ciauscolo

Ciauscolo is a soft, spreadable salami from the Marche and Umbria regions of central Italy, made with finely ground pork and a fat content high enough to let it be spread on bread like a paste. Unlike most Italian salumi, which are sliced, ciauscolo is squeezed from its casing and smeared. Its name comes from Latin ciabusculum, a diminutive of cibus (food, nourishment), used in late Latin to mean a small meal or snack. The word drifted into the regional dialect of Marche and Umbria as the specific name for this particular product.

The terrain that produces ciauscolo is the Sibillini Mountains and the hill towns around Macerata and Camerino in Marche. The high fat content was practical: cold winters allowed the salami to cure slowly without spoiling, and the fat preserved the meat through spring. Pig slaughter in the Apennines happened in November and December, and ciauscolo was ready to eat by January or February. The product stayed intensely local for centuries because its softness made it unfit for long transport.

The recipe varies by household and town, but the base is roughly 70 percent fat to 30 percent lean meat, blended with garlic, fennel seeds, and local red wine. The mixture is ground so finely that it achieves the smooth, sticky consistency that defines the product. Some producers in Camerino use Vernaccia di Serrapetrona, a local sparkling red wine, giving the salami a faintly fruity note that separates it from any generic pork spread.

Ciauscolo remained almost unknown outside Marche and Umbria until the slow food movement of the 1990s brought attention to artisanal regional products. The Slow Food Foundation added it to its Ark of Taste in 1999. The European Union awarded it Protected Geographical Indication status in 2009, requiring production within specified communes of Macerata, Ascoli Piceno, Fermo, and Perugia. A product named for the Latin word for food took roughly two thousand years to leave the hills where it was first made.