The mazzafegato: the diviner sausage.

From a poor peasant product to one of the most popular cured meats by food lovers: the mazzafegato is now a Slow Food presidium.

Pork was already widely used in Roman times for various preparations but it is certainly not the origin of this sausage, made of red pork, tongue, heart, lung, spiced with fennel flowers, in verifiable ancient contexts. The practice of making sausages from the innards of the sacrificial animal has ancestral references that resemble those of Norcineria products from the Upper Tiber Valley, an area between Umbria and Tuscany. This particular sausage, protected by the Slow Food presidium for its extraordinary quality of flavour, links its history to the rural civilization of central Italy. The mazzafegato is made with the so-called ” leftovers”, that is with the secondary cuts of meat. IThe paradox is that if up to thirty years ago it was regarded as the least important of the products of pork meat processing, today this spicy salami has been redeemed from its image of poverty to become one of the most appreciated and sought after products by food lovers. It is available both in its fresh form used in the finest first courses created by the greatest Italian chefs, and in its cured form that enhances the maximum consistency and fragrance of a singular product.