Currywurst

History

Currywurst was born in Berlin in 1949, in the immediate aftermath of the war in Germany. Herta Heuwer, who ran a food stand, reportedly traded alcohol and other goods for ketchup and curry powder with British soldiers — rare and precious ingredients in a city still marked by shortages. She mixed them with Worcestershire sauce and poured the result over a grilled pork sausage, before patenting her own spice recipe in 1959.

The dish became emblematic of Berlin’s reconstruction: the construction workers rebuilding the city turned it into a quick, cheap meal grabbed between shifts. Berlin even dedicated a museum to it, open from 2009 to 2018. Currywurst remains one of Germany’s most eaten snacks today, sold from street stands as well as more formal restaurants.

Ingredients — Serves 4

• 4 pork sausages (bratwurst), grilled or pan-fried
• 200g ketchup (or tomato paste + water)
• 2 tsp curry powder
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 dash Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp sugar, salt
• Bread or fries to serve

The German currywurst recipe, step by step

1. Grill the sausages in a pan or on a grill until the skin turns golden and slightly crisp.
2. Make the sauce: heat the ketchup with the Worcestershire sauce and sugar over low heat, without letting it boil hard.
3. Add the curry powder and paprika off the heat to preserve their aroma, and mix well.
4. Cut the sausages into 2cm pieces, on a board or straight onto the plate.
5. Ladle the hot sauce generously over the top, then dust with an extra pinch of curry powder.
6. Serve with bread or fries, just like at the Berlin food stands.

Cooking method

Technique: the sausage grilled dry, then coated with a sauce heated separately, never cooked together.

Traditional equipment: a griddle plate (Imbiss); a grill pan at home works very well.

Signs to look for: the sausage skin should crackle and split slightly; the sauce should stay fluid, never thick like jam.

Nutrition, per serving

Calculated from the raw ingredient quantities above, divided across four servings.

The sausage carries almost all of the protein, fat and saturated fat in this dish; the ketchup-based sauce contributes nearly all of the carbohydrate, largely as sugar. At 480 kcal per serving before any bread or fries, currywurst sits closer to a snack than a full meal — consistent with its history as something eaten quickly between shifts rather than sat down to.

Economic context

Currywurst was born directly out of scarcity: Herta Heuwer reportedly traded alcohol and other goods for ketchup and curry powder with British soldiers in 1949 Berlin, when both were rare, precious imports in a city still marked by wartime shortages. The dish then became the fast, cheap meal of the construction workers rebuilding Berlin — its whole reason for existing was to be affordable and quick, a reputation that has stuck to it ever since.

Source: World Bank / FAO, Food Prices for Nutrition database (Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet) v4.0, 2024 data, CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.57966/41AN-KY81. Retrieved 29 July 2026. This figure describes the cost of a healthy diet in Germany generally — it is not a costing of this specific recipe.

Who this dish suits

And you?

In your opinion, where’s the best place or restaurant to enjoy good currywurst?

Also worth trying