Bread with Meusa

Street Food

Popo le Chien

Bread with meusa is a specialty of Palermo street food. The calf entrails, the spleen, the lung and the trachea, are boiled whole and then cut into pieces and fried in lard. When served, they are placed between two slices of soft sesame bread, called vastella. The panino con la meusa is a poor dish that was born about 1100 years ago, when butchers of Jewish origin settled in Palermo. These, not being able to receive money for their work, due to their religious faith, withheld the entrails of the calf as a reward: guts, lungs, spleen and heart. Among these offal there was no liver, because it had a greater economic value and was sold separately. The Jewish butchers, having to find a way to transform this reward into money, created a sandwich stuffed with lung, spleen and "scannarozzato" or pieces of cartilage from the ox's trachea. The sandwich was immediately successful. Even today, the sandwich with the meusa is one of the protagonists of Palermo street food.