Fiadone

Fiadone is a Corsican dessert in which brocciu is baked with eggs and sugar until set. In its typical form, the mixture is poured straight into a mold without a crust and baked. Beneath the colored surface, a soft, milky-white interior remains, and lemon zest adds fragrance to the milky flavor. It is also closely related to other island pastries that use the same brocciu filling and set it on thin pastry or chestnut leaves.

Brocciu: Fresh Milk Added to Whey

Brocciu is a Corsican dairy product made by adding fresh milk to the whey left over from making cheese from sheep’s or goat’s milk and heating it. The solids that rise to the surface are skimmed off, and the moisture is drained in molds. There is also an aged version, brocciu passu, but fiadone uses fresh, white, soft brocciu.

On the island, brocciu is tied to milk production from winter to early summer, and it goes not only into desserts but also into omelets, vegetable dishes, fried foods and more. Fiadone is a dessert that makes use of ingredients obtained from herding and cheesemaking in a single sweet dish.

Combining Brocciu and Eggs to Balance the Moisture

The brocciu is broken up with a fork or similar utensil, combined with eggs and sugar, and adjusted to a smoothness that can be poured into a mold. Some recettes (recipes: the proportions of ingredients and the method) use whole eggs without whipping the whites separately. Rather than using wheat flour to make it rise substantially, the dessert brings the milk solids and eggs together and bakes them until set.

The handling of moisture varies. In the recette of the Corsican tourism agency, undrained brocciu is mixed with whole eggs, sugar and lemon zest. Other recettes, by contrast, drain the brocciu thoroughly before mixing. In addition to how moist the cheese is, the amounts of egg and sugar and the depth of the mold affect the softness of the finished dessert.

Adding Fragrance with Lemon Zest or Spirits

The lemon is used as grated zest to impart its fragrance to the mild flavor of the milk. This differs from adding a large amount of juice to make the dessert sour. Some versions use orange blossom fragrance or spirits, and there are also preparations in which the dessert, after being baked and cooled, is soaked with a mixture of sugar syrup and spirits.

The mold is buttered and the mixture is poured straight in. Baking it until the surface colors and the interior sets, then letting it cool, makes it easier to cut. The color ranges from pale gold to deep brown, and the shape ranges from low rounds to rectangular sheet-pan bakes. It is not a dessert limited to round molds or deep browning.

Sliced Corsican fiadone. The soft interior is visible beneath the browned surface. Photo: Popo le Chien, 2024-01-12, location unknown. Original image / CC0. Downscaled version from the distributing source; no additional processing.

Related Pastries Using Thin Pastry or Chestnut Leaves

Brocciu, eggs, sugar and citrus fragrance are common to a number of Corsican pastries. Imbrucciata, from the area around Ajaccio, is a tartlet in which the filling is placed on a small round of dough and the edges are pinched with the fingers into points. A small case is formed from thin shortcrust or puff pastry, and the cheese filling is placed inside.

Falculella from Corte is made by placing small portions of a somewhat firmer mixture of the same ingredients on chestnut leaves and baking them. The shape and texture change depending on whether the cream is set as a single cake in a mold, placed inside a crust, or set on a leaf.

For fiadone, too, versions are recorded in which some makers line the bottom with sweet shortcrust or puff pastry. The typical crustless form coexists with a variety of preparations across the island.

Corsica’s Celebration Desserts and Desserts of the Same Name Beyond the Island

Brocciu went into everyday dishes and also became desserts. In 19th-century Corsican travel accounts and studies of daily life, desserts made with cheese appear at celebrations. In the first half of the 20th century, fiadone was presented as an island dish, and this dish of fresh brocciu combined with eggs became known as a representative dessert of the island.

Desserts with the same name also exist outside the island. Proposed origins of the word fiadone include Late Latin fladonem and, further back, the Germanic flado, denoting a flat cake. In central Italy in the 14th–15th centuries there was a dessert of the same name made with milk and squash, and in Lazio in 1524 there was one that enclosed fresh cheese, ricotta, egg yolks and rose water in a crust. Today in Abruzzo, fiadoni are made by wrapping cheese or ricotta and eggs in thin pastry.

The crustless, lemon-scented fiadone typical of Corsica and these crust-wrapped desserts share the same old name but are made differently. The route by which the dessert reached the island has not been established. In Corsica, brocciu made from whey has been combined with eggs and sugar into a mixture and turned into a variety of desserts, either poured straight into molds and baked or placed on thin pastry or leaves.

Glossary