Pea sausage

Yellow pea sausage from Knorr and a portion piece

The pea sausage was one of the oldest industrially produced ready meals . It is not actually a sausage , but rather portion tablets that are packed in a sausage-shaped, aluminum- coated paper roll. A creamy pea soup can be made from this in a short time by mashing the portions, dissolving them in cold water and boiling them for a few minutes.

The pea sausage was developed in 1867 by the cook and canning manufacturer Johann Heinrich Grüneberg from Berlin . He soon sold his invention for 35,000 Vereinstaler to the Prussian army , which from 1870 onwards distributed it to their soldiers in the Franco-Prussian War - initially as an " iron ration ". This was preceded by attempts by the Prussian War Ministry in which soldiers were fed only with pea sausage and commission bread during normal duty for six weeks . When the war broke out in 1870, a factory was built at state expense in which 1,700 workers initially produced seven tons of pea sausage a day, later up to 65, a total of 4,000 to 5,000 tons.

From 1889 on, the Knorr brothers in Heilbronn , who were already producing Knorr gruel and the Victoria patent-saving soup, took over the production of the ready-made soup. As a cheap, nutritious, almost indefinitely durable and easy-to-prepare dish, it became popular and soon became part of the basic equipment of hikers, mountaineers and expeditions. Until 2018, pea sausage was offered as Knorr pea sausage with bacon in yellow and green . Production was stopped on December 31, 2018 due to insufficient demand.

The portion tablets originally consisted only of pea flour, beef fat, defatted bacon, table salt, onions and spices. Later, the composition of the ingredients was changed significantly - in addition to pea flour, smoked bacon , palm oil , table salt and smoked yeast , smoke aromas and other aromas , especially flavor enhancers were used: monosodium glutamate , disodium inosinate , disodium guanylate and yeast extract . The yellow Erbswurst also contained for coloring turmeric , the green, however, vegetable juice concentrate and spinach powder.

Web links

Wiktionary: Erbswurst  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Marianne Bitsch: Pea sausage for soldiers. Calendar sheet. In: BR online. Bayerischer Rundfunk, August 21, 2002, archived from the original on February 9, 2006 ; accessed on September 1, 2013 . 
• Pea sausage in mass production. In: Prussia - Chronicle of a German State. Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, May 21, 2008, accessed on September 1, 2013 . 
• Christine Baumbarthuber: Tasty Prussian Rations: Erbswurst. In: The Austerity Kitchen. April 5, 2009, accessed September 1, 2013 . 
• http://dingler.culture.hu-berlin.de/article/pj198/mi198mi02_11

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Knorr pea sausage. In: Knorr. Unilever Germany, accessed September 1, 2013 . 
2. ↑ The end of a legend: Knorr discontinues pea sausage. NPG digital GmbH, December 16, 2018, accessed on January 2, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Contents on the respective product packaging.