No. 1820

Zampino, Modena Style, with String Beans—Stuffed

Zampino Farci a la Modene aux Haricots Verts

Zampino is the foot of a young pig, including a part of the leg stuffed (Fig. 352). Let this salt for twelve days in brine, and when needed for use soak it for three or four hours; scrape the rind and prick it with a larding needle to prevent breaking while cooking; wrap it up in a thin cloth, tie it at both ends and in the middle, and lay the leg in a braziere covering over with cold water; let it simmer for two hours or more and when the pointed end is done take out the leg, unwrap and serve over a garnishing of string beans. Serve separately a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) reduced with white wine. For the preparation of the Zampino see hams of chicken with Zampino (No. 2525).

POULTRY (Volaille).

← No. 1819 Pigs' Tongues, Provencal Style Pork No. 1821 Capon a l'Amphitryon →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer assumes a kitchen that cured its own pork and a cook who could read "brine" as a known formula. As printed, the curing half of this recipe carries a real risk, and the cooking half is written in vocabulary that has since drifted.

The brine is undefinedTwelve days in "brine" gives no salt concentration, no volume, no holding temperature, and no curing salt. A stuffed pig's trotter is a dense, sealed, anaerobic package, and that is precisely the environment in which Clostridium botulinum produces toxin when nitrite levels and salt penetration are not controlled by measurement.
Twelve days at what temperatureNineteenth-century larders ran cold in winter and unreliably in summer. A cure of this length only works within a narrow temperature band, and the recipe never names one. Left warm, the interior of the stuffing spoils long before the salt reaches it.
Cooking does not undo a bad cureTwo hours at a simmer will kill vegetative bacteria, and botulinum toxin itself is heat-labile, but spores survive and the heat-stable toxins produced by other spoilage organisms are not destroyed by poaching. A cure that has gone wrong cannot be rescued at the stove.
Cross-referenced, not explainedThe page sends the reader to No. 2525 for "the preparation of the Zampino," so no stuffing formula appears here, and what that entry supplies cannot be judged from this page. If you want zampone, buy a commercially cured one and follow its own instructions, or work from a current recipe with weighed cure.
BraziereNot a brazier. A braisière is a deep, close-fitting braising pan with a lid; here it is simply the vessel wide enough to hold the leg flat under cold water.
Half-glazeRanhofer's No. 413 is demi-glace: a brown sauce built on espagnole and reduced stock. "Reduced with white wine" means the wine goes in and is cooked down before the sauce is finished.
Why the pricking and the clothThe larding needle vents steam so the skin does not split, and the cloth holds the shape through a long simmer. Both are sound technique and are still done with modern zampone.
Doneness at the pointed endThe original tells you to take the leg out when the pointed end tests done. This is the one piece of judgement the original gives, and it is a good one.

A Little History

Zampone belongs to Modena, where the boned foreleg and trotter skin of a pig is packed with a seasoned mixture of pork, rind and fat and then cured — a way of using the least glamorous cuts and the skin itself as casing. Tradition traces its invention to the siege of Mirandola in the early sixteenth century, when the town's pigs supposedly had to be preserved quickly, though that story is folklore rather than record. What is documented is that the sausage became fixed to Modena's identity, is eaten there at New Year with lentils, and now carries EU protected geographical status. Its appearance in Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the compendium of Delmonico's kitchen in New York, shows how far the reach of a fashionable American restaurant extended: a regional Emilian charcuterie item, served with string beans and a demi-glace, under the title "à la Modène".