The 2,000 Years Of History Behind Your Lunch Meat
Mortadella also boasts a rather distinguished history. Two millennia ago, it fed the Roman army, as stone tablets contained in Bologna’s Museo Civico Archeologico attest. In the Middle Ages, roughly 10,000 people, a quarter of the city’s population, were involved in its production at around 280 salumerie. Foreigners—from Napoleon, who brought it back to France, to Buffalo Bill, who flew to Italy to promote it—took a shine to the stuff over the years. Sophia Loren’s character even attempted to smuggle one past US customs in the 1971 film La Mortadella. …