Audio By Carbonatix
Q: On Saturday, I had something called “duck prosciutto” at a chi-chi wedding; on Sunday, more duck prosciutto showed up during a fancy dinner at the Brown Palace compliments of the chef at the Palace Arms. No matter what you call it, it was delicious — but isn’t prosciutto supposed to be ham?
A: Duck prosciutto is like salmon bacon — a food that exists only in the minds of chefs who hate to call things what they are for fear of not seeming highfalutin enough.
After much consultation with the kitchen, a spokesperson at the Palace Arms explained that duck prosciutto is the breast of a duck that’s been thinly sliced and salt-cured. Which sounds good, but that definition takes a lot of culinary license. Prosciutto, like bacon, refers specifically to pig flesh, and the name is derived from prosciugare — “to dry out” — a process used in Italy for salt-and-air-cured ham. You can’t really have duck prosciutto, because it would be “salt-cured duck ham,” with that ham being (and here I’m quoting Webster’s) “the back of the thigh, the part of the leg behind the knee, or the upper part of a hog’s leg or meat from this, salted, dried, smoked, etc.”
I don’t know about the guys in the Palace Arms kitchen, but I’ve never seen a duck with the legs to pull that off.
When news happens, Westword is there —
Your support strengthens our coverage.
We’re aiming to raise $50,000 by December 31, so we can continue covering what matters most to this community. If Westword matters to you, please take action and contribute today, so when news happens, our reporters can be there.
