Landjäger

The landjäger is a semi-dried, smoked sausage traditionally made in southern Germany, Austria, South Tyrol, Switzerland and Alsace. It is prized as a portable snack, since it keeps well without refrigeration and comes in single-serving links.

History

The sausage grew out of the air-curing and smoking traditions of German-speaking southern Europe, where meat was preserved for long periods. Its stability at room temperature made it practical food for soldiers and workers who needed a ready portion to carry.

Its name has several explanations. According to the Swiss German dictionary, it may derive from a dialect expression meaning smoked or air-cured for a long time. A humorous reading links it to mounted police, comparing the sausage's stiffness to military rigidity, but this is a folk reinterpretation. In Alsace and France, the names gendarme and gendarme appear to translate that folk etymology.

Over time it spread to northern Germany and to German-settled communities in the United States. Central and northern Italy produce a very similar semi-dried sausage, the salamino cacciatore.

Culture

The landjäger is associated with hiking, outdoor work and hunting. Today it is eaten as a snack or as a rucksack sausage, and in Germany it was traditionally offered to vineyard workers. Hunters regard it as suitable food for a day in the field, keeping alive older habits of the hunting life.

The recipe combines roughly equal parts beef and pork with lard, sugar, red wine and spices such as caraway, black pepper, coriander and garlic. Before smoking it is pressed into a mould, which gives it its rectangular cross-section. The links are sold joined in pairs by a strip of casing. In Austria it is sometimes made with horse meat.

Today it can be found in butcher shops, specialist stores and supermarkets across the German-speaking area, and it is especially associated with the canton of Graubünden.