What to eat and drink at a Christmas market

Most of what makes a Christmas market worth the cold is eaten standing up. Here is what you are likely to be looking at, and which bits deserve the queue.

The drink

Glühwein is the default: red wine warmed with cinnamon, cloves, star anise and citrus, sweetened rather heavily. It is not fine wine and is not trying to be. A shot of rum or amaretto added to it is sold as mit Schuss, and it is stronger than the thin taste suggests.

Feuerzangenbowle is Glühwein with a rum-soaked sugarloaf set alight above it. Largely theatre, but good theatre.

Eierpunsch is the egg-based one — closer to warm advocaat, thicker and sweeter, and the thing to order when you have had enough red wine. In Austria you will also meet Punsch in a dozen fruit variations.

Non-alcoholic options are universal: Kinderpunsch is spiced fruit punch, served hot, and no one will look at you oddly for ordering it.

The sausages

Bratwurst covers a wide range. The one to seek out is the Nuremberg Rostbratwurst: small, finger-length, grilled over beech and served three to a roll. Thüringer is longer and coarser. Currywurst is sliced sausage under curried tomato sauce, and is a Berlin habit more than a Christmas one.

The roll is a delivery mechanism, not lunch. Order accordingly.

The sweet things

Lebkuchen is the soft, dark, spiced gingerbread-adjacent biscuit, often on a wafer base and glazed or chocolate-covered. Nuremberg’s Elisenlebkuchen is the premium version, made with a very high nut content and little flour.

Stollen is the dense fruited loaf with a marzipan seam, dusted heavily in icing sugar. Dresden’s is the definitive one — the Striezelmarkt is named after it.

Gebrannte Mandeln are almonds roasted in caramelised sugar, and the smell of them is doing a great deal of the work in making the market smell like Christmas.

Trdelník, the hollow chimney-shaped pastry rolled in sugar, is everywhere in Prague. It is delicious and it is also not remotely a traditional Czech Christmas food, whatever the stall says.

The savoury things worth queuing for

Raclette: half a wheel of cheese heated at the cut face and scraped over potatoes. Kartoffelpuffer or Reibekuchen: fried potato pancakes, served with apple sauce, which sounds wrong and is not. Flammkuchen: very thin Alsatian tart with crème fraîche, onion and bacon — the thing to eat in Strasbourg and Alsace. Langos in Hungary: deep-fried dough with sour cream and cheese, and a meal in itself.

In the UK

British markets serve a mix: German imports alongside local producers. The genuinely good buys are usually the regional ones — Yorkshire cheese at York, West Country cider and chocolate at Exeter, Welsh produce at Cardiff. The Yorkshire pudding wrap has become a fixture and is exactly as substantial as it sounds.

One practical note

Eat before you drink. Glühwein is served hot, sweet and in the cold, which disguises how much of it you have had.