The sexiest sausage in the world? Sanguinaccio, Italy’s first form of Viagra

When it comes to passionate love and how to hone physical attraction, Italians are said to be masters. They have the flirting skills, the charm and know-how of Latin lovers and femme fatales. So it’s no surprise that they’ve also concocted a potent, innuendo-inducing food to help boost the chemistry of encounters and enhance the thrill of sensual nights.

In Asia, people drink snake blood to get the hormones going; in Italy there’s pig blood. Sanguinaccio – literally meaning “ugly blood” in Italian – is a popular, huge, salami-shaped tube of meat (or chocolate) made with pig blood and believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac. Its shape, too, might strike a familiar chord.

Sanguinaccio was Italy’s first form of Viagra

The blood sausage’s origins apparently hail back to the Ancient Romans, who had a soft spot for cured meats cooked in spices and herbs, often with the blood of pigs, rabbits or lambs to keep them going – allegedly through hours of lavish dinners and post-meal romances.

It is made in nearly all Italian regions, but the biggest fans are locals living in the extreme south and northern areas, where the rural intangible heritage has survived progress and urbanisation and culinary traditions live on. There’s a sweet version served as dessert with dark chocolate, and a salty one eaten as an appetiser or main course. Each town has its own particular recipe and name twist depending on the dialect.

The hard core, mainstream variant is the sanguinaccio sausage, of a dark brownish colour. It might not look good but its taste is unique and tantalising, just as the effects it has on the human body.

In the town of Cammarata, set in deep, wild Sicily, it’s called lu sangunazzu and is made with one litre of fresh pig blood, salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, grated garlic and herbs. The mix, cooked in hot water and stuffed into the pig’s largest gut, is then served sliced as salami loaves on bruschetta or eaten straight on the plate.

“I have an ancient recipe: I add milk to the pig’s blood, which makes it softer and more delicious,” says Maria Rita Giambrone, chef at the local Villa Giatra restaurant that specialises in traditional delicacies. “The pig blood is highly nutritive, full of iron, it gives energy and reinvigorates the body and heart pump. Mothers have always given it to their children to make them grow strong and healthy, and occasionally also to lazy husbands to boost their sexual energy.”