Castradina

Castradina is reckoned among the oldest surviving Venetian dishes, and its cured mutton reflects the maritime reach of the Serenissima. The meat came from across the Adriatic, from Dalmatia and the wider Balkan Slavic lands of Venice's Stato da Mar, salted and dried at source so that it survived the sea passage; a price-list attributed to Doge Sebastiano Ziani in 1173 is said to record sicce carnis de Sclavinia, dried Slavonian meat, an early documented trace of the trade. The dish became bound to the Festa della Madonna della Salute, the feast that thanks the Virgin for ending the plague of 1630 to 1631, which killed roughly 47,000 in the city, about a third of its people. In October 1630 Doge Nicolo Contarini vowed a votive church if the city were spared; the great domed basilica of Santa Maria della Salute, designed by Baldassare Longhena, rose from 1631 and was consecrated decades later, in 1687. A common account holds that during the plague, when much of the mainland shunned the stricken city, Dalmatian shippers kept bringing supplies including their cured mutton, and so castradina was honoured on the feast day. Every November 21 Venetians still cross a temporary votive pontoon bridge thrown over the Grand Canal to the basilica, and eat castradina.

The first spoon is all depth: a dark, savoury broth slicked with mutton fat, faintly smoky, salty in a tamed and rounded way after the first water has gone. The meat pulls into soft, fibrous shreds with a frank gamey note that fresh lamb never has, and the Savoy cabbage, collapsed and silky, carries the fat right through it. Onion sweetness and a little wine acidity sit under the richness; pepper and bay lift the back of the bowl. It eats warm, heavy and slow, the kind of soup that wants dark bread and a cold day.

Everything turns on two things: drawing the strength out of a heavily cured cut, then coaxing a tough one tender. The mutton was preserved by salt-curing and air-drying, which pull water out of the meat and lock it below the level bacteria need, the same logic as a ham, so the joint could keep for months and cross the sea. That same salt, plus the pronounced muttony odour, has to be moderated before eating: the meat is blanched in water brought to the boil and that first water is discarded, which leaches out a load of dissolved salt and carries off much of the volatile branched-chain fatty acids, chiefly 4-methyloctanoic and 4-methylnonanoic acid, that give old sheep its strong smell. The long, gentle simmer that follows, an hour or two at a bare 85 to 95°C, hydrolyses the dense collagen of this hard-working cut into gelatin, so the fibres slip apart into tender shreds and the broth thickens and coats the spoon. The Savoy cabbage, added later, softens as its cell walls break down and acts like a sponge for the emulsified fat and gelatin, while onion cooked down at the start lends sweetness and body to the base.