---
title: 'Did This Pork Dish Kill Mozart?'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=R9Kw_3c88bQ'
video_id: 'R9Kw_3c88bQ'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 1300
---

# Did This Pork Dish Kill Mozart?

> Source: [Did This Pork Dish Kill Mozart?](https://youtube.com/watch?v=R9Kw_3c88bQ)

## Summary

This episode of Tasting History explores the mysterious death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, focusing on the theory that he died of trichinosis from eating undercooked pork. The host recreates an 18th-century Austrian pork loin recipe from Mozart's time, discusses the historical context, and examines various conspiracy theories, including poisoning by Salieri or the Freemasons.

### Key Points

- **Mozart's Death and Rumors** [00:00] — Mozart died at age 35 in December 1791; cause unknown but likely illness. One theory is trichinosis from undercooked pork.
- **Mozart's Productive Final Year** [01:17] — In late 1791, Mozart was highly productive, composing 'La clemenza di Tito', 'Clarinet Concerto in A', and working on the 'Requiem', while finally getting out of debt.
- **Symptoms and Official Diagnosis** [02:04] — Mozart developed high fever, severe muscle pain, vomiting, and limb swelling. Official cause: 'hitziges frieselfieber' (severe miliary fever), a catch-all for fever with rash.
- **The Pork Letter** [03:42] — On Oct 7, 1791, Mozart wrote to his wife about eating pork with Don Primus. 44 days later, he fell ill, fitting trichinosis timeline.
- **18th Century Pork Recipe** [04:27] — Recipe from Johann Holzmayer's 'Nützliches Kochbuch' for mutton/pork loin boiled in water, wine, vinegar with herbs, then crusted with breadcrumbs, cinnamon, sugar, and baked.
- **Young Mozart's Fear of Trumpet** [08:27] — Until age 9, Mozart was terrified of the trumpet. To cure him, his father had a trumpeter blow it at him, causing Mozart to collapse.
- **Mozart's Vatican Feat** [10:11] — At 14, Mozart transcribed Allegri's 'Miserere' from memory after one hearing, defying a papal ban on copying the music.
- **Poisoning Rumors and Salieri** [12:02] — Rumors spread that Salieri poisoned Mozart, but evidence is lacking. Salieri denied it, though later in delirium he claimed guilt.
- **Freemason Theory** [13:45] — Theory that Freemasons poisoned Mozart for revealing secrets in 'The Magic Flute', but no evidence supports it.
- **Requiem Commission Mystery** [15:43] — Count Franz Von Walsegg anonymously commissioned the Requiem to pass off as his own. Mozart fell ill before finishing it; his assistant completed it.
- **Tasting the Pork** [18:29] — The host tastes the dish: crust is sweet and crunchy, but boiling makes pork tough. Suggests cooking pork separately and using crust alone.
- **Squarespace Sponsor** [20:03] — Sponsor segment promoting Squarespace for website building, with discount code.

### Conclusion

Mozart's exact cause of death remains unknown, though the trichinosis theory is plausible. The mystery continues to fascinate, while the historical pork dish offers a tasty connection to his final days.

