The daily consumption of fresh meat began to decline by 1550 as the
population was now fully recovered from the Black Death of two centuries before,
and, as a result, more land was devoted to the more labor-intensive agriculture
rather than stock rearing. As fresh meat consumption declined, the salting of
meat grew to supply the men of many ships and to form a part of the meager diet
of the poor. Salt meat was important for the crews now beginning to reach the
Indies through the Indian Ocean and the ships creeping down the coast of West
Africa after Henry the Navigator’s first foray in the 1440s, not to mention the
crews about to explode across the Atlantic to discover another world. Salt meat
often took the form of sausages, and the sausage peddler in Italian towns was a
familiar character. A document from the Spanish Vice-regent in Palermo on
January 30, 1415 shows that lamb, pork, or sausages were bought thirteen days
out of the month and macaroni only once a month. The sausages were usually
purchased from street vendors and eaten for dinner.
Mediterranean sausages of all kinds are justly famous. Farm families
would make their own sausage and sell them in town. Muslim countries knew salt
meat and sausages as well, made of lamb or beef such as the dried beef of
Turkey, pastirme (the root of our word pastrami), and they were an
important part of army rations.
The historic Mediterranean struggle against hunger resulted in a vast
repertoire of fresh, dried, and salted sausages and cured meats. Although the
origin of sausages is to be found in the classical period, if not earlier, it
was during the Middle Ages that sausage-making abounded. The list of
Mediterranean sausages that follows is not meant to be a definitive accounting
but rather a large sampling of contemporary sausages, not all of which can be
traced historically. To find any of these products in North America, which is
not as impossible as might appear at first glance, you might try looking through
the links, under "Food Products".
Asturiana
A blood sausage from the Asturia region of Spain made with cow’s blood,
bacon, and onions.
Basṭurmā: see pastirme.
Biroldo
A fresh blood sausage from the Tuscany region of Italy made either sweet
with pig’s blood, raisins, and pine nuts, or savory with calf’s blood, cheese,
and pork.
Bisbe
A large blood sausage from Catalonia made with tongue, pork, and pig’s
offal.
Bondiola or bondeina
A kind of capocollo (see entry following). A large, round sausage
from the Polesine area of the southern Veneto, this is a stuffed ox intestine or
pig’s bladder made with coarsely ground pork, beef, red wine, salt, and black
pepper. Sometimes it is smoked for a month or air-dried for two months.
Bresaola
A salt-cured or air-dried beef product from the Valtellina district of
Italy. It is made from very lean beef fillet or loin and sliced extremely thin
for antipasto.
Butifarra or botifarra
The most common Catalan pork sausage, is spiced with cinnamon, fennel seeds,
and black pepper. Botifarra negra is made with pig’s blood.
Camaiot
A butifarra-like pork sausage from the Balearic Islands made with less blood
that is firmer and coarser, made with diced rather than chopped meat, with a
higher fat content.
Capocollo
A two-month-aged boned rolled shoulder of pork, preserved in saltpeter,
salt, black pepper, sugar, nutmeg, and wine. Different varieties are made in the
Italian regions of Umbria, Apulia, and Calabria.
Cappello da Prete
An expensive Italian sausage (because of its lengthy and complicated
production process) made from meat stuffing similiar to that of zampone but
wrapped in a very thin rind from the intestines of the pig. It is served like
zampone.
Cervellata
A Milanese sausage of pork sirloin with pork and veal fat,
Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and spices such as saffron and nutmeg. It is also
made with pig’s brains (hence the name; cervella means brain).
Chorizo
A Spanish sausage that seems to have its origins in the Catalan
xoriço. There are seventeen officially recognized varieties of
chorizo in Catalonia. It is usually made from lean pork, garlic, paprika,
red bell peppers, and red chile pepper flakes.
Ciauscoli
This dry, smoked sausage from the Marches region of Italy is made from very
finely chopped lean and fatty pancetta mixed with garlic, salt, and black
pepper. It is eaten on pieces of lightly toasted bread.
