Penicillium nalgiovense
Also known as Edelschimmel Kulmbach
The noble white mould deliberately grown on the surface of many dried sausages and salami. Selected because it does not make mycotoxins and crowds out wild moulds that might.
Penicillium nalgiovense is the white coat of a classic salami, and it is there on purpose. It is a selected strain, long known in the trade as Edelschimmel Kulmbach, developed in Germany from the 1970s precisely because it is safe: it does not form mycotoxins, where many wild moulds can.
As a surface culture it does several useful things at once. It shields the meat from light and oxygen, which slows the fat from going rancid; it steadies the drying so the outside does not harden against the still-moist centre; and it adds to the flavour and the clean, even appearance of a well-made dried sausage.
Its real job is competitive exclusion on the surface, the mould equivalent of a starter culture. By inoculating the casing with a known safe strain that establishes first, the curesmith leaves no room for the patchy greens and blacks of wild moulds, some of which form toxins. It is the working tool of the Mould Control Pillar.
The safety rests on the word selected. The commercial cultures are toxin-screened strains chosen because they do not make mycotoxins, but the species as it grows in the wild is not uniformly safe: unselected strains of Penicillium nalgiovense have been found to produce mycotoxins, citrinin among them, so the protection comes from using a defined culture rather than from the species name alone.
Temple element. Pillar, Mould Control