Drowned Men with Onion and Bread

If you work in a morgue, you may have experienced drowned people as something that doesn’t look quite yummy. Thanks to Czech black humor, however, the same name is applied to a dish: a sausage pickled in vinegar and served with onions and bread – in Czech called utopenci (pl.). This is a real pub classic and probably the number one snack with beer, challenged only by nakládaný hermelín, which is the Czech version of a Camembert, marinated with spices in oil and served – guess how – with bread and onion.

There are two common explanations why these sausages are called “drowned men”:

1. They are usually stored in a preserving glass where you can see them floating in the liquid.
2. Legend has it that these utopenci were invented by an innkeeper in the town of Beroun – his name was Šamánek – who later drowned while repairing his mill wheel. His guests decided to honor the tragically deceased by calling his sausages after him “drowned men”.

photos by Wikipedia