An Italian word for bell peppers, repurposed by Italian-American butchers for a spicy sausage that does not exist in Italy
A spicy dry-cured sausage made from pork and beef, commonly used as a pizza topping
From Italian 'peperoni' (plural of 'peperone'), meaning large peppers or bell peppers, derived from Latin 'piper' meaning pepper. Italian immigrants in early 20th-century America applied the name to a new type of spicy salami they developed, likely because of its peppery seasoning. The sausage called pepperoni does not exist in Italy — if you order peperoni on a pizza in Rome, you will receive bell peppers. It is a purely Italian-American creation