 kg (3 lb) floury potatoes, mashed with milk and butter (Kartoffelstock)
- 400 g (14 oz) dried prunes, stewed with sugar, cinnamon and red wine or water
Directions
Key ingredients
- In the collection: veal, milk and bread. The Bavarian veal sausage built on the same cold-paste discipline is Weisswurst (Münchner Weißwurst); the Swiss smoked one is Cervelat (Swiss Cervelas).
- Make the bread dough: soak the bread in about a third of the cold milk with the eggs, then blend smooth. Swiss makers mix bread, milk and egg into a dough first and then work it into the meat; doing it separately stops lumps of bread in the sausage.
- Grind cold: chill veal and fat to −1 °C and grind both through a 3 mm plate. Veal is lean and wet; it smears quickly if warm.
- Emulsify: in a food processor, process the veal with the salt until sticky. With the motor running, add the remaining very cold milk in a stream, then the fat, spices, onion and the bread dough, and process until smooth and fine. Keep the paste below 12 °C / 54 °F throughout — this mix carries more milk than almost any sausage and breaks easily. Work in batches and re-chill between them.
- Test: poach a spoonful at 75 °C for 10 minutes. It should be white, tender and hold together, with no milk or fat weeping out. Season now.
- Stuff: fill the beef rounds and twist both ends by hand into sausages of about 150 g, 15 cm (6 in) long.
- Scald: poach in water at 75 °C / 167 °F for about 30 minutes, until the centre reaches 71 °C / 160 °F (veal and pork, ground). Never boil. Shock in ice water and refrigerate; they keep 4–5 days, or freeze.
- Make the sauce: sweat the onions in butter until soft and golden, stir in the flour, then whisk in the stock or milk and simmer 10 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
- Serve: heat the sausages gently in the sauce for 10 minutes. Peel the casing first if it is tough. Serve with Kartoffelstock and the warm stewed prunes.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The composition comes from the Swiss culinary heritage inventory and the IGP summary: veal about 50% of the sausage, milk about a third, white bread about 4% (the IGP range given as 4–8%), with sausage fat, egg, salt, pepper, mace, nutmeg and onion; stuffed in beef casing, both ends twisted by hand; scalded at 75 °C for 30 minutes. This recipe lands at about 48% veal, 32% milk, 5% bread. The veal-to-fat split (80/20) and spice weights are judgement. Untested.
Where Glarner Kalberwurst came from. Glarus is a mountain canton of dairy farmers, where calves were plentiful. The sausage is first mentioned as characteristic of the region in 1846. In 1920 the Landsgemeinde — the open-air assembly of the canton’s citizens — wrote its recipe into law. That put it on a collision course with Swiss federal food law, which in 1905 and again in 1936 banned non-meat additions such as bread in sausages; from 1957 Glarus butchers made it under a special cantonal permit, and only the revised food law of 1992 made bread in sausage legal. The name was registered as a trademark in 2000 and as an IGP in 2011. In 2006 ten butchers made about 30 tonnes a year; by 2013 there were seven.
Why it is so soft. Most sausages are bound by salt-extracted meat protein alone. Here milk and bread add water and starch that the meat protein and egg must hold, so the sausage is softer and paler than any bratwurst. The cost is fragility: too warm a paste or a boiling pot and it splits and weeps.
The plate. Landsgemeinde Sunday, the first Sunday in May, is the classic day: Kalberwurst in onion sauce, Kartoffelstock and stewed dried plums (gedörrte Zwetschgen). The sweet-sour prunes against the mild sausage is the point of the plate.
Variations. Some butchers use more pork fat; some cook it in the sauce raw; grilled versions exist but are not traditional.
Sourcing and gear. Veal shoulder from a good butcher; beef rounds from sausage suppliers (38–40 mm); a food processor large enough to work 1 kg at a time.
Still open. The IGP specification itself (Pflichtenheft) has not been read in the original; the casing diameter and the exact salt range are not confirmed.
Read more on the site. The German Tradition