Hedi LaMarr Rudd
Jesse Brookstein
Brookstein took about three years to write "A Perfect Pair."
I am from upstate New York and there’s a shop out there called Rolf’s Pork Store. When I was a kid my uncle would go to Rolf’s to get landjaeger, a semi-dried sausage snack, to bring to our family camp.
Over time, this became a family tradition that still takes place over the holidays or anytime we’re able to see one another.
When I was still living in New York, I did an internship at Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown. I was 24 years old, and while I appreciated craft beer, I still drank beer with a party mindset. Then I tasted several sour beers that just blew my mind, and I became interested in learning the recipes and other nuances that brought these flavors to life. I continued working in the beer industry, got my bachelor’s degree from SUNY-Oswego, and moved to Boulder, Colorado, to join some friends who’d already landed out there.
It was incredible out there. I loved it. Between 2007 and 2015 I worked at a couple of different breweries before co-founding Call to Arms Brewery with two colleagues of mine. When my fiancé had an opportunity to pursue her postdoc at UW-Madison, I sold my shares in the business and we moved to Madison in 2018.
After moving to Wisconsin, I noticed the many similarities in culture and landscape that upstate New York and Wisconsin shared. And when I went to the legendary Old Fashioned restaurant in Madison or popped into stores down in Green County, I found display after display of different landjaeger. It felt familiar, and it instantly piqued my interest. The more I dove in, the more I realized the similarities and differences of each brand, and I simply needed to learn more.
I continued trying all the landjaeger I could find, and in my free time, I’d search different areas of Wisconsin on the map to see if landjaeger showed up in the area. This was very similar to my early days as a beer geek, and it’s fascinating what you find when you start asking even the simplest of questions.
When I started researching Wisconsin landjaeger, I really couldn’t find much information about it online. I decided that I was going to conduct some research and write a book about the history of landjaeger in Wisconsin, and it quickly became my passion project.
I first reached out to Chris Hessling at Ruef’s Meat Market in New Glarus. It became quite clear that a lot of these old-school meat processors keep their recipes close to their chest, so I was nervous that they’d think I was coming to steal their ideas. But Chris gave me a thorough take on landjaeger and that gave me the confidence I needed to start interviewing other meat producers in the area.
My first vision for the book saw me covering all the landjaeger producers throughout the entire state, and I was naive enough to think that there were only eight or 10 of them scattered about. Of course, the more I started meeting people and hearing their stories, the more I realized there were more like 30 to 40 Wisconsin shops producing landjaeger.
Green County has the most concentrated grouping of what I’d call traditional landjaeger producers so I decided to refocus my book project on Green County.
I think about landjaeger as time capsules. For example, at Hoesly’s Meats, a well-known shop in New Glarus, the gentleman who runs that place has decades of experience under his belt. And his dad also crafted landjaeger in New Glarus at a now-closed shop called Strickler’s. When Dennis Hoesly opened up Hoesly’s Meats in 1983, his dad was passing along knowledge he’d gleaned from his years at Strickler’s. So even though we’re tasting a Hoesly product now, we’re also tasting a recipe that’s a direct descendant of the Strickler’s product that came decades before — and which itself may have been passed down from another shop or producer, possibly from Switzerland at that point in New Glarus’ history.
After I published A Perfect Pair: The History of Landjaeger in Green County, Wisconsin, I went back home and saw my uncle for the first time in a long time. Oddly enough, up until that point I had never made it to Rolf’s Pork Store myself, which felt altogether sacrilegious. As we walked in, my uncle was really proud to introduce me to the family who owned the shop. He told them about the book and I gave them a copy to keep. They passed along some upstate New York thoughts on landjaeger and were kind enough to comp the items we bought. It was a pretty special moment hanging with my uncle in the shop that started this crazy trip down Landjaeger Lane.
Writing A Perfect Pair took about three years of discussion and two years of planning, travel, interviews, and taste testing. I was also very lucky to have Wisconsin native Zach Nichols use his design skills to craft a “church cookbook” aesthetic. I took an anecdotal approach with the narration, as if two buddies were hanging out at a bar and someone asks, “Why do you love landjaeger so much?” I wanted it to be casual and welcoming while also being scientific and thoroughly researched.
And let me tell you, people in Wisconsin certainly love their landjaeger! I talked with 90-year-old ladies who have been eating landjaeger since they were two years old. Perhaps the greatest compliment I received was from an older Green County resident who told me the book was “A gift to Green County.” When you’re dealing with businesses that people care about so deeply, you’re treading on sacred ground. So needless to say, that was a very touching and validating thing to hear.
I’m often asked “What’s so special about landjaeger?” Or “How is it different from beef jerky?” I always preface my answer by saying that I am not an expert and I’ve only been studying landjaeger for the last three years. But from all my research and conversations with landjaeger makers, I believe there are five factors that constitute a “traditional” landjaeger: it comes as a joined pair and is hickory-smoked; flattened; comprised of pork, beef, or a combination of the two meats; and is shelf-stable, meaning it can be safely stored without refrigeration.
Having the chance to meet the hardworking producers and their families, I truly feel an obligation to tell their story and promote the fact that they’re all living, breathing parts of Green County’s history. Without them keeping these traditions alive, we’d not only be losing out on the deliciousness that landjaeger has to offer, but also the cultural significance of a product that made its way over to Wisconsin from the Old World.
Jesse Brookstein’s story was produced by Jen Rubin for Wisconsin Humanities’ Love Wisconsin project.
