Even in Roman times Cremona was becoming famous for its production of pork meats and for its great autumn fair, “at which”, Tacitus wrote, “much of Italy gathered” to buy and sell livestock and pigs in particular.

Polibius, passing close to Cremona in the second century BC while retracing Hannibal's journey in Italy, reported that “the majority of pigs butchered in Italy for the food-supply requirements of private people and armies were obtained from the Po Valley plains … where food products are especially abundant and cheap…”

In those days the Po Valley plains were only partly ploughed and cultivated, while the rest was covered in woods that included numerous oak trees, whose acorns were much
appreciated by the boars and pigs that grazed in a half-wild state. The situation did not change much during the reigns of the Longobards, first, and subsequently of the Franks. The meat was either consumed fresh or preserved with salt and spices, which were brought to Cremona and its area by means of the Po, the broad, safe link with the sea.

The production of cured and seasoned pork and sausages in Cremona in the sixteenth century was substantial and well documented, showing that the tradition was well established.

In the sixteenth century Tommaso Garzoni (1549-1589) mentioned the good quality of the mortadella produced in Cremona. The tradition must have been maintained in subsequent centuries, because one of the gifts sent to a lawyer in Milan was a
Cremonese mortadella, and one of the recipes in an anonymous manuscript from the first half of the nineteenth century is the one for making Cremonese mortadella.

Today Cremona falls within the PGI production area of Bologna mortadella.

Among the gifts that the Magnificent Community of Cremona sent to the Spanish government of Milan in the second half of the sixteenth century, on the occasion of the Christmas festivities, there were always many salamis, as well as sweets like nougat and quince jam.

Several centuries have passed, and even today one of the most famous sausage products is undoubtedly Cremona salami (which has obtained temporary national protection and is awaiting European PGI recognition -Protected GeographicalM Indication). The complex preparation of this product is based exclusively on pork from pigs bred and slaughtered in Italian regions identified in the production-area regulation. Lean meat, including the thigh, is used, together with dense fat and pink lard with streaks of lean meat.

Cremonese salami includes crushed and spread garlic and spices in the mix, and red or white wine may also be used.

While staying at the Farnese court in Parma, the abbot of Genoa, Carlo Innocenzo Frugoni (1692-1768), had an opportunity to try a cotechino (a type of sausage) made in Casalmaggiore. Finding it excellent and special, he wrote a sonnet to extol its merits: “The cotechino that was always best, the cotechino that all who devour
sausage always eat with zest, is made at Casalmaggior…”

A particularly famous version is Cremonese vanilla cotechino, so named not because there is vanilla in the mix, but because its taste is so delicate that it reminds one of the lightness and scent of vanilla.

Salame da pentola (salami to be cooked) (which at one time was used together with beef and chicken in the preparation of “tre bodi” (three broths) in which Cremonese marubini are cooked), is obtained from lean pork under-shoulder, the lean streaks in lard, and cured pork belly fat, salt, pepper and saltpetre. It sometimes contains a
tongue that has already been corned and cooked.

Salame da pentola (salami for cooking) is one of the standard components of gran bollito misto alla Cremonese (special Cremonesestyle mixed boiled meats), together
with beef from adult cattle, calf's head and tongue, and chicken from a hen or capon. By the nineteenth century the pork products industry had already achieved an “uncommon level of perfection”. Even today, pig breeding and pork processing are among the strong points of the Cremonese economy, and, following the transitional
period of national protection, the large Po Valley pig, yielding excellent meat, is about to achieve the European Protected Designation of Origin (PDG) recognition.

Within the province one also finds traditional products that are shared with bordering areas. These include prosciutto cotto (cooked ham), filzetta salami (a long, thin salami made from loin and pork neck, with a series of added seasonings, depending on the producer), Milan salami, also known as “crespone”, greppole (these are pork scratchings, known in Cremona as gratòon), luganega (a sausage whose name is
derived from its long, thin shape), salamina mista (a small mixed salami), and verzini (small salami composed solely of lean and fat cuts of pork, ground and kneaded, prepared in strings of small pieces about 50 grams each. Traditionally these are eaten cooked with cabbage, from which the name comes).
Sausages and verzini are the basis of certain traditional dishes.

from Cremona presents its typical products from Italy by CCIAA