Ladies and gentlemen it’s Voices From The Fog! Welcome to the history of Prosciutto brought to you by Volpi Foods. While some myths can be traced to humbler origins, and even connected with other cultures’ myths, the story of Prosciutto is so simple and so ridiculous that it bears a quick review.

A Roman Pig Story

Word has it that thousands of years ago the Romans had, amongst its many residents of the livestock persuasion, a happy pig named Franco. Now there’s our first problem right there, no way that pig had a name. Anyway, little Franco was wandering out in Rome one day… Hold up! A pig, which is a food animal usually confined to a pen and probably worth a pretty penny back then, is out in the streets of Rome like a tourist in heels, dangling hat, bags and garment bags from the hottest local clothiers?

Resuming… Franco is getting a little long in the tooth. Dang it! What pig has ever had a chance to get old? I suppose as Socrates famously said “Don’t let facts screw up a good story” also the guy who brought us “What’s that over there?” So our little curly-tailed friend Franco is wearing his Italian glasses from a Fellini movie and walking through the forum contemplating his small pig existence amongst the great universal expanse. He knows it is time for him to meet his maker and he climbs all seven of the Seven Hills and hits the beach.

He wanders in to dip his hooves, feeling the coolness of the ocean for the first time and smelling the freshness and salinity all around. As he dips into the watery blue fathoms of the sea, Franco draws his final breath and expires. After spending over a year as a dead pig and eventually washing up on the beach, some industrious peasants eventually stumble upon Franco’s petrified carcass and have a bite. Prosciutto was born! Isn’t myth so much better than a neglectful farmer who lost his pig, let it drown and some hobo is resorted to eating the bloated carcass, shrugged, and said “Yeah not bad”?

Volpi Foods — American crafted since 1902.

Ladies and gentlemen it’s Voices From The Fog! Welcome to the history of fermentation brought to you by Volpi Foods. It’s more interesting than it sounds, I promise. Much like the curing process, using fire to cook food or accidentally eating the wrong mushrooms, fermentation was this fascinating natural process going on whether we simple little humans happen to take part or not. Our subject today is what humans have done with this process in which bacteria take sugars and turn them into any number of things like gas, acid, or what you may know it for best — alcohol. I got news for you sunny, you see that pickle you’re so delicately applying to that Italian hoagie with Genoa and Mortadella? Or how about that provolone so elegantly draped over a said sandwich?

Also, fermented. *mind-blown*

Let’s Sail Back in Time to Early Fermenting Days:

Picture two distinguished gentlemen. They’re about to invent the hangover:

So one guy says “Dang look at all these rotten grapes that ended up all over the ground. Guy! You were on grape watch!” 

His bud is like “They’re just a little squishy and moldy no biggie!” So they eat the grapes and get a funny head rush. 

A smarter person comes along and says “Just drink that mess guys. Run the grape gunk through my hat and mash it up good. Flash-forward 6000 years and we’ve evolved all the way to foot and bucket technology. Moving forward the Egyptians and their huge structure building slave population, those happy laborers that built the pyramids would each ration four to five liters of beer a day. This counted as a form of payment so the Egyptian government could classify them as employees and not interns thus avoiding the slave tax.

Sobering-up, CHEESE — the milk that keeps. No one knows exactly how fermentation first introduced cheese to the world but the legend ain’t bad. An Arabian merchant is set to cross the desert. He’s agreed to pay another merchant for some milk but failed to secure a plastic jug from anywhere in the world, yet he’s got a pouch made from a sheep’s stomach. He crosses the desert and does his nomadic sort of thing. When he gets to camp, he opens the pouch and takes a drink. Instead of throwing up, he finds the way to be quenching and the curds to be delectable. Cheese is still made this way accidentally, even today all over the world in lazy people’s refrigerators.

Final anecdote and shout out to Asia. Genghis Khan — a man who, like a yeast cell, converted people into acids, gases, and alcohol in the form of murdering them. He is noted for officially bringing sauerkraut to the West… so thanks I guess? But seriously Genghis, just because sauerkraut is awesome we’re not going to look the other way on you being an epic pillaging scumbag.