Prosciutto is Italian salt-cured, air-dried ham — the raw hind leg of the pig (Sus scrofa domesticus) preserved with nothing but salt and time. Sliced tissue-thin, it is rosy-red shot through with rims of ivory fat, and it eats sweet, deeply savoury and silky, dissolving on the tongue with a clean salt edge. Twelve to thirty-six months of slow drying in mountain or river-valley air concentrate the meat into something nutty, umami-rich and faintly funky — the unmistakable depth of Prosciutto di Parma or Prosciutto di San Daniele. The word simply means "ham," but to most of the world it has come to mean the uncooked, dry-cured kind eaten cold.