Talk:Mortadella

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I have been informed by a Bolognan friend that traditionally Bolognan Mortadella contains a small amount of donkey meat for flavour. I haven't had time to confirm this with other sources yet. - billdepo - I was actually told by someone that "morta della" means "dead donkey", so if this is true it would certainly make sense. -NT

A quick google (beginning with Mortadella asino) throws up what appear to me to be sound sources which confirm and extend your friend’s information:

• Anciently, in Bologna, donkey and/or horse were added to the pork. [1] (The same page refers to a museum of industry in Bologna, which includes a section devoted to Mortadella production. Might be worth mentioning in the article.)
• Donkey mortadella, described as a local tradition, is on sale in Quattro Castella Province of Reggio Emilia [2]
• Mortadella di cavallo (horse) is recognized as a traditional product of the Province of Rome, especially Albano Laziale; its sales are relatively local and the production is under threat [3]

(I also found references to rabbit mortadella: but only as insults directed at the prime minister.)

If you do add the information (which would be good), I think it would be wise to bear the word ‘traditionally’ in mind. If I remember aright Mortadella Bologna is a PDO product which means that the ingredients are strictly regulated and (IIRC) do not include equine meats. So you could produce a brilliant mortadella in Bologna with donkey meat in it, and make lots of money from it. But you couldn’t call it Mortadella Bologna.

Finally, for people editing Italian food articles who haven’t spotted this site, one of the first Google hits was http://www.prodottitipici.com/prodotti_tutti.php. It looks like a total scam—in fact my instant reaction was ‘this has to be the front end of a porn site with lots of words intended to attract Google’—but it’s actually extremely useful. It’s an enormous list of regional specialities which are officially recognized either at the regional or at the EU level, each of which links to a page giving what seems to be properly sourced information about production regimes, etc. At least the two cases I checked out seemed to be accurate. As for mortadella, it lists a number of other variants.

—Ian Spackman 03:14, 10 August 2006 (UTC)