Frankfurter Würstchen

Frankfurter Würstchen belongs to Frankfurt am Main, not to a beer tent and not to every sausage stand in the country. It is a slender smoked pork sausage in a sheep casing, set down for a quick meal with potato salad, mustard, and bread. Weeknight food, yes. Careless food, no.

Im Norden anders, im Süden anders. In Frankfurt, the Würstchen stays thin, gently smoked, and pale pink inside; in Vienna the related Wiener Würstchen often runs a little broader and may mix pork and beef. Berlin will put a sausage into curry sauce and call that dinner. Fine. This one is Frankfurt's table, and the mustard does not come sweet like Bavaria's white-sausage breakfast.

The whole technique is heat control. Bring the water up, take it off the boil, then lay the sausages in and let them warm through gently. Boil them hard and the tight sheep casing splits, the fat leaks, the smoke washes out, and you've made expensive cooking water. Runter mit der Temperatur. That is the recipe.

Serve them with Kartoffelsalat, potato salad, the kind dressed sharp enough to cut the smoke. A little mustard, a roll or rye bread, and nothing from the jar except the mustard if it is a good one. Schön ist, was schmeckt.