To prepare it, Cristoforo recommends using pork intestines or “bondole” and recommends washing them thoroughly, taking care to leave “the remaining fat.” Then, after sprinkling them “with salt, flour, and wine,” he advises scrubbing them with your hands before immersing them and washing them again with red wine. Finally, he advises placing the prepared intestines in a “jar with a pound of salt… for four days.”

This was followed by the manipulation of some of the ingredients intended for the dough, which had to be carried out energetically for an hour by punching them, adding a glass of pure red wine and then leaving it to rest for two or three days.

The final stage involves the actual stuffing, or casing, with indications of the various parts of the pig that could be added to the mixture, such as “loins cut into morelli” or well-shaved and seared ears, peeled tongues, and trimmed shanks. To avoid air trapping in the casings, Cristoforo recommends making the Mortadella “ben calcate,” or well-pressed.
Here, however, is a faithful reproduction of what, we repeat, can be considered the first printed recipe for Mortadella. It is obviously a recipe tied to its time, to its author, a great Renaissance chef, to the environment in which he operated, the Este court, but above all to the tastes and gastronomic culture of the first half of the 16th century. In other words, a “rimetta” (a re-stuffing) that has nothing to do with the “rimetta” (a re-stuffing) of Mortadella that forms the basis of today’s production. We are reporting it not only for philological reasons but also to show the evolution of the queen of sausages from the 16th century to today.

 

Making Mortadella from Meat

First you need to take the pork intestines or casings, and wash them well several times without removing the remaining fat, rub them with salt, flour, and wine, rub them with your hands and beat them very well, and then wash them with wine several times, and then remove the said wine, and place them in a jar with a pound of salt, and mix them with the said salt, and then leave them like that for four days. Then take the meat, cleaned of the pellets that are inside it, and combine the lean with the fat so that it is well combined according to the judgment of whoever wants to make it, and pound everything well, after hanging it. And for every twenty-five pounds of carme, throw in in two or three times ten ounces of salt and one ounce of crushed pepper and four pork corms, six spleens, four pork legs and a pennyroyal, everything pork. And I say this for the weight of stuff you will have with these four Mix together, which will become liquid on its own; make a hole in the pounded meat with your fist and throw the mixture in, then mix everything together for an hour, stirring constantly. Then add a glass of pure red wine per weight of the first meat, stirring constantly. Then let it sit like this for two or three days, which doesn’t matter.

 

Investitures:

Take pig throats without the fat, leaving the glands that are well cleaned and trimmed; pork loins cut into pieces according to size; ears, cleaned, roasted and cleaned, and snouts; tongues, peeled with hot water and thoroughly cleaned; fresh shanks, roasted, cleaned and trimmed, with the entire bone removed and the small piece of meat similarly. And you will place all these things in a clean jar, placing the shanks, ears and snouts at the bottom with coarse salt on top and then on the tongues and with light salt on the throats, pork loins and small pieces of meat with a little salt sprinkled on top, so that they absorb the salt immediately, and leave them like this for three days, then wash everything well with red wine and place everything in a clean jar to preserve in pure red wine for another day. Then cleanse everything thoroughly of the wine and remove the salt from the intestines, and wash everything with wine several times, and cleanse these things very well and with white rags, cleanse them of the wine. And then make the Mortadella, well pressed, the pure ones, and those you want to invest in.”

In the previous edition of his gastronomic treatise, published in 1549 in Ferrara under the title Banchetti compositioni di vivande et apparechio generale, Cristoforo di Messisbugo proposes two more recipes for both yellow and liver mortadella. Naturally, these are two of the many variations of mortadella that have emerged over time and are far removed from the classic Bolognese mortadella and its initial codification in the 17th century.