Mortadella Vs Olive Loaf: The Difference Between Deli Meats

Restaurateur Stephen Starr once wisely noted, "You try to come up with new ideas, but in the end, people just want to eat Italian food." Legendary film director Martin Scorsese has emphatically echoed this sentiment, saying, "If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant?" Indeed, Italian food is something to write home about (or perhaps, to never leave home for) and mortadella belongs to the Italian cured meat Hall of Fame. Etymologically, the name "mortadella" is thought to have been derived from Mortaio della Carne, meaning "the mortar for meat," or else take origin from "mirto," the Italian name for myrtle berries.

"Olive loaf," by contrast, is a descriptive, literal, unromantic title. Although it is Italian (kind of), this dated deli darling is largely regarded as a retro relic of the past, not wildly unlike the jello-encased hams coming out of the home kitchens of the 1970s. Still, steadfast fans remain. Mortadella and olive loaf are made using roughly the same production process of emulsification, curing, shaping, and casing. But beyond their common assemblage, mortadella and olive loaf couldn't be more different. They're made from different meats, different aromatics, and one is served quite unlike the other.

Mortadella is a classic salumi fixture (which is not the same thing as salami, for the record). The Italian cold cut hails from Emilia-Romagna in Northern Italy, and indeed, this silky meat is strikingly comparable to another cold cut named after the eponymous Emilia-Romagna city of Bologna. Bologna, however, lacks mortadella's distinctive fat cubes and dimensional taste due to the absence of additional aromatic ingredients.

Mortadella is made from high-quality pork, unlike ultra-processed American bologna. In fact, true Mortadella di Bologna bears IGP (Indication of Geographic Protection) status, in recognition of quality and traditional production standards. To make mortadella, ground sausage is baked in a dry air oven to cure, cooled to room temperature, mixed with cubes of pork fat and the chosen seasoning ingredients, then shaped and cased in cylindrical packages typically weighing 26-30 pounds, or as much as 110 pounds. To serve, the meat is typically cut into thin slices with a diameter of 12 inches or larger.

Beyond that rich, fatty pork flavor, mortadella is also emulsified with pistachios, whole black peppercorns, myrtle berries, nutmeg, and sometimes (but less commonly) olives or truffles for a touch of subtle nuttiness and spice on the palate. Historically, the sausage and aromatics used to be mushed together using a mortar and pestle. These nuanced aromatics give mortadella its spiced, slightly salty, smooth profile, artfully juxtaposed by its rich pork flavor.

Olive loaf is essentially bologna flecked with whole or sliced green and pimento-stuffed Manzanilla olives. Chunks of red pimientos or pickles might be thrown into the mix, as well. Olive loaf also commonly features spices like mace, coriander, and black pepper, as well as textural binders like corn syrup and potato starch. The meat, like American bologna (and unlike mortadella), is highly processed. Preservatives like sodium nitrite and sodium lactate are commonplace ingredients in olive loaf. Still, these additives don't seem to interrupt the briny taste of the meat. On the palate, olive loaf presents a uniquely tangy flavor due to the ample dotting of the olives. It's a distinctive taste with an undertone of saline acidity for interesting interplay alongside the savory pork.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this retro relic is tougher to find in grocery stores than the widely-available, quintessential salumi mortadella. Historically, olive loaf has been a fixture of American deli lunch counters, where hot and cold sandwiches are peddled service-style. Deli meat giants Boar's Head and Oscar Mayer both made olive loaf for a time, but these brands appear to have discontinued the product. Still, this isn't to say that olive loaf has gone extinct. Even B.J.'s discount warehouse still carries Dietz & Watson brand olive loaf for $4.99 per pound at a store in New Jersey.

Mortadella is made from emulsified pork sausage, mixed with 15%-40% pork jowl fat cubes, giving the meat its signature dotted appearance. The sausage itself comprises hog shoulder, leg, belly, snout, and jowl, plus sometimes offal like trim and tripe. In conjunction with the studding of fat cubes, this high-quality meat makeup is to thank for mortadella's marbled visual and melt-in-your-mouth, satiny texture.

Olive loaf, by contrast, follows a more lax assemblage. The meat itself is typically a blend of pork and beef, but turkey and chicken versions exist too. On the note of aromatics, olive loaf's mace, coriander, pepper profile leans more muted than mortadella's sweet-spiced blend of myrtle berries, nutmeg, and pistachios.

Like mortadella, the meat in olive loaf (whatever it may be) is ground into a paste, then mixed with aromatics and olives, shaped, and cased to slice. Due to the similarities in their basic emulsion-and-reshaping preparations, and due to the olive's long ties to Mediterranean cuisine, food historians seem to agree that olive loaf also hails from Italian origins. However, olive loaf is largely a product of adaptation and innovation, and while the meat perhaps borrows from mortadella's general fundamental concept at its inception, it has stepped out of the think tank as a distinctly American deli meat.

To serve, mortadella is typically sliced thin and enjoyed as an appetizer. Mortadella has deserves a spot when you're building the ultimate charcuterie board alongside fruits, nuts, and mustard. It pairs especially well with soft-ripened cheese (like goat cheese or havarti) and a crisp, full-bodied white wine or bittersweet Aperol Spritz.

This salumi superstar is great for snacking, but it's also frequently reached for as a flatbread topping, or incorporated into pasta dishes like the classic Bolognese dish tortellini di mortadella. At home, we love piling the toothy meat onto this mortadella focaccia sandwich with red pepper mayo. The thinly-sliced meat might also come in the form of toothy cubes. 

In order to dig olive loaf, you have to really like olives and bologna both. To serve, olive loaf is most commonly stuffed into flavorful sandwiches, eaten cold as a lunch meat (olive loaf and mortadella meet in the sandwich realm). The classic, nostalgic olive loaf sandwich of yore adds mayo and whole-grain mustard on white bread. Beyond sandwiches, this deli meat can be served on crackers or torn up to be used as a spaghetti topping. But compared to mortadella, olive loaf has markedly less versatility for utilizing in different dishes.