Bonet

Baked amaretti are crushed and mixed with milk and eggs, adding their aroma to the cocoa mixture. Piedmont’s bonet is a pudding baked in a water bath in a caramel-lined mold. When it is chilled and turned out onto a plate, the caramel from the bottom ends up on top. Its name, meaning “hat,” has been linked both to the shape of the cooking mold and to the end of a meal.

Crushed amaretti mixed into milk and eggs

Dry amaretti are crushed and mixed into milk and eggs. To the cocoa they add an aroma reminiscent of almonds and apricot kernels, along with the sweetness of the baked cookies themselves. Unlike a cake with a cookie base, the crushed cookies absorb the liquid and become part of the interior of the pudding.

Crushed coarsely, they leave a few small pieces; crushed finely, they blend into the whole. Some recipes (ingredient proportions and methods) also grind savoiardi together with them and replace part of the milk with fresh cream. Recipes that use whole eggs and those that use egg yolks also differ in firmness and in how the pudding melts in the mouth.

Mixed without whipping and baked in a gentle water bath

The eggs are mixed with the sugar and other ingredients until smooth and free of lumps, but they are not whipped, so that large air bubbles are not incorporated. In some methods, warmed milk is added a little at a time; the crushed cookies and cocoa are distributed evenly, and the mixture is poured into the mold.

The mold is set in a deep baking pan filled with water and baked. It is heated so that the milk and eggs set gently, and the water in the bath is not allowed to boil vigorously. If the heat is too strong, holes form inside and on the surface, making it difficult to obtain a smooth mass. Once baked, it is cooled and left to settle in the refrigerator for several hours before being turned out, which gives it a firmness that allows it to be sliced.

Caramel that ends up on top once turned out

Sugar heated to an amber color is first spread over the bottom and sides of the mold. The caramel that lay beneath the poured mixture moves to the top of the dessert when it is turned out onto a plate, and flows. The aroma of caramelized sugar gathered on the surface layers onto the flavors of cocoa and milk.

Bonet served at a restaurant in Turin. Caramel spreads around a slice. Photo: Popo le Chien, 2018-10-06, Turin, Italy. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Reduced-size version from the distributing source; no additional processing.

Aromas from spirits and nuts, and the choice of mold

Rum is commonly used, but some recipes add cognac, Fernet, grappa, or other spirits, and versions combining coffee or hazelnuts have also been handed down. Besides being made in a rectangular form and cut into thin slices, it is also made in individual molds. Decorating it with amaretti also lets you enjoy the shape of the cookies that were mixed into the batter.

A name linked to the shape of a hat and the end of a meal

The Piedmontese word bonèt means “hat.” A 1783 Piedmontese dictionary lists a hat-shaped copper confectionery container under the same name, and an 1859 dictionary also records the name of a mold, bonet ‘d cusin-a. According to this explanation, the name passed from the container used when turning the dessert out onto a plate. In the Langhe there is another account: it is eaten last, just as one puts on one’s hat to go home after a meal. Both the name of the mold and the dessert’s place at the close of the meal have been associated with its name.

Cream cooked over direct heat and pudding set in a mold

A cookbook from 1801 includes a white, hat-shaped milk dessert made with milk, egg yolks, sugar, amaretti, and candied fruit. It differs from the cocoa-colored bonet commonly seen today.

The bonet recorded in an 1822 Piedmontese culinary manuscript was made by cooking milk, egg yolks, sugar, chocolate, and bitter almonds into a cream in a pot over low heat, then transferring it to a plate to cool. It was also a tramesso, a dish served between courses that corresponds to the entremets of French cuisine, and it differs from today’s chilled after-meal pudding both in where it is cooked and in when it is served during the meal.

The 1846 cookbook of Turin cook Francesco Chapusot includes a cream made by pouring a mixture of eggs and milk into a deep caramel-coated mold, setting it gently in hot water, and turning it out onto a plate. Neither amaretti nor the name bonet is required, but it shows techniques that connect with today’s bonet: coating the mold with caramel and setting the mixture in a water bath. Vialardi’s 1854 work also includes a chocolate cream set in a water bath, and in the 19th century, cooking over direct heat and setting in a mold existed side by side on the table.

There is also an interpretation that women who learned urban cooking while in domestic service brought it back to their home areas of the Langhe, Asti, and Monferrato, and spread it at weddings and other celebrations. In the 20th century, particularly from the 1930s onward, restaurants in the Langhe popularized a chilled after-meal dessert containing cocoa, amaretti, and spirits as part of the regional cuisine. The custom of turning it out of a long mold onto a plate and cutting it into slices to serve continues today both in homes and in restaurants.

Glossary