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”:
- They are usually stored in a preserving glass where you can see them floating in the liquid.
- 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”.
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- Imagine drowned men floating with giant onions in a huge aquarium. Enjoy your meal!
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- Pickled ‘drowned men’ with bread and onion.
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- For comparison: nakládaný hermelín. These are not called ‘drowned men’ – perhaps because they are vegetarian.
photos by Wikipedia
