Delizia al limone

Delizia al limone is a pastry from the Sorrento Peninsula that makes the most of the aroma of lemon. A soft sponge is filled with cream and covered with a lemon-scented sauce. Pastry shops make it both in individual dome-shaped portions and as a large cake.

Lemon cream inside and outside the sponge

The sponge is made from a light batter and filled with cream infused with the aroma of lemon. After the sponge is soaked with syrup, the outside is covered with a sauce made by thinning the cream. Because the inside and outside form separate layers, each spoonful brings together the soft sponge, the richness of the cream and the citrus aroma. Many versions use a syrup containing limoncello, but the flavoring varies from maker to maker.

How Marzuillo describes its preparation and spread

Pastry chef Carmine Marzuillo has described his own method: he piped and baked two small hemispheres, hollowed them out and filled them with cream, joined them together, soaked them lightly in syrup and poured the sauce over them. The pastries are decorated with thinly sliced lemon peel steeped in sugar and alcohol, or with candied cherries. Because the sponge is delicate, this pastry chef took care not to let it absorb too much syrup. He also recalls that he valued the aroma of the lemon peel from Sorrento and Massa Lubrense and grated the peel directly into the cream.

According to Marzuillo, he first used a liqueur called Strega and later switched to a spirit that strengthened the lemon aroma. The current form made with limoncello cannot be called the one and only method, unchanged from the beginning. He also says that he made this pastry as a dessert for a hotel and that it later spread through pastry workshops and restaurants. Some accounts say it was presented at a culinary gathering in Formia in 1978, but he says that he did not create it for the first time for that occasion.

Glossary