Lucanica (Apicius)

Lucanica is the smoked Roman sausage whose name became luganega, longaniza, linguiça and loukaniko. The Roman scholar Varro says the Romans learned it from the Lucanians of southern Italy; the cookbook that goes under the name of Apicius, compiled around the fourth century AD, gives the only Roman recipe for it. That recipe has no quantities. It names pepper, cumin, savory, rue, parsley, an unspecified seasoning, bay berries and liquamen (fermented fish sauce) pounded together, worked into well-pounded meat, then whole peppercorns, plenty of fat and pine nuts, stuffed into a gut drawn out very thin and hung in smoke.

The diagnostic details are the fish sauce in place of salt, the pine nuts, and rue — a bitter, medicinal herb modern cooks have mostly forgotten. The text does not say which animal the meat comes from; pork is the usual reading.

This page gives the Latin, a translation, and a modern working formula that keeps every Roman ingredient but adds what the Romans did not have: weights, Cure #1, and a smoke that cooks the sausage to a safe temperature instead of drying it for weeks. I have not made this one yet; the formula is this recipe’s own reading of Apicius, and it is untested.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight

• 1,700 g (3 lb 12 oz) pork shoulder — 75%
• 570 g (1 lb 4 oz) pork back fat — 25% (‘abundanti pinguedine’, plenty of fat)

LIQUAMEN AND CURE (% of meat weight)

• 90 ml (about 100 g) fish sauce — 4.4%, supplying about 25 g salt (Red Boat-type, about 25% salt)
• 23 g fine salt (1.0%) — total salt about 2.1%
• 5.7 g Cure #1 (2.5 g/kg = 156 ppm nitrite) — not Roman; for the smoke

THE POUNDED SPICES (% of meat weight)

• 5 g black pepper, freshly ground (0.2%)
• 5 g cumin seed, toasted and ground (0.2%)
• 3 g dried savory (0.13%) — summer savory
• 0.5 g dried rue (0.02%), or 3–4 fresh leaves — optional; see Notes
• 20 g flat parsley, very finely chopped (0.9%)
• 3 g bay berries, ground — or 1 g ground bay leaf (0.05%)
• 2 g lovage seed or celery seed (0.1%) — for ‘condimentum’, see Notes

FOLDED IN WHOLE (% of meat weight)

• 7 g whole black peppercorns (0.3%)
• 70 g pine nuts (3%)

CASING

• 24–26 mm sheep casing (‘perquam tenuatim’, drawn out very thin)

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper · Fish Sauce

1. In the collection: Fish Sauce is the closest modern product to liquamen and it is doing the salting. Black Pepper twice — ground and whole — as the Latin says.
2. The Latin (Apicius II.4): “Lucanicas similiter ut supra scriptum est. teritur piper, cuminum, satureia, ruta, petroselinum, condimentum, bacae lauri, liquamen, et admiscetur pulpa bene tunsa, ita ut denuo bene cum ipso subtrito fricetur. cum liquamine admixto, pipere integro et abundanti pinguedine et nucleis inicies in intestinum perquam tenuatim productum, et sic ad fumum suspenditur.”
3. Translation: “Lucanian sausages in the same way as written above. Pepper, cumin, savory, rue, parsley, seasoning, bay berries and liquamen are pounded, and well-pounded meat is mixed in, so that it is rubbed again well together with the ground mixture. With liquamen mixed in, whole pepper, plenty of fat and pine nuts, you put it into a gut drawn out extremely thin, and so it is hung in the smoke.”
4. Pound the spices: in a mortar (or spice grinder) grind pepper, cumin, savory, rue, bay and celery seed, then pound in the parsley with half the fish sauce to a green paste. The Romans built the flavour first and put the meat into it, not the other way round.
5. Grind the meat: lean through 6 mm, fat through 6 mm, both at −1 to 1 °C. Apicius says pounded; a single grind gives the same effect without turning it to paste.
6. Rub it together: mix the meat into the spice paste with the salt, Cure #1 and the rest of the fish sauce until sticky — ‘rubbed again well’. Then fold in peppercorns, fat and pine nuts. Fry a patty: the fish sauce should taste savoury, not fishy; the rue should be a faint bitterness at the back. Adjust.
7. Stuff thin: into sheep casing, long links or one rope. Refrigerate overnight uncovered so the casing dries for the smoke.
8. Hang in the smoke: smoker at 55 °C (130 °F) for 1 hour with no smoke to dry the surface, then oak or beech smoke at 65–75 °C (150–165 °F) until the centre reads 68 °C (155 °F) — 2–3 hours. Shower or dip in cold water and chill. The Roman sausage was smoke-hung and dried for keeping; this one is smoke-cooked and kept in the fridge.
9. Eat: grilled, or sliced cold. Keeps a week refrigerated.
10. Sibling: Luganega (Lombard Coil Sausage) is what the name became in the north of Italy; Isicia Omentata (Apicius) is the Roman caul-wrapped patty from the same book.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The text is Apicius, De re coquinaria, book II, section 4, from the standard Latin text (IntraText edition); the translation is a close working one. The formula — every weight, the 75/25 block, Cure #1, the smoking schedule — is this recipe’s own; Apicius gives no quantities at all. Untested.

What the text actually says, and what people add to it. (1) The meat is ‘pulpa’ — flesh. The species is not named; pork is the reasonable reading, not a statement in the text. (2) The spice list includes ‘condimentum’, an unspecified seasoning — often silently dropped in modern retellings; celery or lovage seed here is a guess at a common Roman flavour, labelled as a guess. (3) Liquamen appears twice: once pounded with the spices and once mixed in with the meat. There is no salt except what the liquamen supplies. (4) ‘Bacae lauri’ are bay-laurel berries, not leaves. (5) The gut is drawn out ‘perquam tenuatim’ — extremely thin. (6) The opening words ‘in the same way as written above’ refer back to the preceding entry, and the heading ‘lucanicarum confectio’ in some editions is an editor’s insertion. (7) ‘Hung in the smoke’ is all it says about curing: no time, no heat.

Where lucanica came from. Varro, De Lingua Latina 5.111 (1st century BC): “Quod fartum intestinum e crassundiis, Lucanicam dicunt, quod milites a Lucanis didicerint” — a stuffed gut made from the thick intestines is called lucanica because (Roman) soldiers learned it from the Lucanians. Cicero and Martial also mention it. Lucania is the modern Basilicata, where the Lucanica di Picerno IGP (2018) — fennel, pepper, sweet or hot red pepper — still carries the name.

Rue — a caution. Ruta graveolens was everywhere in Roman cooking. It is intensely bitter, its sap can blister skin in sunlight, and it is traditionally avoided in pregnancy. A pinch is the Roman taste; leave it out if in doubt.

Variations. Drier and closer to Roman: skip Cure #1 and the cooking smoke, use Cure #2, a culture and the dry-sausage rules on Salami, cold-smoke, and dry to 30% weight loss. Garum instead of a modern fish sauce, if you can buy a Roman-style one (colatura di alici from Cetara is the nearest Italian descendant).

Sourcing and gear. Dried rue and bay berries from herbal suppliers; summer savory from spice merchants. A mortar and pestle.

Still open. What ‘condimentum’ meant in this entry is not knowable from the text. Whether Roman lucanica was eaten after a short smoke or a long dry is not stated anywhere.

The photo. The photograph is the modern Lucanica di Picerno (PGI) from Basilicata, which keeps the Roman name; nobody can photograph Apicius’s sausage.

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