Almond of Noto

Almond is the absolute protagonist of Sicilian confectionery.

It was the Arabs who discovered the secret of working the chopped fruits with egg white and honey and it was them who inaugurated the great Sicilian tradition of almond sweets. It is a tradition which has then gathered here and there (from Normans, Spanish, French, nobles, convents, pilgrims…) diversifying from valley to valley, from city to city, from village to village.

The main preparations based on almonds are

• the pasta reale (which, unlike the Central European marzipan, is processed raw)
• the martorana (faithful reproduction of fruits or vegetables)
• the dolcetti da riposto (miniatures of fruit and vegetables smaller than martorana embellished with crystalline sugar)
• the shells (shaped like scallops and filled with citron jam)
• the almond milk
• the nougat
• the mustazzuoli (shaped like them and made of honey paste stuffed with chopped almonds and orange honey)
• the macaroons
• the faccioni of Noto
• the cookies (petitfour decorated with an almond or with a candied cherry)
• the cassata, the baroque sweet par excellence. The form is that of a cake: above there is a white sugar icing, around royal pistachio paste and, inside, between two layers of soft sponge cake, sheep ricotta cheese.

Among the first scholars who dealt with the cataloguing of the varieties of almonds present in Sicily, Giuseppe Bianca in his manual of 1872 lists 752 cultivars including the Romana, mainly spread in the territory of Noto and whose name derives from the patronymic of the family of peasants in whose fields it was found and to whom is attributed the merit of spreading it.

There are three varieties cultivated in the campagnedi Noto: Romana, Pizzuta d’Avola and Fascionello. The first one is the one which gives the best fruits from an organoleptic point of view (the taste is intense and aromatic, the color is white-pinkish) but less appreciated by the market (because of its squat and irregular shape). The third variety is a middle way between the first two: similar to Pizzuta for the shape of fruits and “vigorous” like Romana.

These ancient cultivars have a thick and woody shell: an involucre which keeps fats, preserving for a long time the taste and the aroma of almonds but, on the other hand, the yield is not high.