Mayo & Mustard

Mayonnaise is French or Spanish in origin. Mustard-based condiments may have originally been invented in ancient Rome, but since then, Germany has developed a lot of different kinds of mustard. 

 

They also have lots of different kinds of sausage. Often a sidewalk food truck will have just one or two kinds of sausage, maybe with just one or two kinds of mustard to put on it, and there are also regional specialties, but if you add up everything in Germany, it's an amazing variety of sausage. And mustard.

 

And of course, Germany has beer. Great beer. A small amount of bad beer compared to Murrka, but also huge amounts of amazing beer that doesn't cost much at all.

I used to tell people that beer was invented in Germany, but I was mistaken. (I used to tell people all sorts of things which were inaccurate, and you know what? I probably still do!) People in the Middle East were drinking beer 10,000 years ago, in the earliest towns built from stone. By 2000 BC there were huge beer festivals in Egypt, where everyone would get very very drunk and dance maniacally and have sex in public. The attitudes of ancient Egyptians about sex were very different than ours today. Don't get me started. 

 

Knowledge of beermaking doesn't appear to have gotten as far north as Germany until 800 BC.

But mead remained the most popular northern European drink well into the Middle Ages. Generally speaking, beer and wine moved north alongside the Latin language, reading and writing, and Christianity. And in some areas it didn't replace mead as the most popular booze for a long, long time after that. And, as you may know, there are still people who make mead and grow beards and sing wimpy folk songs.

 

I've never had mead. Unless I have, and I was so drunk that I don't remember it, which is possible.