nduja

Spilinga, in the province of Vibo Valentia, Calabria; a spicy spreadable salami whose European lineage is disputed and whose heat is American

Two accounts compete: one traces it to the andouille that Joachim Murat, the French king of Naples, is said to have handed out, the other to the Spanish around 1500; hyper-local to Spilinga for generations

The argument about 'nduja is an argument between two European powers over who gave Calabria the sausage. One account has the Spanish bring it around 1500; the other has Joachim Murat, the French king of Naples, handing out andouille, so the story goes, to win over the Neapolitan poor, and the name sides with France, since the linguist Francesco Avolio derives 'nduja plainly from andouille. Avolio also notes that it borrowed only the look of the French sausage: 'nduja is the pig's scraps ground again and again into something very hot and soft enough to spread, and its heat comes from chilli, an American plant now grown in Spilinga itself. Both accounts describe a form arriving from outside, and neither has anything to say about the chilli. This means that the debate is over the container, while the ingredient that makes the sausage Calabrian crossed the Atlantic and goes uncredited, which is roughly how attribution has always worked here.