Finocchiona

The finocchiona grew up around Florence, where both Campi Bisenzio and Greve in Chianti claim its invention, and its origins are placed in the late medieval or Renaissance centuries. Its name comes from the wild fennel of the Tuscan hills, whose seeds and flowers seasoned and helped preserve the meat when black pepper was a costly import; a popular tale even has Niccolo Machiavelli, the Florentine statesman and noted lover of good food, especially fond of it, and his taste is echoed in passages of his letters. The salami is recorded by name in the great Tuscan and Italian dictionaries of the late nineteenth century, from Rigutini and Fanfani in 1875 to the Accademia della Crusca in 1889, and in April 2015 it was granted IGP status reserved to salami prepared and packed in continental Tuscany.

Soft and yielding rather than firm, it slices thick and almost spreads on the bread. The pork is sweet and winey, the abundant fat silky on the tongue, and over it all rides the warm liquorice-anise scent of fennel, with a faint crunch of whole seed. The sbriciolona version is looser still, crumbling into rich, fragrant nuggets.

Making finocchiona is controlled fermentation and drying. Salt mixed into the ground pork draws out water and, with any added curing salt, holds spoilage bacteria in check while salt-tolerant lactic bacteria feed on the meat's sugars and turn them to lactic acid; the falling pH firms the paste, binds the lean and fat into a sliceable mass and gives the cured tang, while nitrite from curing salt fixes the stable pink colour and guards against botulism. Over weeks in a cool, humid cellar the salami slowly loses moisture from the outside in, concentrating flavour, as enzymes break proteins and fats down into aromatic compounds. The fennel seed contributes anethole, the sweet anise-scented oil that both perfumes the meat and lends a mild antioxidant, antimicrobial effect. The sbriciolona crumbles because a coarser grind and shorter cure leave the paste less bound and less dried.