Signora di Conca Casale

The 'Signora' — the Lady — of Conca Casale takes its capitalised name, by local account, from an old custom: the farm women who made it in the winter months did not eat it themselves but offered it as a tribute to the village 'signori', the doctor, the notary and the mayor. It is counted among the rarest salumi in Italy, made in tiny numbers with a single sausage from each pig and weighing anywhere from 800 grams to five kilograms. Recognised as a Slow Food Presidium and a Molise traditional food product (PAT), it had fallen close to extinction before a handful of local artisans revived it. The casing is the pig's caecum, known in dialect as the 'zia', the aunt, washed with wine, vinegar, cornmeal, orange and lemon; the finished salame is eaten in thick slices with the bread of Isernia.

Cut in thick slices, the coarse grain shows a mosaic of deep red lean and bright white fat. It chews firm and meaty, dry-cured and lightly salty, with wild fennel running clear through it, a low warmth of chilli behind, and a clean citrus edge from the casing at the finish.

Six months of drying steadily lowers the meat's water activity until it falls below the level bacteria need to spoil it, so the salame keeps without refrigeration. As it dries, muscle enzymes (cathepsins) break the proteins into free amino acids such as glutamate, building the deep savoury taste, while lipases split the hard back fat into aromatic aldehydes. In the first weeks lactic bacteria ferment the meat's sugars to acid, dropping the pH so the proteins firm and the coarse grain sets. The whole peppercorns, wild fennel and coriander shed their volatile oils into the fat, and the acid and citrus left by the casing wash lend the tang at the finish.