Lucanica was a rustic pork sausage in ancient Roman cuisine. Apicius documents it as a spicy, smoked beef or pork sausage originally from Lucania;[1] according to Cicero and Martial, it was brought by Roman soldiers from Lucania.[2][3]
It has given its name to a variety of sausages (fresh, cured, and smoked) in Mediterranean cuisine and its colonial offshoots, including:
- Italian luganega or lucanica
- Portuguese and Brazilian linguiça
- Bulgarian lukanka or loukanka
- Macedonian (Western dialects) lukanec/луканец or lukanci/луканци
- Albanian (Arbëresh community in Italy) likëngë or lekëngë, also llukanik in Albania.
- Greek loukaniko, a fresh sausage usually flavored with orange peel
- Spanish, Latin American and Philippine longaniza, a name which covers both fresh and cured sausages
- Arabic laqāniq, naqāniq, or maqāniq, made of mutton and some semolina[4][5]
- Modern Hebrew naqniq (נקניק), an umbrella term for 'sausage'
- Basque lukainka
- Croatian luganiga, flavored with cinnamon
Today, lucanica is identified as lucanica di Picerno, produced in Basilicata (whose territory was part of the ancient Lucania).[6]
- ^ Jenkins, Nancy (2007). Cucina del sole : a celebration of southern Italian cooking. William Morrow. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-06-072343-9. Retrieved 6 July 2024.
- ^ Oxford Companion to Food
- ^ Touring Club Italiano Le città dell'olio, 2001, Touring Editore pag. 237 ISBN 88-365-2141-X
- ^ Maxime Rodinson, "GHidhā", Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. full text
- ^ For the phonetic variation, see Dulaym ibn Masʻūd Qaḥṭānī, Sound changes in Arabic sonorant consonants (not seen)
- ^ "The Lucanica di Picerno, A Historical Sausage". Arte Cibo. Retrieved September 16, 2020.