Sweets, History, Zones and Seasons

Nowadays, to stay among the good memories, a meal should end with a dessert. It’s curious that, around the year 1000, it was the opposite: banquets started with the sweets to carry on with the salty things. And they had to get along with no sugar nor cocoa...

Sugar beet and cocoa, in fact, arrives in Europe only after 1492, with Christopher Columbus’ trip towards the "Indies": before that, they used honey, supported by cane sugar, which arrived from the Arabic zones as a spice around 900. Hence, it’s easy to notice that sweets were much different from those that conclude our meals nowadays: they were not soft and the sweet flavours often went together with salty and sourish ones. The use of cooked fruits was very common with meat, which in fact is still a use in Anglo Saxon and Scandinavian countries: the fruit sauces were very appreciated.

The discovery of America had a great influence in the European production of desserts, which coincides with the beginning of the writing of cookery books: in the period before, until 1000-1200, cookery was nominated more in a negative form as an overindulgence than in a positive way, and books talking about cookery were mostly a list of ingredients to live a healthy life. The first cookery book that actually contained recipes, ironically, was written by a Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen, and it dates back to the XII century.

Afterwards, cookery books became more and more commons, becoming more common the alphabetization, which before was rather rare; moreover, the arrival of the sugar beet influenced the production very much. In fact, while some desserts have very ancient origins – Cicero talks about a "roll made with a wheat batter, very sweet, prepared with a milk good to be eaten", which makes us think about the Sicilian cannoli – others were born after the arrival of sugar and cocoa.

Since the very beginning, and even more when the ingredients began to give new stimulations to the chefs’ fantasy, cookery had different characteristics going from one area to another.: if in Turin they concentrated on chocolate, in Catania Italian ice and cannoli rule; Neapolitan sweets vary from the soft babà to the crunchy sfogliatelle, while Verona and Milan are consecrated to Christmas, Verona with the pandoro and Milan with the panettone.

Hence we see not only how the area itself makes the difference, but also as this should be mixed with the period:while the New Year’s Eve in Naples is associated with struffoli and Easter with pastier, in Catania Saint Agata’s olives can be found only during the saint’s period, while the Roman frappe – like the Venetian galani and the Neapolitan chiacchiere – can be found only during the carnival. The typical Easter and Christmas desserts are maybe the most renowned, together with the Carnival ones, at a national level: but a gastronomic tour is always interesting, and you should always remind to do it in different periods of the year to be sure to taste all the delicacies.

In the end, we can say that desserts conquered the most exigent palates, as much as to play an important role in the success of a meal: after all, what you keep in mind – and in the mouth – is the last taste you savoured.



This article was written by Lia Contesso, with support from pandoro panettone.


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