an Historical Florentine Pudding

Lo Zuccotto

Recently a friend brought a pudding to Le Ripe which I had heard of but never tasted.

The pudding casing, made of spectacularly red sponge slices, hid a half-chocolate mousse, half-cream filling studded with candied peel and chocolate kibbles


 Formerly known as Caterina's Helmet, this Florentine pudding hails from the days of the Medici.

 In the late Renaissance at the height of the family's fortunes, Caterina de' Medici, Lorenzo il Magnifico's daughter, as queen of France, apparently asked Bernardo Buontalenti to invent a new dolce to celebrate the Spanish ambassador's arrival. 

 Buontalenti (1531-1608) was a designer, architect, engineer and artist also famed for inventing gelato, who worked all his life for the Medici. He supposedly concocted this delightful pudding (also called a semifreddo in Italian) originally named 'Caterina's helmet', since the story goes that it was moulded inside an infantryman's helmet.

The name for a small round cap being zuccotto, the pudding's name soon evolved. But since the pudding was traditionally coloured red, it came to be associated with a cardinal's cap, also called zuccotto.

The liqueur which flavours and colours the pudding is called Alchermes or Alkermes. The word derives from the Arabic al-qirmiz or Persian qirmiz, meaning red or crimson. It is an infusion of spirits with sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Until the early 20th century the liqueur's scarlet was extracted from  
an insect called kermes; nowadays it is more often synthetic.

 

 Interestingly, in the Middle Ages, Alkermes was a far more esoteric cardiac tonic and restorative which contained: raw silk, ground pearls, musk, ambergris, gold leaf, rosewater, apple juice, cinnamon and honey, no less!  

antique bottle of Alkermes made by the monks of Camaldoli in the Casentino

 ***

Today many different recipes for the zuccotto exist, but here we were interested in reproducing the original one with its striking red colour and its sheep's milk ricotta and candied citrus filling.  
Below is our version of the Renaissance zuccotto, but the possibilities are endless. One can use any other liqueur, fillings, flavouring and decoration.
   

sponge cake; sheep's ricotta; cream; sugar; candied peel and last but not least, Alchermes liqueur

oil and line large pudding bowl with plastic wrap; cut sponge in one cm slices to line bowl

paint sponge slices with lightly diluted Alchermes; do not over-wet; cut off excess sponge

mix ricotta, sugar, candied peel and whipped cream

spoon ricotta mixture into mould; another layer of sponge can be added halfway

finish off with strips of sponge; brush over liqueur; cover and freeze for three hours, removing to fridge 2 hours before eating; alternatively, keep for 12 hours in the fridge

turn out and spoon over extra Alchermes liqueur

serve sliced like cake

ingredients for a zuccotto for 8 people:

large ready-made sponge cake

600g sheep's milk ricotta

200g whipped cream

150g sugar

candied peel to taste 

Alchermes liqueur   

(can be diluted to taste, but the bright colour fades)