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Meat from Italy

Finocchiona IGPFinocchiona

Pork from heavy pigs or Cinta Senese pigs is minced with salt, pepper, garlic and fennel seeds or flowers, with wine allowed, and stuffed into casing. It dries at 12–25 °C and matures at 11–18 °C for 15 to 45 days or more by size, under a feathery mould.

Fully documentedMeat15 daysPGI (IGP), Reg. (EU) 2015/629

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceAmounts per 100 kg of mix ready for stuffing, as fixed by the product specification.
Salt2.5–3.5 kg[disc2024]
Ground pepper50–100 g[disc2024]
Whole, cracked or loose peppercorns150–400 g[disc2024]
Garlic (or dried garlic to the same dose)50–100 g[disc2024]
Fennel seeds and/or flowers200–500 g[disc2024]
WineUp to 1 litre[disc2024]
Dextrose, sucrose, fructose or lactoseUp to 1 kg[disc2024]
Nitrites, nitrates, ascorbic acid; sodium ascorbate up to 150 g[disc2024]
Microbial starter cultures (optional)[disc2024]
Starteroptional; the specification allows microbial starter cultures

Total time across the recorded steps: 15 days

Start
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What changes: Trimmed pork is minced through a fine-to-medium plate

Step 1 of 5
Trim and mince
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

The cuts must never have been frozen. Output: minced lean and fat.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Pork from heavy pigs or Cinta Senese pigs is minced with salt, pepper, garlic and fennel seeds or flowers, with wine allowed, and stuffed into casing. It dries at 12–25 °C and matures at 11–18 °C for 15 to 45 days or more by size, under a feathery mould. Made in 5 steps over 15 days. The longest step, mature, takes at least 15 days (Disciplinare di produzione della IGP Finocchi…) and runs at 11–18 °C (Disciplinare di produzione della IGP Finocchi…). Salt is 2.5–3.5 % (Disciplinare di produzione della IGP Finocchi…).

Key numbers
Main stepat least 15 daysSet[disc2024]Mature
Temperature11–18 °CSet[disc2024]Mature
Salt2.5–3.5 %Set[disc2024]Knead with fennel, garlic and pepper

What makes this one different

Finocchiona is seasoned with fennel seeds or flowers and kept soft on purpose. In 2017 its maximum water activity was raised from 0.92 to 0.945 to keep the slice moist, and the specification calls its taste never acidic.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Small formats (0.5–1 kg)At least 15 days of drying and maturing.
  • Large formats (6–25 kg)At least 45 days; synthetic casings, nets and clips allowed.
  • Cinta Senese finocchionaMade with meat of registered Cinta Senese pigs reared in Tuscany.

Safety

The specification sets pH 5–6, water activity of 0.945 or lower and salt of at most 6 % in the finished salami, and allows nitrite and nitrate as additives. A water activity of 0.945 is above the levels at which EU rules automatically treat a ready-to-eat food as unable to support Listeria (0.92, or 0.94 at pH 5.0 or below), so this limit alone does not rule out Listeria growth. This is raw pork eaten without cooking. Curing and drying alone do not consistently kill Trichinella worms in pork (CDC). CDC tells people who are pregnant, 65 or older or have a weakened immune system to avoid unheated fermented or dry sausages, or to heat them until steaming hot.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

The word "finocchiona" appears in Rigutini and Fanfani's 1875 Vocabolario della lingua parlata and in the 1889 Crusca dictionary, which ties it to Tuscany. The PGI was registered in April 2015.

  1. [reg2073] Commission Regulation (EC) No 2073/2005 on microbiological criteria for foodstuffs, Annex I, footnote to row 1.3 (retained UK copy)gov
  2. [cdc-trichinella] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, How to Prevent Trichinellosis (12 March 2024)gov
  3. [cdc-listeria] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Preventing Listeria Infectiongov
  4. [disc2024] Disciplinare di produzione della IGP Finocchiona, consolidated text of 26.6.2024 (Art. 2 and Art. 5), Consorzio di Tutela della Finocchiona IGPspec
  5. [sd2017] Single document 'Finocchiona', EU No PGI-IT-01120-AM01, Official Journal of the European Union C 385, 15.11.2017, p. 20spec
  6. [kelbert2023] Kelbert L. et al. 2023, Completely assembled genome sequence of the florfenicol-resistant Enterococcus faecalis strain 90_2023 isolated from a raw sausage imported from Italy to Switzerland, Microbiology Resource Announcements 12(10) (abstract)paper
  7. [qualigeo] Qualigeo, Finocchiona IGPweb