Ricciarelli of Siena

History

The ricciarello is a soft almond-and-sugar biscuit that sits, alongside panforte, at the heart of Siena's confectionery tradition. It belongs to the family of marzipan sweets—almond paste bound with sugar—a technique that reached the Italian peninsula through Arab Sicily and Spain, where Arab traders introduced sugar cane during the early Middle Ages. In medieval Siena the sweets were known as marzapanetti alla senese or morzelletti, and were sold in the city's apothecary shops beside spices and medicines. The familiar name ricciarelli became standard only in the 1800s, appearing in print for the first time in an 1814 Livorno dithyramb praising coffee and sugar. A popular legend credits the knight Ricciardetto della Gherardesca with bringing the biscuits home from the Crusades, saying they curled like a sultan's slippers—a charming origin story rather than documented fact, and the modern biscuit does not actually curl. Even the century of origin is unsettled, placed variously in the fourteenth or the fifteenth. Artusi's 1891 formula—sweet and bitter almonds, sugar, whipped egg whites, and grated orange peel—codifies this long-standing Sienese sweet, which today carries IGP protection granted in 2010.

Ingredients

• g fine white sugar
• g sweet almonds
• g bitter almonds
• egg whites
• orange peel

Instructions

1. Pound peeled, dried sweet and bitter almonds very fine with some of the sugar, then mix in the rest.
2. Fold the almond-sugar and grated orange peel into beaten egg whites.
3. Roll half a finger thick on lightly floured board and cut lozenges (16-18).
4. Bake at moderate heat on a bran-and-wafer-lined pan so they stay soft; trim excess wafer after baking.