Coppa
This Italian sausage is cured for three months and has an earthier taste
than does prosciutto. It is made from equal parts of lean and fatty boned pig’s
shoulder rolled with saltpeter, salt, black pepper, and nutmeg.
Coppa Senese
A sausage from Siena made from pork seasoned with garlic, orange and lemon
rind, cinnamon, caraway seeds, and other spices. It must be consumed as soon as
it is made.
Coppiette
A Tuscan sausage made from dry- and smoke-cured beef and wild boar seasoned
with ginger.
Cotechino
In northern Italy this sausage is made with coarsely chopped pork rind, lean
pork, and pork fatback seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves, and cinnamon, then
cured for three weeks.
Culatello
This sausage from Emilia-Romagna is made from the top round of a pig’s leg
stuffed into a pig’s bladder and aged for a year. Bonaventura Angeli in his
Historia della città di Parma refers to "culatello" being served
in 1322 on the occasion of the wedding of Count Andrea Rossi and Giovanna di San
Vitale.
Extremeña
A blood sausage made with chopped meat, potatoes, or pumpkin from the high
plains of Spain.
Figatelli
A long, thin, highly flavored smoked pork liver sausage from Corsica, eaten
as is or grilled.
Finnochiona
A fennel-flavored Tuscan salami made of pork and garlic and aged about one
year.
Grive della Langa
A caul fat crépinette from the Piedmont made from beef, pork liver,
juniper berries, and nutmeg.
Horiatika
A Greek country pork sausage flavored with orange peel, wine, and oregano.
Insaccato
The general Italian name for all sausages and salami. The word comes from
sacco, or bag, referring to the casing.
Jabuguito
A small chorizo that is eaten raw or deep-fried.
Jamón de Jabugo
A jamón serrano from the western end of the Sierra Morena mountains
in Andalusia.
Jamón Serrano
A cured Andalusian ham much used in Spanish regional cooking; similar to
prosciutto.
Khlea
See Qalaya.
Khlia
See Qalaya.
Klaya
See Qalaya.
Kokkoretsi
An Easter specialty, this
Rumelian (Greek Macedonia) andouillette is made of lamb or goat offal
and seasoned with lemon juice, oregano, thyme, and garlic. It is usually eaten
as part of a meze
table. Greek Jews might know it as gardoumbes. This Greek sausage lends
itself to the Turkish kokoreç, a sausage made of sheep’s lungs.
Koloface
A fresh Albanian sausage made of lamb’s liver and lungs mixed with beef,
onion, and rice.
Kranjska Kobasica
A Slovenian sausage made of pork shoulder, slab bacon, garlic, and black
pepper.
Llonganissa
See Salchichón.
Longaniza or llangonissa
A Spanish pork sausage seasoned with paprika, cinnamon, aniseed, garlic, and
vinegar.
Lonzo
A Corsican charcuterie made from rolled fillet of pork cured in brine with
herbs and then dried.
Loukanika
A Greek sausage traditionally made in the countryside after the
hirosfagi, the hog slaughter between mid-November and New Year’s Day. Its
name derives from the Latin lucanicus, said to be the name of a sausage
invented by the Lucanians, a people who lived in southern Italy at the time of
its Greek settlement and the Roman Republic (but see the comment below for the
entry Luganega).
Loukanika Nissiotika
Long, thin pork sausages from the Greek islands.
Luganega
A mild Italian sausage with a delicate flavor also called salsiccia a
metro because it is sold by the meter. The roots of this sausage can be traced
to classical Rome: Varro, Cicero, and Apicius mention it. It is said that the
best comes from Monza in Lombardy. Lombardy might also be the birthplace of this
sausage, since it also has been argued that the Latin lucanicus derives from a
Lombard word, not the name of a southern Italian people. In Basilicata it is
called lucanica or lucania, where it is a long, continuously
coiled grilled pork sausage flavored with red chili pepper flakes.
Malagueña
A spicy blood sausage from Andalusia.
Mallegato
A spiced Florentine-style blood sausage with raisins, citron (Citrus
medica L.), pine nuts, and bread crumbs. It is called buristo in
Siena.
