Micrococcaceae
Also known as Micrococci
The old family name that once gathered all the salt-loving, nitrate-reducing cocci of curing, since dismantled by taxonomy but still met in traditional recipes and on starter labels.
Micrococcaceae, the micrococci, from the Greek for small berry, is the traditional family under which the useful curing cocci were once all filed: the salt-tolerant, catalase-positive, nitrate-reducing round bacteria that steady colour and build flavour. For much of the twentieth century a curesmith spoke simply of adding micrococci, and older books, and some starter descriptions still today, use the term.
The name sits at the very origin of controlled European fermentation. The first European starter, Fritz Niinivaara's strain M-53 of 1955, was identified as Micrococcus aurantiacus and sold as Bactoferment, and for a generation the colour-and-flavour cocci of dry sausage were understood as micrococci. Later taxonomy took the family apart. Much of what had been called Micrococcus proved, on closer study, to be coagulase-negative Staphylococcus, S. xylosus and carnosus above all; the true micrococci were regrouped, and Niinivaara's own organism now sits in the genus Kocuria as Kocuria varians, formerly Micrococcus varians. The family as the old books drew it no longer stands.
The functions, though, are shared across the whole group and are exactly as the old term implied: nitrate reduction to feed the cured colour, catalase to guard the fat against rancidity, and gentle proteolysis and lipolysis for flavour. Whether a label reads micrococci, Micrococcus, Kocuria or coagulase-negative staphylococci, it is this colour-and-flavour work that is meant.
The entry survives so the older term still resolves. A curesmith meeting micrococci in a traditional recipe or on a starter description should read it as the colour-and-flavour cocci, and reach, in practice, for a modern blend built on the named species that now carry the work: the two staphylococci and, where wanted, Kocuria.