## Transcript

When the brilliant composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart  died in December of 1791 at the age of 35,   Vienna was awash in rumor. What killed Mozart? Well, to this day, nobody actually knows, but it was likely an illness.
And one theory is that it was trichinosis brought on by eating undercooked pork, a dish like this 18th century Austrian recipe for rye and cinnamon crusted pork loin. as we ask the question what or who killed Mozart,
this time on Tasting History. Today [January 27] is Mozart's 270th birthday so since he  is one of my favorite composers of all time,  
Now at first I was going to actually make the nipples of Venus, which are featured in the movie Amadeus,  I already made them over on Binging with Babish a couple years ago,  
I figured I would do something a little more  historically appropriate. I figured I would find something that he actually wrote about in his letters, which we still have to this day.   And that led me to a theory about his death.
See in late 1791, Mozart was in the midst of perhaps his most productive year ever. and 'La clemenza di Tito'. He'd also composed numerous  smaller works, including the 'Clarinet Concerto in A',
and was in the midst of working on the now legendary 'Requiem'. All of this while finally earning enough money to get out of debt. He had lived most of his life in debt, at least his adult life, because he lived lavishly. He went out a lot. He drank a lot  and entertained.
And he loved gambling, mostly on billiards and cards. And clearly, he wasn't very good at it. But things were finally starting to turn around He developed a high fever, severe muscle pain, vomiting, and a swelling of the limbs.
As his wife Constanze and her younger sister nursed him at home, Mozart endeavored to complete the 'Requiem', but on December 5th, 1791, he died, his last work unfinished. Of course, we see this scene in one of the greatest films of all time,  
a movie that I have seen no less than 30 times,  probably more, 'Amadeus'. But while that film is based on Mozart's life, or rather based on a play which is based on his life, it also takes a lot of dramatic liberties, especially in the  relationship between Mozart
and Antonio Salieri, who was another composer. The composers were actually on very good terms with each other it seems, and Salieri was one of the few people who actually attended Mozart's burial.
Now the film Salieri no real mention of exactly what killed  Mozart other than showing the man exhausted to the point of delirium, but his official cause of death, according to his family doctor, was "hitziges frieselfieber" or severe miliary fever.
And that term wasn't really a specific disease. Rather, it was a catch-all for any illness that caused fever and a rash. Mainly because the rash would look like millet,   the grain on your skin, hence the name miliary fever. 
Now in the past 270 years at least 136 post-mortem diagnoses have been put forward  including tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, kidney failure, syphilis, mercury poisoning,
streptococcal infection and for our purposes trichinosis from eating undercooked pork. See, on October 7th, 1791, Mozart wrote a letter to his wife, Constanze, telling her about a successful performance of 'Die Zauberflöte', 'The Magic Flute', his opera.
And at the end of it, he writes, "What do I see? What do I smell?   It is Don Primus with the pork! Che gusto! I eat  to your health. It is just strilking 11; perhaps you are already asleep? Sh! Sh! Sh! I will not wake you!...
44 days later, he began to show the signs of an illness which could be caused by trichinella, Now, is it definitive? No.
And so my question is, well, what kind of pork dish would he be eating? Now, it might be something like a simple pork chop or a breaded cutlet of pork schnitzel,
which was very popular in Vienna, but I've already made that here on the channel. So, I figured that I would look to an 18th century cookbook to find a different pork recipe. And that would be the Vienesse cookbook by Johann Holzmayer 'Nützliches Kochbuch' or The Useful Cookbook.
The cookbook has numerous recipes for how to prepare meat. And recipe 231   specifies mutton loin, but it also says that it  can be used for either venison or pork. It says, "Take from a mutton the loin, as large as it can  be, and dress it as one does a venison loin.
Boil it in water, wine, and vinegar with bay leaves, onion, rosemary, and strips of lemon peel until it is quite tender. When it is cooked, arrange it on a casserole dish and pour melted butter over it.   Take grated dark bread, mix it with cinnamon and  sugar, sprinkle this over the loin,
pour more butter over it and put it into the oven, so that  it becomes nicely brown, turning it once or twice.   Make a good broth, pour it underneath, and serve  it warm at the table." So for the first part of this recipe, what you'll need is 3 to 4 pounds or 1/2 kilograms of pork loin rubbed with two or 3 tablespoons of salt.
Then two tablespoons of butter or olive oil, two quarts or two liters of water,   two cups or a half liter of dry white wine,  two tablespoons of red or white wine vinegar,   four bay leaves, one onion sliced up, four sprigs  of rosemary, and the zest of one lemon.
So first heat the butter or olive oil in a large pot  over high heat. And then set the pork in,   Turn it over and sear it all around, including the ends and then remove it from the pot and pour in the water.
Add the white wine and the vinegar along with the bay leaves, onion slices, and the lemon zest. And then let this start to warm. And once it's steaming, you can add the pork back in and let it come to a gentle boil.   Then set the lid on the pot and cook for about 30 minutes
or until it has an internal temperature of about 130°F, 55° C. And it will continue to cook even after we take it out of the water and once we put it into the oven, of course. Now the ideal temperature at least for safe eating of pork is 145° F.
So if Mozart did die of trichinosis then that means that his valet, Don Primus, did not fully cook whatever he was serving to Mozart. And so you want to make sure to cook it all the way through.
