The column featured today was written by Rosario Scarpato. Rosario is an ebullient man I met several years ago during global chef’s events he organized and conducted. He has been the most prolific ambassador of the integrity of Italian Cuisine throughout the world. He continues with passion and energy in preserving, promoting, and diffuse the land’s gastronomic culture. Please read Rosario’s achievements and future projects here.
Among Italians around the Christmas season, the options are several in the sweet department: from Panettone, Pandoro, there is also torrone, the equalizer. Find out what it is here.
Torrone is among those few sweets that, through the centuries, had represented a common Italian identity rooted in many regions well before Italy became a unified nation. You may still read somewhere that torrone is a typical sweet of Cremona, one of the oldest cities in the Northern region of Lombardy. It’s true, but torrone, indeed, with slight variations, is a typical sweet of Abruzzo, Sicily, Sardinia, and Campania. As we will see later, it has been a favorite in many other Italian regions.
Basic Torrone is made with simple and natural ingredients: honey (increasingly replaced by sugar through the centuries), egg white, nuts, usually almonds, hazelnuts, and pistachio. There are two types of torrone: Duro (hard), which must be crumbly and crunchy, and morbido (soft), easy to break with the teeth and not crumbly; for both the ingredients are the same, but the quantity of sugar, honey and nuts makes the difference. In the last decades, chocolate has been more and more used to coat classic torrone to the extent that it can be almost considered a traditional ingredient. Then there are many variations made at industrial levels. Only relatively recently, torrone became part of Italian pasticceria. Originally in some areas, as in Cremona itself, chemists manufactured it – yes, by pharmacists.
Torrone Festival in Cremona Italy
They were the only ones who had the right tools. Later grocers took up the trade and finally pastry chefs. Furthermore, it went from being a product made by artisans to become a successful industrial one, sold in typical packaging in grocery stores and supermarkets. In the beginning, in many regions, it was sold “naked” at markets, fairs, or popular festivities, by peddlers, and then it became one of Christmas traditional sweets. In general terms, torrone was consumed far from or at the end of meals by itself. More recently, in restaurants, torrone is often found as a part of sweets served in a dish. Its essential mix of ingredients has become hugely popular since used as a flavor for gelato. Very popular commercial candies such as Milky Way and Toblerone have been inspired by torrone.
Where was torrone born? Impossible to say. Legends say that its ancestor could have been invented in China, the land of almonds, a long time ago. But there’s no evidence whatsoever. Instead, according to Latin writers Martial and Marcus Terentius Marronis, ancient Romans used to eat something similar to torrone, called ‘cuppedo’ o ‘cupedia’’ made out of honey and flour cooked wine, and sesame. ‘Cupeta’’ in the Region of Campania and ‘copeta’ in the Region of Calabria is still used to identify torrone in southern Italy parts. More likely, though, is that the origins of the sweet are Arabic. A honey-based ‘tu-run’ appeared in an essay written on medicine and food by the Arab medical practitioner, Abdul Mutarrif, in Cordoba, Spain, and translated into Italian by Gherardo Cremonese in the 12th century.
Torrone, according to others, is just a variation of the Arab ‘cubbaita’, made with honey and toasted sesame seeds. In any case, the toasting component is seen as the basis of the Latin etymology of the word: to toast in Latin is ‘torrere’’ in Spanish ‘turrar’ and then ‘turrón’’ The Arabs introduced this way of making a sweet to the Mediterranean countries. They had political or economic influence in Italy, the South of France, and Spain. In the last of these countries, torrone was produced in the 16th century, particularly in Alicante.
In France, towards the end of the Middle Ages, torrone appeared as ‘Montélinar Nougat’, produced with a recipe in which almonds and pistachios are strictly regulated. Spain learned how to make torrone from the Arabs directly or from the Italian city of Cremona, where according to legend, it was born.
In reality, it could have learned it from any Italian region dominated by the Spaniards; southern Italy, for example, was a Spanish colony for various centuries. In any case, in current times, besides the origin and quality of ingredients, the main difference between Italian and Spanish torrone lies in the number of nuts; Spanish products tend to have more.
