LA CARTE POSTALE DE FRANCE: Rosette de Lyon

Lyon's claim as the charcuterie capital of France rests on many things, but the rosette is the flagship.

A rosette de Lyon is a large, dry-cured pork sausage. A rosette can run up to forty inches long and weigh close to three kilograms, which makes it considerably more serious than the average saucisson you'd pick up at a Parisian market. It's made from the shoulder, ham, coarsely chopped and mixed with fat, salt, black pepper, and a bit of garlic. Some producers add a bit of local red wine. The mixture is packed into a natural pork casing called a rosette, a casing whose pink color and slightly conical shape give the sausage both its name and its distinctive tapered silhouette. It gets netted, hung, and left to dry.

The drying process takes anywhere from six weeks for a smaller piece to four months for the largest, and the best artisan producers let them go even longer. The exterior develops a white, powdery mold, a sign of proper aging, not something gone wrong, and the interior should be firm, deep pink, and evenly marbled with fat. The tradition goes back to the Middle Ages, when the relatively dry, temperate climate of the Rhône Valley made the region ideal for curing and drying pork.

A rosette should be sliced thin, roughly two millimeters, and brought to room temperature before eating. Cold sausage straight from the refrigerator won't release its full flavor. In the bouchons, it's the opening act: sliced and laid on a wooden board or a simple plate, served with cornichons for acidity, a pot of Dijon mustard for sharpness, and a basket of crusty bread. At the Halles Paul Bocuse, the great charcuterie houses — Colette Sibilia, Maison Bobosse, Maison Cellerier — hang rosettes in their windows and you can buy them whole to slice at home or have them cut to order. At the Café des Fédérations, one of the city's most storied bouchons, the rosette opens the meal before the quenelles and the tablier de sapeur arrive.

But the rosette doesn't belong only to the bouchon. It shows up on raclette boards in winter, in composed salads with lentilles du Puy and shallots, and alongside a glass of Beaujolais at any hour that could reasonably be called apéritif. A Brouilly or a Côte-de-Brouilly with its bright fruit is the classic pairing, though a light Côtes-du-Rhône works just as well. The Lyonnais have a term for the late-morning meal of charcuterie and wine that working people used to take between early labor and lunch: the mâchon. The rosette is the centerpiece.