The sfogliatella.la history, the poetry and ......

THE HISTORY OF THE SFOGLIATELLA

The history is almost never sweet. But every dessert has its history. Laboriously reconstructed at times, in some case shamelessly invented.

The history of the sfogliatella belongs to the first category. Of this dessert typically partenopeo can be traced a precise topomonastica.

You have read well; topomonastica, because the topos of the sfogliatella is a monastery. That of Saint Rosa, on the coastal amalfitana, between Fury and Basin of the Sea ones.

In that sacred place so much was begged, but, treating himself/herself/itself of a convent of seclusion, you/he/she could not be gone by any part, and therefore of leisure time us n'era in abundance. A part of it was spent in the kitchen, administered in a regime of hold autarchy: the nuns had their garden and their vineyard, so that to reduce the contacts with the outside, and to amplify those with the eternity. Also the bread the religious if they did him/it alone cooking him/it in the oven every two weeks. The menu was equal for everybody (it would miss us): only the elderly nuns could enjoy of a special food, done of nourishing minestrine.

One day of 400 years ago (we are in 600) the nun employed to the kitchen realized that some cooked bran was advanced in the milk. To throw her/it, didn't speak really. It was so that, inspired by the tall one, the cook threw us inside some you/he/she yields shoal, of sugar and of liqueur to the lemon. "You/he/she could be a stuffing", it was said. But could thing put us above and under?

It prepared then two sfoglies of pasta adding you lard and white wine, and it systematized us in mean the stuffing. Then, since also in a convent the eye wants its part, it lifted some it skims through her/it superior, giving her form of a hood of monk, and it baked the everything.

The Mother Superiora on the first ones smelled the dessert as soon as sfornato, and later it smelled immediately the bargain; with this blessed (and still better sort) invention you/he/she could be done of the good both to the farmers of the zone, that to the boxes of the convent.

The seclusion was not put in danger: the dessert was put on the classical wheel in exit. Always that, the villicis is clear you/they had put us, in entrance, some coin.

To this dessert you/he/she was given, inevitably, the name of the Saint to which the convent was devoted.

As all the gifts of God, the Santarosa could not stay confined in a sol place, for the joy of little.

The divine Providence is some as the diet: it works, but it doesn't need to give her hurry. The santarosa put us around centocinquant'anni to cross the sixty kilometers between Amalfi and Naples.

Here it reached 800 the first for worth of the innkeeper Pasquale Pintauro.

The Neapolitans will be protesting: but no!, Pintauro is a pastry cook and not an innkeeper. Instead in the days of which we are speaking it was indeed an innkeeper, with shop in the street Toledo, really in front of Saint Brigida. What an inn remained up to 1818, year which Pasquale entered in possession, for a street that has not been clarified never, of the original recipe of the santarosa. There were two conversions that year: Innkeeper Pintauro became a pastry cook, and its inn was converted in a confectionery laboratory.

Pintauro didn't limit him to spread the santarosa: it modified her/it, eliminating the cream pasticciera and the amarena, and suppressing the superior protuberance to hood of monk.

The sfogliatella had been born. His/her more famous variety, the so-called one "curly", it maintains since then his/her triangular form, to shell, vaguely rococo (with an alone c, not to confuse with the roccocò other famous Neapolitan dessert).

Today the sfogliatella can be tasted in all the confectioneries in Naples, with satisfaction. If the excellence is looked for, the shop of Pintauro is there always: you/he/she has changed management but not the name and the insignia, and not even the quality. What that stays of almost two hundred years ago.

To the traveller that reaches the station in Naples, or that has at least twenty minutes between a train and the other, it recommends him to serve a jump as Attanasio, to Vico Ferrovia, that sforna warm sfogliatelle to continuous throw. On his "puteca" you/he/she is written there: "Napule three things beautiful tene: 'or sea, 'or Vesuvius, and 'and sfugliatelle." A 'prudence: stunned by the perfume of the sfogliatella as soon as sfornata, by now in your hands, you avoid to voraciously bite her/it. The characteristic skims through lamellare it is warm, but the stuffing of ricotta is red-hot.