On 1 Jun 2004 18:02:50 -0400, (The Bibliographer)
wrote:

>
>I have an old Italian recipe which calls for "carne salata
>vergellata." I am fairly certain that the "carne salata" is "salted
>meat," but probably not bacon. Can someone tell me about the "vergellata"?
>Thank you very much for your time.

>>So, yes, bacon-looking meats with cross-sections showing
>> fat and lean strata.

>> Streaky bacon in Brittania and just plain bacon in the US.

For Italian adjectives, you want to look up the masculine singular
forms, not the feminine forms (or any plural ones). So, vergellato
(masculine) instead of vergelleta (feminine) or vergellati (masculine
plural) or vergellate (feminine plural).

If you google that word, vergellato, you'll find this page:
http://www.emmeti.it/Cucina/Lazio/St...RT.107.it.html

which is quite dense, but it mentions

"ponendovi quattro lardelli di presciutto vergellato (= vergato di
grasso e di magro) per ciascun pezzo"

Place 4 slices of prosciutto vergellato (= streaked with fat and lean)
per each piece.

(a lardello means slice or rasher, always referring to fat, or to what
we would call loosely, bacon)

Though vergellato is probably from a verb such as vergellare, that
doesn't help me as I don't know what vergellare means, either. I think
you're right about it being an older word.

All this is just to say I think everybody is on the right track,
though someone on it.hobby.cucina could probably pin the term right
down.

I think the Italian word that people might use today for streaky might
be something like "lardellato", perhaps.