Mortadella is a finely hashed/ground heat-cured pork sausage with lard pieces, delicately flavored with garlic and anise seed and optionally with broken pieces of pistachio. Traditionally the pork filling was ground to a paste using a large mortar (mortaio) and pestle. Two Roman funerary stele in the archaeological museum of Bologna show such mortars. Alternatively, according to Cortelazzo and Zolli Dizionario Etimologico della Lingua Italiana 1979-88, Mortadella gets its name from a Roman sausage flavored with myrtle in place of pepper. The Romans called the sausage farcimen mirtatum. Anna del Conte (The Gastronomy of Italy 2001) found a sausage mentioned in a document of the official body of meat preservers in Bologna dated 1376, that may be mortadella.
Mortadella originated in Bologna la Grassa, the "fat" city overflowing with bounty, though it is made elsewhere in Italy, and a similar commercial product, called "bologna" often omitting the lard, is popular in the US.
"Mortadela" is also very popular in Brazil, thanks to the large number of Italian emigrés established in the country in the early 20th century, mainly in the southern states of Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul.
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