Maniatika
Half pork and half beef Greek sausage from Máni in the Peloponnesus seasoned
with oregano and mint.
Also spelled mirkās in Arabic, but usually transliterated as merguez. It is a Tunisian sausage of lamb or beef and spices, known in Algeria and Morocco.
Mocetta
This specialty of the Val d’Aosta in northern Italy is a cured goat thigh
sausage flavored with garlic, herbs, juniper berries, and black pepper. It is
salted for twenty days, then hung for four months. It is very hard and needs to
be eaten within a year.
Morcilla
This is a Spanish blood sausage stuffed with rice, paprika, onions, garlic,
and spices.
Mortadella
The name is thought to derive from mortaio because the mixture was
pounded in a mortar. More probably it is derived from the Latin murtatu,
a sausage seasoned with myrtle*. Anna del Conte, author of The Gastronomy of
Italy, suggests that the first mention of mortadella appears in a document
of the official body of meat preservers in Bologna dated 1376, but earlier
evidence comes from Boccaccio, who mentions mortadella in the Decameron,
and it appears earlier still in the statutes of the Cathedral of Nice from 1233.
Mortadella is made with a seven-to-three ratio of lean pork meat to fat,
flavored with peppercorns, pistachios, wine, sugar, and olives and stuffed into
beef bladder casing. The mortadella is steamed an hour for each half-inch of its
diameter. *- Cortelazzo and Zolli 1979-88.
Mortadella di Amatrice
Amatrice is a small town high in the Apennines between Lazio(Latium) and
Abruzzi. This lightly smoked mortadella is flavored with cinnamon and cloves and
aged for two months.
Morteruelo
This pâté of game is from the Cuenca region of Spain.
Mumbar ve Shirdan
Turkish sausages made with the second stomach of ruminants and stuffed with
mutton, rice, salt, black pepper, and cinnamon. The fresh sausage is boiled and
cooled, then sliced and either fried in butter or dipped in egg and fried. It is
probably of Persian origin and also called bumbar.
Musetto
From the Veneto and Friuli regions of northern Italy comes this pork meat
and rind sausage, seasoned with black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, red
chili pepper flakes, and, sometimes, coriander seeds.
Numbolo
A bacon-flavored sausage from Corfu.
Ortau
A Sardinian andouillette made with pork blood, lard, liver, tongue,
heart, spleen, and lung, garlic, parsley, salt, and black pepper, usually
roasted.
Pancetta
Cured pork belly, the same cut as bacon. There are two types; in one the
pancetta is left in its natural state and is used as a flavoring in cooking,
while pancetta arrotolata is rolled and used at the table as a thinly
sliced cold cut for antipasti.
Pastirma (basṭurmā)
A cured and dried meat
originally from Turkey or Armenia usually made from beef fillet. Sun-dried slices of
meat are coated with a paste made of garlic, fenugreek seeds, paprika, and salt
and left to cure. It is usually eaten for breakfast with fried eggs or, in Egypt, with the stewed bean dish known as fūl.
Probusti di Rovereto
A beef-and-pork sausage made with veal kidney fat and garlic from the
Trentino-Alto Adige region of Italy.
Prosciutto
The most famous of the cured hams known as prosciutto crudo are from
San Daniele, Parma, and Tuscany, although today they are made throughout Italy
and North America in local versions.
Qadid
A preserved meat or jerky
from Algeria and Tunisia. There are a number of recipes mixing up either the
meats or the spices. Basically, lamb meat is salted and seasoned with garlic
and mint. It is re-marinated with salt, harīsa,
and mint and then sun-dried for several days before being cut up and cooked in
a mixture of olive oil and sheep’s fat.
Qalaya (sometimes transliterated as "khlea")
A preserved meat in the Maghrib made from mutton meat, fat, kidneys, heart,
and liver and seasoned with garlic, salt, black pepper, red chile pepper flakes
and other spices. It is cooked in olive oil and kept for two months before being
used.
Generic word for salt-cured insaccati (see entry), that is, salami.
The word comes from salare, "to salt." In Italy there are as many
different salamis as there are families that still home- cure them.
