Why do Americans call mortadella bologna?

Mortadella vs bologna: what is the difference?

The quickest test is the slice. Mortadella shows pearly white squares of fat. American bologna is uniform pink all the way through. The rules behind each product explain why.

Checked October 2026, from the Mortadella Bologna IGP product rules (summarized by ARSIAL, Lazio’s agriculture agency) and the US Code of Federal Regulations.

Both are finely ground, so texture is not the real difference. What separates them is the pork-only rule, the cubes of fat and the long, slow cooking. The US rule even groups bologna with frankfurters, wieners and knockwurst as one family of cooked sausages, and it allows binders and extenders.

Why is it called bologna?

Because it comes from Bologna. Dictionary.com dates the English word to between 1555 and 1565 and says simply that the sausage is named after the city. The correct Italian pronunciation is roughly bo-LO-nya. English speakers turned the ending into “-ee”, and from there came the spelling baloney.

The other meaning arrived later. Around 1920, baloney started to mean nonsense in American slang. One word historian has traced an early printed use to the magazine Variety in 1922. The link to the sausage is likely, but nobody has proved it.

Why American bologna went its own way

For more than 30 years Americans could not legally buy the original. The United States banned imports of Italian mortadella from 1967, after an outbreak of a pig disease in Italy, and it returned to American shelves only around 2000, according to NPR. For those decades, the bologna in American delis was made under American rules.

Where does the name mortadella come from?

The ARSIAL product sheet traces it to the Latin mortarium, the mortar used to pound pork with salt and fat. The history it gives runs back a long way:

• 1242: a statute puts the Salaroli, one of Bologna’s oldest guilds, in charge of making it and applying its seals of guarantee.
• 1348: mortadella is mentioned in a Bolognese document.
• 1376: the Salaroli guild’s coat of arms is a mortar and pestle.
• 1661: Cardinal Farnese issues an edict codifying how mortadella is made in Bologna, which is where the “Bologna” name comes from.
• 1998: Mortadella Bologna is registered as an EU protected geographical indication. A producers’ consortium followed in 2001.

Where to eat mortadella in Bologna

Start in the Quadrilatero, the old market streets behind Piazza Maggiore, where delis slice it to order. Tamburini on Via Caprarie has been run by the same family since 1932, and Stanley Tucci ate mortadella at Salumeria Simoni in the Bologna episode of his CNN series (our page on where Stanley Tucci went in Bologna covers the rest of his stops). Ask for it sliced thin. To take some home, the delis will vacuum-pack it, though meat is banned from luggage into some countries: see what to buy from Bologna.

If you would rather have someone explain what you are eating, a three-hour walking food tour with a Bolognese guide covers mortadella alongside the other local specialties. Our Bologna food tour comparison sets it against five others, and the tours page lists the rest.