Now as the loin boils, one of the preferred methods of cooking pork in the 18th century, we can go ahead and start our crust. So, for that, what you'll need is 1/2 cup or 110 grams of butter,
and 1 and 1/2 cups or 150 grams of dark rye or  wheat breadcrumbs. I used pumpernickel slices, toasted them until they were completely dry, and then grated them to make the crumbs.
Though after a few slices, I switched to a blender  'cus it was easier and it worked pretty much just as well. So melt the butter in a saucepan and then in a large bowl add the bread crumbs,   the sugar and cinnamon and whisk it all together.  That way everything is ready once the pork has boiled.
Once it has boiled, remove it from the pot and pat it dry. And then pour a little of the melted butter in a baking dish and set the pork in. Pour the remaining melted butter over the top and the sides. And then start sprinkling the breadcrumb cinnamon sugar mixture on,
If some breadcrumbs fall to the side, that's fine. Better to have too many than not enough. Once coated, set the dish in the oven at 400° F, 205 C, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes,
or until it has a nice dry crust on top. Now the recipe says that you should flip it during the cooking. I tried that. It did not work out very well. So I would just leave it be and that'll give you more time to listen
as I tell you a bit more about the death of Mozart. When I was a little boy, I was obsessed with  Mozart. I loved everything about him. He was my favorite composer and still is one of my favorite composers to this day.
Of course, I loved his music. I loved listening to it. I loved singing it. I got to be one of the three boy sopranos in a production of 'The Magic Flute' when I was like 11 or 12 years old, I just loved reading about all these little  snippets about how unbelievably incredible he was,  
especially as a kid, basically the same age that I was at the time. Like one of my favorite stories of his childhood was his overwhelming fear of the trumpet. The story actually comes from Johann Schachtner, who was a friend of Mozart's father
and who was the court trumpeter in Vienna, or rather in Salsburg at the time. And he wrote, "Until he was almost nine [Mozart] was terribly afraid of the trumpet when it was blown alone, without other music.
Merely to hold a trumpet in front of him was like a pistol at his heart... Papa wanted me to cure him of this childish fear and once told me to blow [the trumpet] at him despite his reluctance, but my God! I should not have been persuaded to do i;
Wolfgang scarcely heard the blaring sound when he grew pale and began to collapse, And it's interesting because in his entire life, Mozart is only known to have written one concerto for the trumpet. And he did so at 12,  
which makes me wonder if his father, Leopold, made  him write it to just help him try to get over his fear of the trumpet. Sadly, we don't actually have that trumpet concerto. And the only reason we know it exists is because Leopold mentioned it in his letters.
The other story that I really love about Mozart as a kid was when he supposedly defied a papal decree when he was only 14. In 1770 he traveled with his father to the Vatican and on Ash Wednesday they went to the Sistine Chapel
Now this is one of the most ethereal and haunting pieces of music that I know of. I absolutely love it. And it also has this mystique around it or rather it had a mystique around it at the time
because supposedly ever since it had been composed in the 1630s it was forbidden to take the music the written music  out of the Vatican and Leopold Mozart wrote about this in a letter to his wife.
"You have often heard of the famous Miserere in Rome, which is so greatly prized that the performers in the chapel are forbidden on pain of excommunication to take away a single part of it, to copy it or to give it to anyone. But we have it already.
Wolfgang has written it down... We shall bring it home with us. Moreover, as it is one of the secrets of Rome, we do not wish to let it fall into other hands..." Supposedly, Mozart's genius was such that upon just one or maybe two listenings of the Miserere,
he was able to commit it to memory and go home and write it down. And it's 12 minutes long. It is rather repetitive, but still pretty amazing feat. Now, there's also the idea that this was the only way  that it ever got out of the Sistine Chapel  
and it's the only way that we are able to listen to it  today, but there are also conflicting   stories about how it was being performed in London by  the 1760s. So, not entirely sure.
Now, another story about Mozart, which is less likely to be true,  is that his truecause of death was poison. But even though there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence behind it, that doesn't mean that the story didn't spread within weeks of his death.
"Mozart is dead. He returned from Prague feeling sickly: it was thought he had contracted dropsy, but he died in Vienna. Because his body swelled up after death, people thought he had been poisoned."
Some seem to have believed that it was a rival composer, Antonio Salieri. Now when those rumors about Salieri began to appear is unclear, but they had been swirling around for quite some time by  the time Salieri was an old man.
Because in 1823 when he fell ill, he told one of his pupils that "Although this is my last illness, I can assure you on my word of honor that there is no truth in that absurd rumor; you know, that I am supposed to have poisoned Mozart.
But no, it's malice, pure malice, tell the world, dear Moscheles, old Salieri, who will soon die has told you." But as Salieri's illness grew worse and his mind started to go,   it does seem that he, forgive the pun, changed his  tune because Ludwig van Beethoven's nephew  
wrote to Beethoven that Salieri was telling people that  he had indeed poisoned Mozart. And Beethoven's   secretary, Anton Schindler, wrote that "Salieri is again in a very bad way.
He has fantasies that he was responsible for Mozart's death and gave poison. And even newspapers began running stories about  Salieri confessing to the murder of Mozart, but
They said it was "a bit of lunacy which surely no one but the poor, delirious old man believes." Another theory that didn't arise until 1861
