Salame Piemonte

Appearance & taste

The salami is cylindrical; small pieces are curved. It is compact and soft, with no visible sheets of sinew. The slice is compact and even; the pieces of muscle and fat are rather elongated and well bound, with pepper in pieces or as powder between them. The colour is ruby red.

It smells mildly of well-ripened meat, of wine and of garlic. The taste is mild and delicate, slightly spicy with pepper and nutmeg, evenly salted and never sour, with a long-lasting aroma. The specification attributes the softness and the mild taste mainly to the short ripening. The salami contains at least 23 % protein. It comes in various shapes and sizes made from the same sausage mixture; a whole salami weighs at least 300 g when sold.

Production

For the lean part, muscle meat from the leg, shoulder or belly is used; for the fatty part, fat from the belly, neck and rind. The pigs descend from the Large White and Landrace breeds or from Duroc; other breeds and crosses are permitted if their carcasses fall into grades E, U, R or O. Purebred Belgian Landrace, Hampshire, Pietrain, Duroc and Spotted Poland are excluded, as are boars and sows. The animals are at least nine months old and their carcasses weigh 110.1 to 180 kg. They are fed mainly on cereals, chiefly maize, along with barley, bran and soya; whey and buttermilk are permitted up to 15 litres per animal per day. There is no restriction on where the pigs come from.

Added to the sausage mixture are salt (at most 3 %), pepper (at most 0.4 %), garlic, cloves – whole, ground or steeped in wine – and nutmeg, as well as more than 0.25 % Piedmontese wine with a designation of origin made from Nebbiolo, Barbera or Dolcetto. Sugar or dextrose, starter and mould cultures, nitrate, nitrite and ascorbic acid are also permitted. The mixture is filled into natural casing or a casing of natural origin; the fresh sausage measures 40 to 90 mm. At 40 to 70 mm it ripens for 10 to 50 days, at 71 to 90 mm for 21 to 84 days. Salting, kneading, filling, drying and ripening take place in Piedmont.

Origin & history

The production area is the whole Piedmont region, whose name goes back to its location “at the foot of the mountains”. The climate is temperate subcontinental, with cold winters, moderate precipitation and frequent foehn winds that keep the humidity low. According to the specification, Piedmont is sunnier and therefore drier than the neighbouring regions of the Po plain.

A great deal of wine has always been produced in Piedmont; Barbera, Dolcetto and Nebbiolo are among the most widespread native grape varieties. That is why they go into the salami, and their wine shapes its taste and aroma. A cookbook by a chef of the House of Savoy describes in 1854 a pork sausage which, according to the specification, can be regarded as the forerunner of Salame Piemonte: the recipe resembles today’s and already called for “a glass of good Barbera wine”. After the war, industrial production increased. Since 1948 the price list of the Turin Chamber of Commerce has included the name “Salame Piemonte” in every edition.