mortadella

Mortadella, ‘the most noble of all pork parts’ according to a proclamation of 1661, was so prized in the 14th and 15th centuries that it was used for currency, as noted in the contracts of the Cathedral Chapter of Bologna.

An esteemed part of Emilian cuisine, the big sausage of Bologna consists of prime cuts of pork ground fine (with whitish squares are cubes of fat, lardarelli mixed in) and spiced, traditionally, with whole peppercorns and sometimes pistachios.

The recipe goes back to the Romans, but the word comes from the mortar mortaia used by friars to grind the pork into a smooth paste, before kneading it and stuffing it tightly into its casing: the exact rules for its making were established with the Corporazione dei Salaroli (the sausage-makers guild) founded in 1367.

The Americans, who loved it, are responsible for much of the confusion over the name, after 1899 calling any kind of sausage ‘mortadella’ or just plain Bologna sausage, or baloney.