TY - JOUR T1 - On the <em>Zampone</em> Trail JF - Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies SP - 91 LP - 95 DO - 10.1525/GFC.2012.12.4.91 VL - 12 IS - 4 AU - , Y1 - 2012/11/01 UR - http://gcfs.ucpress.edu/content/12/4/91.abstract N2 - This article explores a renowned Italian salume (cured meat product) made of many different pork oddments that give it a complex but melting texture. It is usually found in one of two forms, cotechino or—the chief focus of the article—the more demanding zampone. Both are associated with the Christmas-New Year's holiday season throughout the Emilia-Romagna region. For cotechino, a mixture of pork meat, tendons, rind, and bits of snout and jowl is filled into hog casings just as for other sausages; for the more demanding zampone, a similar mixture is stuffed into an almost completely deboned pig's foot. The article traces the history of zampone from Renaissance Modena to modern commercial versions; it then recounts the author's attempt to make it from scratch, as was done in his childhood in the Cape Cod village of Sagamore, a community of immigrants from Emilia-Romagna who long preserved traditions of home butchering and sausage-making. ER -