Sanguinaccio salato

The sanguinaccio is one of the Italian charcuterie products with the most names. Alongside the standard name, at least fifteen regional names can be recorded: boudin in the Aosta Valley, bodin in Piedmont, sanganèl in Friuli, berodu in Liguria, marzapane in Lombardy, biroldo and mallegato in Tuscany, sangunazz in Apulia, sangiari in Calabria, sangeli in Sicily, buddeddas in Sardinia, and so on. Each valley developed its own version, without a national model of reference.

The etymology is Latin and transparent: sanguine(m), extended with the suffix -aceus, which, in its old neuter use, indicates the nature of a thing. This formation stands apart from the lineage of the French boudin and the Italian budino, which derive from the Latin botellus (animal gut). Modern Italian inherited both words, which today designate distinct products: sanguinaccio for the blood sausage, budino for the sweet pudding, the latter sense imported from English in the nineteenth century.

The principle of the cased, poached blood sausage is old: Apicius gives a recipe for one in De re coquinaria (Book II, chapter III), based on egg yolks, pine nuts and vegetables, without blood. The sanguinaccio is a blood variant of it, attested later. The cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove in several regional recipes preserve the aromatic profile of medieval Italian charcuterie, in which spices of Eastern import remained part of popular preparations long after they had disappeared from court cooking.

The sanguinaccio accompanies the winter pig slaughter, traditionally held around 17 January, the feast of Sant’Antonio Abate, patron of animals and rural crafts. It demands fresh blood collected at the time of bleeding and prepared within the hours that follow, which has long made it a domestic rather than a commercial preparation.

Its making was struck in 1992 by the Italian prohibition on the retail sale of fresh pig’s blood (a health measure). The product did not disappear, but it left the commercial circuits: it survives in family production, in a few PATs (Prodotto Agroalimentare Tradizionale) recognised at the regional level, such as the sanguinaccio leccese of Apulia or the Piedmontese mustardela, and in two Slow Food presidi, the biroldo della Garfagnana in Tuscany and the susianella di Viterbo in Lazio.

Several variants deserve mention. The biroldo della Garfagnana incorporates pork offal, cooked, then minced, mixed with blood and wild fennel seeds, stuffed into a large, spherical blood sausage, and sliced cold as an aperitif. The boudin valdôtain, a PAT, adds boiled potatoes and red beetroot, which colours the paste. The Ligurian berodu stands out for its pine nuts and whole milk. One last variant escapes the savoury register altogether: the sanguinaccio dolce, a sweet blood sausage with chocolate, prepared for Carnival, which has its own entry.