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There is no New Year’s Eve without wiener (Vienna) sausage: the vast majority of Hungarian households serve them at the start of the New Year. The price increase has not spared this product either, but it seems that despite the price hike, Hungarians are not giving up their favorite New Year’s Eve food.
At the end of the year, the consumption of wieners, sometimes called frankfurters, among Hungarians is extremely high, with people buying and consuming 20 percent of the total annual quantity at this time, Világgazdaság reports. In previous years, Hungarians spent HUF 5 billion on this product during the New Year’s Eve period, with consumption in December typically reaching 3-4 thousand tons.
And why do Hungarians eat these frankfurters on New Year’s Eve? According to tradition, you should not eat poultry on New Year’s Day, because that would fly away with your luck, and you should not eat fish either, because that would swim away with it.
Pork, on the other hand, is a good luck charm because it digs out luck, so eating pork wurst has become very popular.
Hungarians are willing to pay the higher price in exchange for quality, which is particularly important when it comes to wiener.
Pork frankfurters are the most popular among people, but they are also the most expensive. According to the Hungarian Central Statistics Office, the average price of the product has risen to over 3,000 forints per kilogram this November, compared to around 2,100 forints a year ago.
Meanwhile, this increase in price may lead to a shift towards supermarket’s own label products, which are cheaper than the well-known brands, but often of the same quality.
Obviously, a sausage with 80-90% meat content is obviously more expensive than a product with various additives instead of pork. However, quality is an extremely important aspect with frankfurters and this is highlighted in the requirements as well. The Hungarian Food Codex tightened the rules for wieners in 2017. Since then, products must contain at least 51% meat, and those that do not meet the requirements cannot bear the name ‘wiener.’
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