Mortadella

Mortadella is a cooked salume. Lean pork is ground in a cutter until it becomes a completely smooth emulsion, then folded together with cubes of hard fat taken specifically from the pig's jowl, plus salt, whole peppercorns and spices. The mix is stuffed into a casing and cooked slowly in dry-air ovens at 70-80°C: a few hours for small ones, over 24 hours for the 100kg monsters.

The fat cubes are the visual signature and are not decoration. Jowl fat has a high melting point, which is why it stays white and distinct instead of dissolving into the paste during that long bake. Mortadella Bologna IGP requires at least 15% of it.

That IGP, granted in 1998, is the line worth caring about. Its rules forbid added polyphosphates, milk proteins, starches and mechanically separated meat, all of which cheap mortadella uses freely. The permitted production zone is wider than most people assume, covering Emilia-Romagna plus seven other regions, but the tradition and the best producers remain around Bologna.

Delicate and surprisingly mild. The dominant note is clean pork sweetness, with black pepper and a warm background of spice: coriander, a little anise, sometimes myrtle. There is no smoke, no tang, and nothing sharp.

The texture is the real experience. Sliced properly, paper thin and almost translucent, it collapses on the tongue, and the fat cubes melt a half-second behind the meat, which gives it a two-stage richness. Sliced thick it is a completely different and much worse product: heavy, rubbery and bland.

Anyone approaching it from American bologna will find it more perfumed, less salty and far less uniform, with a texture closer to a very fine pâté than to a deli slice. Anyone approaching it from prosciutto will find it much milder and much softer.

Slice it as thin as the machine will go, thin enough to see light through. This single decision separates good mortadella from bad more reliably than the price does. Thick slices are rubbery and dull; paper-thin slices dissolve.

Bring it to room temperature. Twenty minutes out of the fridge unlocks the fat and the aromatics. Cold from the refrigerator it tastes of almost nothing.

In Bologna it goes into tigelle and crescentine, alongside gnocco fritto, or into a plain rosetta roll with nothing else. It is also one of the three meats in the classic tortellini filling, with pork loin and prosciutto.

Modern uses that work: mortadella mousse (blitzed with ricotta and cream, spread on crostini); diced into a frittata; draped over a just-baked pizza with stracciatella and crushed pistachios; rolled around a grissino. In the US it has become the defining sandwich meat of a wave of Italian delis, usually piled high with provolone and hot peppers.

Do not cook it for long. It is already a cooked product, and sustained heat dries out the fat cubes and kills the texture.

Whole and uncut, casing intact, mortadella holds for months in a cold display or a fridge at about 4°C (39°F); the printed date on the piece or the producer is the reference for how long. Once you cut into it, the exposed face is what changes. Press baking paper or film directly against that face, and expect it to darken a shade within a day or two as the surface fat and meat meet air.

Sliced mortadella moves fastest of all. Aroma thins and the pink dulls over two or three days. Wrap slices in deli paper rather than cling film, which traps moisture against them, and keep them in the least cold part of the fridge rather than the coldest shelf. Freezing sliced mortadella breaks the emulsion: it thaws watery and the slice goes loose and slack. A whole piece freezes better but still loses some spring. Vacuum-packed trays carry their own date; once opened they behave like freshly cut slices.

Colour comes first. Mortadella Bologna IGP is a pale, matte pink, even from edge to edge. A bright red or vividly saturated pink points to a different formulation, and a greyish cast on the cut face means the surface has been sitting in air. The fat cubes should be white, roughly even in size and scattered evenly rather than clumped along one side. They are cut from hard jowl fat, which is why they stay defined instead of smearing into the paste. Whole black peppercorns are a good sign.

A slice should be elastic and velvety: fold it and it springs back. Slices that feel bouncy and wet usually carry added water and phosphates. Look on the casing for the Consorzio stamp reading Mortadella Bologna IGP. The lookalike abroad is American bologna or baloney, a smooth uniform pink loaf with no visible fat cubes, no peppercorns and no spice profile. Price separates them too: IGP mortadella sits at roughly two to three times the deli-bologna rate per pound.

In the US, look first for the IGP seal: Alcisa, Levoni, Fiorucci and Negroni all export Mortadella Bologna IGP, and Eataly, Whole Foods and Italian delis carry it at $12 to $22 per pound. Domestic producers making genuinely good versions include Fra' Mani in Berkeley (Paul Bertolli's is widely considered the best American mortadella), Olli Salumeria, Volpi in St. Louis and Creminelli. Boar's Head sells one at supermarket counters, decent for the price.

In the UK, Waitrose, Ocado, Sainsbury's and Lidl all stock mortadella at £2 to £5 per 100g pack. For the real thing, Natoora, Vallebona, Ham & Cheese Co. and Italian delis in London's Soho and Clerkenwell import IGP producers.

Wherever you buy, buy from a counter rather than a pre-sliced tray. Sliced mortadella oxidises fast, with colour and aroma fading within days, and pre-packed trays are cut thicker than they should be. Check the label for polyphosphates (E450-452), milk proteins and starch: the IGP forbids all three, and their presence tells you which tier you are in.

Bologna, and specifically the Quadrilatero, the grid of food streets behind Piazza Maggiore. The historic salumerie on Via Drapperie and Via Pescherie Vecchie slice to order in front of you. Tamburini and Simoni are the names everyone repeats, and in this case the reputation is earned.

MortadellaBò, the festival dedicated to the product, takes over Piazza Maggiore and Piazza Re Enzo in October, with producers, tastings and a ceremonial giant mortadella cut in the square.

In the province, Zola Predosa and Crevalcore hold the historic factories. Around Modena, mortadella is eaten inside crescentine in every country trattoria.

Rome is mortadella's second home: the rosetta con la mortadella is one of the city's defining sandwiches, and the counters at Mercato Trionfale and in Testaccio take it seriously. In the US, the Italian-American delis of New York, Philadelphia and Chicago have made it a signature.