Speck


Speck is smoked or pickled pork belly. In Germany speck is pork fat with or without some meat in it.
In Italy, Turkey and parts of the English-speaking culinary world, "speck" refers to Italian speck, a type of prosciutto, rather than German speck. The term "speck" became part of popular parlance only in the eighteenth century and replaced the older term "bachen", a cognate of "bacon".

Regional varieties

There are a number of regional varieties of speck, including:
In Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, in which bacon is forbidden as unkosher pork, "speck" commonly refers to the subcutaneous fat on a brisket of beef. It is a particular specialty of delis serving Montreal-style smoked meat, where slices of the fatty cut are served in sandwiches on rye bread with mustard, sometimes in combination with other, leaner cuts.