Generality
There mortadella it is a "cooked" cured meat based on pork, fat (lard) and, in its various types, also of beef and liver; mortadella can contain various aromas, spices and achenes (like pistachios).
Mortadella is a typical product of the Bologna area; this territory, which in ancient times was colonized by the Etruscans (Felsina), then by the Galli Boi (Bononia) and finally by the Romans, it has always prospered thanks to the high presence of pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) and wild boars (Sus scrofa majori or similar). It is in this area that mortadella was born, whose noun is difficult to trace; there are two plausible hypotheses (probably complementary), according to which the term would come respectively from murtatum (mortar, tool used in mincing meat) or by myrtatum (myrtle, berry originally used in the "flavoring of" sausage). The archaic term of mortadella could therefore be: farcimen myrtatum or farcimen murtatum.
The first official mortadella recipe was disclosed in 1600 by the Bolognese Vincenzo Tanara, who proposed a "preparation very similar to the contemporary one; the main difference between the archaic and today's mortadella (in addition to the choice of some spices and aromas) is the amount of fat / lard used in the formulation: from 30-33% once to 15% used today.
Production
Mortadella di Bologna Igp is made up of pure pork meat; it has an ovoid or cylindrical shape and, according to the specific disciplinary, can be produced throughout Emilia-Romagna, Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto and in some provinces of Trentino, Tuscany, Marche and Lazio.
Mortadella di Bologna Igp is composed of lean and fatty raw meat, which is finely chopped in 3 consecutive steps, after which the mixture is larded, salted, peppered, flavored, spiced and added in shelled pistachios; everything is processed and stuffed inside. natural or synthetic casings varying in size from 500g to 50kg. The Bologna IGP mortadella is then cooked in dry air ovens until it reaches a temperature "at the heart of the" food "of about 70 ° C, then it is cooled with water showering (reducing the internal temperature of the mortadella up to 10 ° C) and stored in cold rooms.
By cutting the Bologna IGP mortadella it is necessary to appreciate a remarkable compactness of the dough which, however, must NOT have any elasticity; the color - on which there are white areas consisting of lard (added for a minimum of 15% of the total weight) - is pink in color The taste of Bologna IGP mortadella is sweet and never acid.
Mortadella is a sausage whose large-scale production requires the use of some food additives; among these we remember for example: nitrates and nitrites, ascorbic acid, milk powder and monosodium glutamate.
Nutritional characteristics
Mortadella is a highly energetic preserved meat; it is rich in lipids, provides good quantities of cholesterol and, in all probability, the breakdown between fatty acids turns in favor of saturated ones. These aspects make mortadella a food unsuitable for diet customary of subjects suffering from hypercholesterolemia and / or from overweight or obesity.
Furthermore, being a sausage, mortadella is also rich in sodium, contained in the added cooking salt; this macro-element, if present in excess in the diet, in the long run can favor the onset or worsening of hypertension.
The proteins of mortadella are of high biological value with a predominance of amino acids: glutamic acid, aspartic acid, leucine and lysine.
The small concentrations of simple carbohydrates in mortadella indicate the addition of powdered milk in the mixture.
From a salt and vitamin point of view, mortadella has good concentrations of iron, phosphorus, thiamine (vit. B1) and niacin (vit. PP).
The consumption of mortadella (especially in the case of metabolic pathologies) must be occasional or, if systematic, duly distributed over time and not too frequent; the average portions of mortadella are between 60 and 80g.
NB. The sportsman can consume mortadella in larger portions and more frequently than the sedentary.
Nutritional values
Nutritional composition of Mortadella - Reference values of the INRAN Food Composition Tables
Bibliography:
- The Italy of cured meats - G. Ballarini, F. Malerba - Italian Touring Club - page 91:93.
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