Pepperoni certainly has conquered the United States. Hormel is the biggest-selling brand, and in the run-up to the Super Bowl this Sunday, the company has sold enough pepperoni (40 million feet) to tunnel all the way through the planet Earth, said Holly Drennan, a product manager.

Michael Ruhlman, an expert in meat curing who is writing a book on Italian salumi, doesn’t flinch from calling pepperoni pizza a “bastard” dish, a distorted reflection of wholesome tradition. “Bread, cheese and salami is a good idea,” he said. “But America has a way of taking a good idea, mass-producing it to the point of profound mediocrity, then losing our sense of where the idea comes from.” He prefers lardo or a fine-grained salami, very thinly sliced, then laid over pizza as it comes out of the oven rather than cooked in the oven.

But some of the most respected meatheads in the country are beginning to take pepperoni seriously.

“I can’t make salami fast enough as it is, and now the pizza chefs are begging me for pepperoni,” said Paul Bertolli, founder and self-proclaimed “curemaster” of Fra’ Mani, the salumi specialist in Oakland. Mr. Bertolli is in a research-and-development phase on a pepperoni, because of demand from expert pizzaiolos like Chris Bianco of Bianco in Phoenix and Craig Stoll of Delfina in San Francisco. “There’s nothing quite like that spicy, smoky taste with pizza,” he said.

Mr. Bertolli believes that pepperoni’s smokiness, beef content and fine grind are more characteristic of German sausages like Thüringer, suggesting a possible Midwestern connection. “I’ve never seen a smoked sausage anywhere in Italy,” he said.