What it is
The solid pressed residues left after boiling/rendering pork fat for sugna, used in Campanian rustic breads, pizzas, and tortes.
Origin place card
The source foregrounds Mugnano del Cardinale and Quadrelle in Avellino, but cicoli function as a wider Campanian kitchen engine.
Verified history
Regione Campania PAT — Cicoli supports this historical/traditional framing for Cicoli: The page frames cicoli through the no-waste pig principle: once liquid sugna is separated, the solid remainder becomes food rather than discard. Treat the wording as source-supported tradition/history, not independent archival proof of a founder, precise origin date, first attestation, or origin story.
Local hypothesis
Cicoli are less a dish than a transformation hinge: they allow the slaughter day to enter breads, pizza rustica, and winter doughs.
Local legend / oral tradition
The saying that nothing is thrown away from the pig should sit as proverb/cultural frame, not as formal evidence.
Ingredients
Fatty pork parts boiled/rendered; resulting sugna plus solid residual cicoli after pressing. Source-supported detail: I cicoli non sono altro che il risultato della bollitura delle parti grasse del maiale in un pentolone, laddove la parte liquida formerà, una volta solidificatasi, la sugna, mentre i panetti solidi residuali, dopo la spremitura, sono i cicoli.
Method
Boil/render fatty parts in a large pot; reserve the liquid fat as sugna when solidified; press or collect the remaining solid pieces as cicoli. Source-supported detail: Si possono certamente definire un cibo della tradizione, dal sapore forte e peculiare, ma ricco di grassi; i cicoli sono ancora oggi abbastanza utilizzati nella cucina campana, soprattutto come ripieno per pizze e torte rustiche.
Ritual / calendar
Implicit winter pig-processing calendar; no specific feast is documented by the source. Source-supported detail: Pork scratching are the result of boiling the fat parts of the pig in a big saucepan, the liquid part will form suet once solidified, while the little residual blocks are the pork scratching.
Why travel for it
Follow cicoli into bakeries: the atlas page should point from the rendering pot to the pizza rustica counter.
Recreate-it pathway
Need recipe recovery for pizza with cicoli, panino napoletano, and other doughs that use them.
Editorial warning
Cicoli are an ingredient/product page. Do not publish as a standalone “recipe” without linked dough variants.
Fieldwork questions
Which bakeries around Mugnano/Quadrelle still use local cicoli? How are they rendered today?
Photo brief
Cicoli pieces beside sugna; second image of cicoli folded into rustic dough.