Culatello substitutes

The realistic answer, from the same corner of Emilia and the same animal. Ask the counter for the longest-aged prosciutto they carry and to slice it a shade thicker than usual.

Best for

antipasto plates, with bread and butter, with figs or melon, wrapped around grissini

Saltier and firmer than culatello, with a more prominent white fat rim and a cleaner, simpler aroma. Culatello has a musty, almost truffle-like note from ageing in humid cellars that prosciutto does not, so a tasting plate made with prosciutto is very good but noticeably less complex and more straightforwardly salty. Twelve-month prosciutto is a real step further away; the extra ageing is what closes the gap.

From Friuli rather than Emilia, pressed flat during curing, and generally sweeter and more delicate than Parma.

Best for

antipasto plates, with bread and butter, with cheese, salads

The sweetness and softer, silkier bite land closer to culatello than Parma does, and it is less aggressively salty. What it lacks is culatello's density and the deep rose-to-mahogany colour, so the plate looks paler and each slice feels lighter in the mouth.

Fiocco is the other half of the same hind leg once the culatello muscle has been removed, and culaccia is essentially culatello left with its rind on. If a specialty counter has either, stop looking.

Best for

antipasto plates, anywhere culatello is called for

As close as it is possible to get without buying culatello itself: same animal, same region, same curing tradition. Fiocco is slightly leaner and less perfumed because it ages for a shorter time, so it is a little firmer and more prosciutto-like. Neither is easy to find outside Italy or a serious salumeria.

Spanish rather than Italian, but the nutty, deeply aromatic, dissolving-on-the-tongue quality is arguably nearer to culatello than an ordinary prosciutto is.

Best for

tasting plates, eaten alone with bread, with sherry or a Tuscan red

Distinctly nuttier and more savoury than culatello, with acorn-fed richness and yellow, liquid fat, so the plate tastes Spanish rather than Emilian and the fat coats the mouth more. Costs as much as culatello or more, which undercuts the point if you were substituting on price. Serrano ham is the cheaper Spanish option but is much saltier and firmer and lands further away.

Northern Italian cured pork leg that is lightly cold-smoked and rubbed with juniper, garlic and pepper.

Best for

antipasto plates, with rye bread, cooked into pasta or dumplings

A good cured meat that pushes the dish somewhere else: the smoke and juniper are immediately obvious and dominate anything they sit beside, where culatello is all sweetness and perfume. Use it if you like speck, not if the point of the plate was purity, and never as the single centrepiece meat on a board built around culatello.

Air-dried salted beef eye of round from Lombardy, sliced paper thin. Reach for it when you want a lean, elegant cured slice rather than a rich one.

Best for

salads with rocket and Parmesan, carpaccio-style plates, lighter antipasti

Beef rather than pork, and almost fat-free, so it is mineral and faintly tangy with a drier, slightly chewy bite and none of the melting fat that makes culatello luxurious. It also dries out fast on the plate. A reasonable stand-in for the role of thin cured meat, a poor one for culatello's texture.

The honest least-bad option. Fine wherever the cured meat is an ingredient rather than the star.

Best for

wrapping vegetables or chicken, crisping in a pan, risotto, pasta, sandwiches

Pre-sliced, short-aged prosciutto is essentially salt and fat with a thin cured note, and it works well cooked, where salt and fat are all you need. Do not build a tasting plate around it as a culatello replacement, because side by side the gap in aroma is the entire difference between the two products.