Cremona’s legend claims that torrone was born there in 1441, on the occasion of the marriage of Bianca Maria Visconti to Francesco Sforza. The Court pastry chefs prepared a torrone in the shape of the Torrazzo, or Torrione, the Cremona’s cathedral tower. This legend holds that the name ‘torrone’ came from that. As intriguing as the legend may sound, it was only a tale invented by the painter Massimo Galelli for advertising an industrial producer of torrone in 1918. Nevertheless, the sweet is mentioned in documents from Cremona, Litterarum, dated 1543-45. At that time, the city was vibrant due to its strategic position on the River Po, and as part of the hefty levy paid to the dominating Spain, there was some torrone mentioned.
At the end of the 16th century, torrone from Cremona was so popular that the Senate of the City of Milan ordered that it was to be sold in boxes of predetermined weight, to prevent frauds. By the end of the 19th century, the manufacturing of the sweet in Cremona became increasingly industrialized.
With silk and mostarda (a famous local food specialty based on fruits, mustard seeds, and sugar syrup), torrone production was a very profitable business, even though it was seasonal. Indeed, it was a challenging, labor-intense manufacturing process that began at dawn and lasted 24 hours. Things got a bit easier when the French-invented electric Poêlon à nougat replaced the manual work. Still today, Cremona has a priority in the production of torrone; the city celebrates a festival dedicated to its world. The inexpensive ‘ciballo’’ in which peanuts replaced the almonds, sugar, honey, and ammoniac yeast, the egg whites, was invented in Cremona to allow the less fortunate to experience the pleasure of torrone.
In the second half of the 19th century, in Southern Italy, almonds were substituted in some types of torrone, as it was the case of The King of the Two Sicily, Ferdinand I. The King ordered Benevento’s torrone makers (a city not far from Naples), to prepare a new product for his wife, Queen Marie Caroline, without almonds but with candied fruit. The outcome was called the Queen’s Torrone (Torrone della Regina).
The production of torrone has been traditionally concrete in Sannio and Irpinia in the Region of Campania. In Sannio, Torrone di Benevento is the classic one and has three variations, crumbly, crumbly ‘cupedia’ with hazelnuts, and soft with almonds. In the same area, Torroncino Croccantino o Torrone Bacio (kiss) was invented in San Marco dei Cavoti in 1891 by Innocenzo Borrillo. It was an immediate success since it was minimal – 15 grams, with sugar, honey, crushed hazelnuts, and almonds and coated with chocolate. By 1898 Mr. Borrillo was awarded the French Legion d’honneur for his invention. Torrone in Irpinia has a variation, pantorrone, with genoise, created in 1927 in Dentecane, by a manufacturer who produces torrone since 1750.
A strong tradition of torrone is also present in the Region of Abruzzo, where Ulisse Nurzia, the descendant of a family of artisan torrone makers from Arischia, created a revolutionary chocolate soft torrone (Torrone morbido al cioccolato) in his pastry shop in L’Aquila. In Abruzzo, there are strong torrone-making traditions in the towns of Guardiagrele and Sulmona’s town. Torrone is one of Sicily’s typical sweets. Historically, some of the best ingredients have been used: almonds from Avola, pistachios from Bronte, and honey from the area of the Iblean Mountains. In Caltanissetta, torrone is called ‘cubaita’’ which, as we have seen before, is very similar to the Arab definition for a sweet made with sesame seed (‘giuggiolena’ in Sicilian dialect). In Sardinia, torrone (soft) is made in Barbagia, mainly in the town of Tonara, using only pure honey, egg white, almonds, hazelnuts, and walnuts. Excellent torrone is made in Piedmont’s Region using the special Langhe’s hazelnuts and other regions such as Marche with figs, Molise (Torrone del papa, the Pope’s Torrone), in Veneto in Cologna Veneta and San Giovanni Lupatoto, and Calabria.
Rosario Scarpato first from the right during Italian Cuisine World Summit in Dubai
As you can see below, Cremona celebrates the Torrone Festival in October of every year, and hopefully, we can all participate in 2021.
Courtesy of Rosario Scarpato E-mail: rosario@the-i-factor.com
Gratefully: Images via Arte Cibo / Nonnas Way / Veryeatalian
