[Sca-cooks] Cassata and period Sicilian pastries (long)

[Christiane]

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 22:48:47 -0500
From: Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com>
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Introduction and a request
To: SCA-Cooks SCA-Cooks maillist <SCA-Cooks at ansteorra.org>
Message-ID: <7AECDD22-FEC2-11D7-BE48-000393A414D0 at austin.rr.com>
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  Gianotta said:
> I am a fairly recent newcomer to the SCA, having joined officially last
> October. But I've had a fair amount of activity so far, mostly music
> related. I have always been interested in cooking and food history,
> however, so a recent little project of mine has finally prompted me to
> do what I should have done months ago, and join this list.
>
> Mundanely, I am of partly of Sicilian descent, and I have been doing
> more research about the culture and food of the island.
You might be interested in this file in the CULTURES section of the 
Florilegium then:
Sicily-msg        (11K)  6/29/01    Period Sicily. Culture, history, 
food.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/CULTURES/Sicily-msg.html

Unfortunately, it is not very large. If you continue your research and 
would be interested in writing an article for the Florilegium on 
medieval Sicily, I'd love to consider it. Or a bibliography. Or even a 
message with some useful info I can add to this file. I try hard to 
make sure contributors get credit for their work.

> What I am trying to determine is what a late-period cassata would have
> contained. I contacted the food historian Clifford Wright who said my
> theory that a late-period cassata may have contained unsweetened
> chocolate bits could be valid, as the Bourbons had control of the
> island and the Spanish nobles had chocolate as a luxury item.
But as I'm sure others have mentioned, the process for making chocolate 
in a solid form was not known until well past period.  For more details 
on the history of chocolate and some referances, check this file in the 
FOOD-SWEETS section of the Florilegium:
chocolate-msg     (65K)  6/25/02    History and description of early 
chocolate.
Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****


------------------------------
Lord Stefan,

Thank you for your input. And Johanna, thank you for your offlist response.

Here's an interesting little thing about cassata I picked up off an Italian Website. The 1575 reference has been made by a number of food writers:

1000th ANNIVERSARY?
 
FOR THE SICILIAN CASSATA?
This is an important anniversary which involves an Italian traditional product of patisserie.
 
The Sicilian Cassata appeared in 998 in Palermo which had been appointed as the Sicilian capital of the Arab Emirates during the kingdom of emir Yussuf. Scholars believe that its name comes from "q? sat", the Arab word for bowl. Actually, this cake used to be prepared in a round bowl 33 cm in diameter and, to make it, its inventor used all the delicacies available at the time.
 
The original recipe has been handed down to us through the centuries: sponge cake, ricotta mixed with sugar, pieces of candied fruit, cinnamon, vanilla, dark chocolate and liqueur (preferably maraschino).
 
The surface icing and candied fruit decorations date back to the Middle Ages when Sicily was governed by the Normans, who kept all Arab cooking delicacies. Whereas the noble woman Eloisa Martorana introduced the small and sweet fruit for decorating the Arab cassata which is still called "martorana fruit".
 
As time went by, the cake became increasingly successful. Apparently, in 1575, the diocesan synod of Mazzara del Vallo had to ban the production of the cake in enclosed convents and monasteries to prevent the nuns, who were very skilled and popular confectioners, from being disturbed during the Holy Week's prayers.



OK. The reason why I theorized about an earlier introduction of chocolate into cassata is that there was a compressed tablet form of chocolate available in period. It was not candy, but it was dissolved and used to make chocolate drinks by the Spanish nobility, along with sweetenings such as sugar or honey, and cinnamon.

Cassata is not baked. The cake part, pan d'spagna (Spanish cake-bread) is baked separately. You take thin slices of the cake, line a pan with it. You mix the ricotta, sugar, nuts, liquer, and candied fruits all together. You spread this mixture into the cake-lined bowl-pan,  perhaps spread with quince jam, cover with more pieces of cake, chill, and invert onto a plate. Then you decorate with marzipan icing (usually pistachio-flavored), candied fruits, and "frutta di Martorana," realistic-looking fruits made of marzipan. The art of making these was perfected at the Martorana convent near Palermo.

The Aragonese-Bourbon nobles of Sicily were known for their extravagant tastes, and commissioned lots of pastries from the nuns (cloistered convents continued to produce pastries right up into the 20th century). I had a thought, since tablet chocolate was available in period, the Spanish noble families of the islands could have had access to it. Maybe they enjoyed these chocolate drinks. What if an enterprising pastry maker ground up a tablet of compressed chocolate and added some of it to the amazingly sweet ricotta filling? The cake is not baked, therefore meltability of the chocolate is not an issue. The ricotta would add the sweetness the chocolate lacked (not to mention the sweetness of the marzipan, the candied fruits, and the jam).

Johnna has written to me, however, and said if chocolate was used in Sicilian pastry-making in period, then food scholars would have already commented on that, and there have been no articles.  Ah, well. It was a nice theory while it lasted. I still have a sneaking hope that some previously unknown record of recipes kept in one of these Sicilian convents will turn up, and one of them will mention a "special" cassata. I do know that the convents were fiercely competitive with each other as far as pastry-making goes, and guarded their secrets jealously. Training was traditionally done orally -- for a look at what it might have been like in period, read "Bitter Almonds, Recollections and Recipes from a Sicilian girlhood," the biography of Sicilian pastry maker Maria Gramatico of Erice, Sicily. As a young girl raised in a cloistered convent, she had to beg the nun who specialized in making the marzipan fruits, hearts, lambs, and other elaborate constructs to teach her the techniques. The old nun had never written anything down. If Maria had not evinced an interest in learning how to make marzipan sculptures, the nun's secrets would have died with her.

This still begs the question: what was in period cassata?

Gianotta