claims that it was not Salieri but rather the Freemasons who poisoned Mozart. The Freemasons are the world's oldest fraternal organization and especially  in the 18th century were rather secretive about  
aspects of their order and Mozart was a Freemason.  Now, the theory is without any real evidence,   because he was divulging their secrets inside of the opera, 'The Magic Flute',
which is supposedly coded with many Masonic symbols. The poisoning theory was further bolstered because of Mozart's own words, kind of. They were related by Constanze to a friend
She says that before he died he said "I feel definitely that I don't have much time left. I am sure I have been poisoned.   Now all of these theories are unlikely to be true, but
especially the Salieri poisoning theory gave wonderful fodder to the fiction writers of the time. The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin used the theory in his play Mozart and Salieri which was then turned into an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov. And of course the idea that Salieri had something to do
Now in 'Amadeus' it is not poison but rather Salieri comissions,   secretly comissions Mozart to write the 'Requiem' and then his plan is once Mozart dies  
then he will take credit for writing the 'Requiem'   but that's pure fiction except kind of not because that actually did happen. It just wasn't Salieri.
It turns out that someone did commission Mozart to write the 'Requiem' and he did so in secret.  His name was Count Franz Von Walsegg. He was an Austrian nobleman and a wannabe composer.
And I say wannabe because after trying his hand at it, he kind of realized it was hard to do. And so he would hire other composers to write things and pay them handsomely with the caveat that they couldn't ever take credit for it. And then he would take credit for it.
Well in 1791, following Walsegg wife's death, he commissioned Mozart to write a requiem.   But he did so through a messenger. So Mozart never  knew who was actually commissioning it.  
And the messenger said, don't you dare try to find out  who my employer is. Well, Mozart was very much in need of the money at the time, so he accepted. But he kept falling behind because he ended up working on other things
like the opera 'La clemenza di Tito' which was written for the coronation of the new emperor Leopold. Well, the messenger returns and is questioning Mozart saying where is my requiem?   And he says that I'll actually pay you more if  you get this done quickly. And so Mozart agrees,  
but then he falls ill and he ends up telling  his wife that he feels like Well, shortly after his death, the messenger comes to collect the unfinished requiem
but the cat was already kind of out of the bag because before he died, Mozart had given it to his assistant Franz Süssmayer, Once he did, he did give that to the Count and Walsegg ended up
And it was only because Mozart's widow Constanza was saying things and knew that Mozart had written this that finally he relented and acknowledged that Mozart had actually written the requiem.
Alas, while that mystery was revealed, we will probably never know the mystery   Was it a fever of some kind? Rheumatic fever, or syphilis, or scarlet fever, or something else?
Maybe trichinosis. Who knows? What we do know is that on October 7th, 1791 Mozart did eat a meal of pork very much like the one that I am about to enjoy right now.
So once the breadcrumbs on the pork have dried  into a crust, let it rest for 5 to 10 minutes.   Then serve it with a bit of the broth that the pork boiled in. And here we are, a cinnamon and breadcrumb encrusted pork loin from Mozart's Vienna.
By the way, I got this fork. It is not an actual antique, it's a replica, but I just think it's so cool. So pretty. Anyway here is- got a good amount of the crusting  on top. Some of the pork. Here we go.
Hmmm. That is so good. I would almost think that it's actually better to cook this like  
with the crusting all around each piece because  the crust is really good. It's a little sweet, but not super sweet. I'm going to cut another piece.
A little cinnamon, but not super cinnamon. It but it's also got a nice crunch to it. What is evident is that boiling pork is just not the best way to cook pork. It just kind of makes it a little tough. It's  not that it's overcooked. It is overcooked, I think,
Also, I don't know that the boiling liquid added all that much flavor. Maybe it did. You know, all those other things that we put in there.
I think really you could just kind of cook it however you want and then have that crusting on the outside because it is the crusting that's that's really the star of the show here. Now something else that's interesting about this  meal is that we not only know that Mozart ate it,  
but we know that when he did so, he had a  clean tablecloth because on October 8th,   the day after he ate this, he wrote another  letter to his wife Constanze saying,   "You should have seen me at supper yesterday! I couldn't find the old tablecloth, so I fished one out as white as a snowdrop,
Very fancy. Also, I wanted to let you know that I'm going to put some of my favorite   Mozart pieces as well as the Allegri's 'Miserere' in the next Tasting History newsletter that comes out probably next week,
a website that I built with help from today's sponsor, Squarespace. Squarespace is the easiest all-in-one platform for building a website, and you don't need to be a web designer to use it.
Their professionally designed templates give you a great place to start, and their intuitive tools like their drag and drop editing And they have a wonderful suite of business tools. So whether you're selling services or products, or both, or your time,  
then they can help you set all the scheduling  up and help you with payments, and fulfillment,   and invoicing and inventory and all of that stuff. So if you want to try Squarespace, then head to squarespace.com and you will get a free trial. And when you're ready to launch,  
go to squarespace.com/tastinghistory and you  will get 10% off of your first purchase of a new website or domain, Wait! I have a wonderful, actually a terrible little dad joke for you about Mozart.
what did Mozart do after he died? Now I'll see you next time on Tasting History.