Salame da Sugo
A salami speciality of Ferrara is made from fat and lean ground pork, minced
calf’s and pig’s livers, and ox or pig’s tongue cut into small pieces, all
flavored with spices and a full-bodied red wine. The casing is pig’s bladder and
it is shaped like a small melon. It is dried in a hot room for three to four
days and then cured for six to seven months.
Salame di Milano
This salami, along with salame genovese, are what most Americans know
as "salami." In Italy it is made from pigs fed on cheese by-products. It is
flavored with garlic and white wine and cured four to twelve months.
Salame di Napoli
A pork-and-beef salami, ground coarsely and seasoned with salt, garlic, and
red chili pepper flakes, which distinguishes it from the milder salami of the
north. The curing process lasts about four months and sometimes includes
smoking.
Salame di Varzi
A salami specialty from the town of Varzi near Pavia. It is made from lean
pork shoulder and flavored with red wine, salt, black pepper, and a little
garlic.
Salame Toscano
This distinctive salami that is dark and full-bodied in taste, with large
"eyes" of fat, flavored with lots of garlic, black peppercorns, and white wine.
It is cured for six to twelve months, sometimes in caves, from where its flavor
derives.
Salamella
Also called Neapolitan sausage. It contains pork, veal, lard, red chili
pepper flakes, garlic, spices and wine and is lightly smoked.
Salami di Fabriano
A salami from the Marches region of Italy, flavored with a little garlic and
black peppercorns and is formed into 1- to 2-pound shapes in natural casings.
Salami Felino
A prized salami that comes from the same area as the prosciutto of Parma. It
is made from pigs fed on the by-products from the manufacture of
Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and is flavored with pepper, a little garlic, and
white wine.
Salchichón
In Catalonia and the Balearic Islands this sausage is known as
llonganissa; it is a smoked sausage made from chopped lean pork and pork
fat with salt and black pepper.
Salsiccia della Basilicata
A lean pork sausage seasoned with black pepper and red chili pepper flakes.
Salsicce di Mare
A seafood sausage made from by-products of tuna processing.
Salsiccia di Nicosia
A pork-and-rabbit sausage from Sicily.
Sartizzu
A dried Sardinian pork sausage seasoned with black pepper, cinnamon, fennel
seeds, and vinegar.
A Majorcan speciality, a soft, almost pâté-like pork sausage flavored with
garlic and paprika. It is not similar to Italian soppressata but rather
closer to and less spicy than a Mexican-style chorizo.
Soppressa Veneta
A large, soft pork salami from Valpolicella near Verona made with 35 per
cent fat.
Soppressata
A salami made in southern Italy, especially Basilicata and Calabria, in a
four-, or five- to-one ratio of lean pork to a mixture of pork fat and bacon.
The meat is coarsely chopped and seasoned with salt and black pepper, with the
hotter versions additionally seasoned with red chili pepper flakes, paprika, and
wine. The sausage is lightly smoked and pressed to eliminate air pockets (hence
the name; it’s "pressed").
A Greek and Greek Cypriot sausage originally from Smyrna (Izmir) made today
with veal or beef instead of the original lamb. Its distinctive flavor is that
of cumin, garlic, and wine.
Souzoukaki Politiko
A dried Greek black sausage sometimes made with red chile pepper flakes.
Speck
An Austrian-type of smoked prosciutto from Alto Adige in northern Italy.
Spetsofai
A loukanika (see entry) sausage and black pepper recipe from Mount Pelion.
The best known of the Greek sausages.
Strinù
A specialty of Val Camónica in Lombardy, this is a mixture of beef and pork
meat, flavored with cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and nutmeg.
Sujuq (suguq in Egypt)
Pencil-thin Arab beef sausages flavored with cumin, allspice, cinnamon,
garlic, and red chili pepper flakes popular in Egypt and the Levant; it
originated in Turkey.
Thessalias
Greek pork sausages from Thessaly stuffed with leeks.
Voliotika
Small, fat Greek pork-and-beef sausages from Vólos seasoned with allspice.
