Marche & Umbria, Italy

Italy

The green heart of Italy. Umbria and the Marche sit side by side in the Apennine hills, sharing a pork culture rooted in the norcino tradition. The town of Norcia gave its name to the craft: norcineria, the art of the pork butcher. Every winter, norcini traveled these hills, slaughtering pigs on farms and turning the whole animal into salumi. Mazzafegato, the liver sausage, came from this same logic of total use. The Marche side, centered around Fabriano and Visso, adds its own variants, including the ciauscolo (a spreadable salame) and the sweet mazzafegato dolce with citrus and pine nuts. Castelluccio lentils, crescia flatbread, and local Verdicchio wine complete the table.

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Sausages from Marche & Umbria, Italy

Mazzafegato

Mazzafegato

Marche & Umbria, Italy

Mazzafegato is central Italy's pork liver sausage, born from the winter pig slaughter in the Marche and Umbria regions. The name comes from 'ammazzare il fegato' (to kill the liver), a blunt label for a blunt sausage. Two versions exist: dolce, with orange zest, pine nuts, and raisins; and piccante, spiked with chili. The sweet version is an oddity in Italian charcuterie, a technique traceable to ancient Roman preservation methods. This is a salume povero, a poor man's sausage that turns liver and scraps into something worth seeking out.

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