Is There Really an Extra Sausage?

In Germany, the term is probably best known as part of a figure of speech – someone who claims an extra sausage for themselves wants special treatment. In Austria, on the other hand, people not only know this figurative meaning, but actually also a meat specialty called “Extrawurst”. It is a boiled beef and pork sausage similar to the Lyoner and Fleischwurst respectively. Other ingredients include garlic, spices and bacon. It also contains potato starch for better binding. There are several regional variants that differ in the composition of the spices. For example, the extra sausage meat can be refined with white pepper, mustard seed, paprika powder, ginger, allspice or nutmeg.

Officially, the Extrawurst is available in three different varieties, which differ in appearance or the mixing ratio of the basic ingredients: the Extrawurst in a wreath, the Extrawurst in sticks and the Feine Extrawurst. The Extrawurst im Kranz is made from the ingredients mentioned as a round sausage ring. The extra sausage in sticks differs only in its straight shape and is well suited for cold cuts. The Feine Extrawurst, on the other hand, contains particularly high-quality muscle meat and less beef, but more bacon than the other two varieties.

In addition, there are various sausages in Austria that are very similar to the Extrawurst: the Pikantwurst, for example, also contains chopped sweet peppers. The Paris sausage, on the other hand, contains more muscle meat and less bacon than the extra sausage.

What the Austrian sausage specialty has to do with the saying has not yet been clearly clarified. The naming may refer to the fact that sausage and meat products used to be a very rare or even unaffordable treat for poorer people. The Extrawurst is also one of the few sausages that was not originally developed by ordinary people. It could only be produced industrially and with expensive equipment that allowed the ingredients to be crushed very finely.