Currywurst
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Currywurst is a typical German take-away dish, a hot pork sausage cut into slices and seasoned with ketchup and generous amounts of curry powder, or a ready-made ketchup-based sauce seasoned with curry and other spices. Usually served with French fries or bread rolls, it is particularly popular in the metropolitan areas of the Ruhr Area, Berlin, and Hamburg. Considerable variation both in the type of sausage used and the ingredients of the sauce occurs between these areas, and there are disputes over where currywurst was originally invented and which version is to be considered "correct". Currywurst is almost exclusively sold in take-away diners, "greasy-spoon" or hot-dog stall type places, and very rarely even in restaurants (then usually as a dish for children). Some instant food makers have tried to establish currywurst as a supermarket-shelf product to prepare at home, but this has met with little success.
For decades, currywurst has been by far the most popular fast-food dish with Germans, typical of but not limited to working-class diet habits. In recent years, its popularity has suffered due to the competition of pizza and, more strongly, döner kebab. Nevertheless, it remains easily available almost everywhere and continues to enjoy a certain cult status.
Currywurst seems to have been invented in the post-World War II years, although the exact time and place of the event remain subject to controversy. According to the Berlin legend, currywurst sauce was invented by one Herta Heuwer (b. 30 June 1913, Königsberg, d. 3 July 1999 in Berlin) when, while waiting for customers at her sausage stall in Berlin's Charlottenburg district on the rainy day of 4 September 1949, she started to experiment with the ingredients out of sheer boredom. According to the Ruhr area legend, the sauce was accidentally invented by a sausage stall owner in Essen, who dropped a can with curry powder into some ketchup. In his 1993 novella entitled Die Entdeckung der Currywurst ("The Discovery of the Currywurst"), the renowned author Uwe Timm dates it to 1947 and attributes it to a fictional character called Lena Brücker, who ran a stall in Hamburg. Early in his career, Herbert Grönemeyer, raised in Bochum and arguably the most successful German pop singer, devoted a song to currywurst with lyrics in the typical sociolect of the Ruhr Area.
