Frankfurt & Hesse, Germany

Germany

Frankfurt sits on the Main river at the center of Hesse, a trading city that has been a crossroads for commerce since the medieval fairs that drew merchants from across Europe. The city gave the world one of its most copied sausages: the Frankfurter Würstchen, a thin, lightly smoked pork sausage in a natural sheep casing that predates the American hot dog by several centuries. Frankfurt butchers received a guild charter for this sausage in 1487, making it one of the oldest documented protected meat products in Europe. The sausage is always sold in pairs, always poached rather than grilled, and eaten with bread and mustard. Vendors at Frankfurt's Christmas market and the Sachsenhausen apple wine taverns still serve it this way. The name is protected under EU law: a Frankfurter must be made in the Frankfurt area to carry the designation.