Food importers : Discovering the Sweet Side of Italian Life

Through Agrelma for the importers of sweet products a tour of Italy is as pleasant a way as any to discover or learn more about Italian pastries, biscuits, candies and cakes, just as an exploration of the universe of Italian confectionery provides numerous insights into the history, culture, customs and habits of the Italians themselves. It is a long history that really began when the first professional bakers appeared in Rome around the beginning of the third century BC. Passing references to confectionery by ancient writers give only a summary idea of the assortment of sweets enjoyed by the Romans.

However, the implements, equipment and layout of bakers' and confectioners' shops and workrooms uncovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum outside Naples, as well as the "mummified" remains of some of the pastries and loaves themselves, suggest that

the range of specialties was almost as broad as a modern shopper expects to find in a reasonably well-stocked store.

That demand was strong is proved by a monument near the main railroad station in Rome. The structure has been severely damaged during the last 2,000 years but it is still impressive and somewhat mystifying. Probably few if any of the millions of travellers who

have no doubt glimpsed it as their trains pulled into or left the station have any idea what it is or represents. Only the top of its white stone facade can be seen above the surrounding buildings and that part is pierced at regular intervals by round holes arranged in a rectangular band. The holes represent the openings of an ancient oven, for the monument is or was the tomb of Vergilius Eurysaces, a baker, and his wife, Atinia.

A frieze at the very top of the facade, invisible to train passengers, illustrates the making and baking of bread and other goods. It is clear from the size and elaborate character of his tomb and its position, near one of the main gates in the walls of ancient Rome, that Eurysaces was not ashamed of his connection with what was often scorned as a menial occupation and that baking was a lucrative business.

Once established, the confectionery tradition never faltered in Italy. The Empire fell and the country dissolved into numerous small and quarrelsome states. Pastry-making continued to flourish in each, although tastes and the bakers' and chefs' responses to them took different forms so that regional specialties developed. A surprisingly large

number of them have survived and they have changed little over the centuries. Flat heavy cakes in which exotic spices were used lavishly, partly because those flavorings were extraordinarily scarce and expensive, were characteristic of the Middle Ages. The Panforte and Panpepato of Siena are direct descendants of those preparations. Cakes and most pastries were dense and heavy in Roman times and the early Middle Ages because

honey was the principal sweetener. Sweet preparations became lighter and more delicate when refined sugar was introduced into pastry-making - around the time the Renaissance was taking shape. Sugar had been known for centuries previously but it had been used almost exclusively as a medicine. Largescale cultivation of sugar cane was initiated by the

Arabs who ruled Sicily for 300 years, from the ninth through eleventh centuries. Sugar produced on the island and in other Arab-ruled lands in southern Europe and the Middle East passed along the trade routes northward from the Mediterranean.

Other ingredients were progressively added to an increasingly elaborate culinary tradition. Cherries, plums and peaches were transplanted to the west from the Middle East by the Romans, while citrons, oranges and lemons made their appearance in southern Europe shortly before the time of Christ, first as ornamental shrubs and trees and then as

providers of fruit. The flavour and appeal of a whole host of traditional Italian pastries and confectionery products depends on the use of candied peel and marmalades. The growing taste for complex sweet preparations encouraged wider cultivation of hazelnuts, walnuts and especially almonds. Chocolate arrived from the New World in the 16th century and

was soon playing a vital role in the making of pastries and confectionery. In the 17th century, coffee was introduced from Ethiopia, by way of the Middle East and Venice, and almost immediately became the favourite beverage of Italians and many other Europeans as well as an important flavouring.

Over a span of 2,000 years, Italian cooks and pastry chefs have shown remarkable versatility in adopting each ingredient and innovation as it came along and incorporating it in their distinctive culinary traditions. They have constantly developed new preparations, while at the same time retaining the essence of the old. Many Sicilian pastries betray,

or proudly proclaim, their Arabic origins, delectable memorials of a time when Palermo was one of the richest and most highly civilized capitals in Europe.

Other cities and regions of Italy perfected their own roster of specialties, it’s possible find them at Agrelma , creating an assortment of pastries and confectionery products that may be unequalled for breadth, variety and quality.