A Traditional Swiss Specialty Since 1846
A pale, delicate veal sausage enriched with bread — and the only one of its kind protected by Swiss and European geographical law.
Glarner Kalberwurst is a white, scalded veal sausage native to the Canton of Glarus, a small alpine canton in eastern Switzerland. Its earliest written trace appears in an 1846 description of the canton, where the Kalberwurst is named as belonging unmistakably to Glarus.
What sets it apart from every comparable Swiss veal sausage is a single, much-debated ingredient: white bread baked in Glarus itself. Folded into the fine meat-and-milk mixture, it gives the sausage its soft texture and gentle flavour — and once sparked a legal dispute that lasted most of a century.
Since 2011, Glarner Kalberwurst has carried the IGP (Protected Geographical Indication), meaning it may only be produced within the canton, to a defined and protected recipe.
From local meat to the gentle scald, every Glarner Kalberwurst IGP follows a protected, time-honoured method — produced only within the canton.
Cattle and pigs born, raised and slaughtered in Switzerland — for many producers, sourced directly from Glarus farms.
Meat, bacon, ice, salt and mild spices are cut fine and fast, then the local white bread is folded in to form the mixture.
The mixture is filled into natural cow intestines and shaped into the characteristic Kalberwurst ring.
Sausages are scalded in hot water and steam at a minimum of 68 °C, then cooled with cold water — never grilled.
Few sausages in Switzerland have been argued over as passionately. This is how Glarner Kalberwurst earned — and kept — its place.
A published description of the Canton of Glarus names the Kalberwurst as belonging to the region — its oldest traceable evidence.
The recipe was so contested that the canton's open-air assembly fixed the sausage's exact contents by law.
After a long struggle with federal food law, Glarus butchers won the right to keep making it to the original recipe.
New Swiss food law finally allowed bread in sausage meat — ending the dispute. Glarus could enjoy its Kalberwurst freely.
Registered as a Protected Geographical Indication, securing both its name and its place of origin for good.
It is more than a meal — it is how Glarus gathers.
Each May, the people of Glarus meet in the open air for the Landsgemeinde, one of Switzerland's last direct-democratic assemblies. The meal that follows has long been the same, and the Kalberwurst sits at its heart.
Production, landscape and table — the world the Kalberwurst belongs to. Swap any panel for your own photography.
Questions about Glarner Kalberwurst IGP, producers, or where to taste it? We're glad to help.