Torta Paradiso

Torta Paradiso is the signature butter cake of Pavia, a university city in Lombardy. Beneath its white dusting of powdered sugar, a fine, pale yellow crumb shows through. It is made by combining wheat flour with potato starch and baking it with butter and eggs that have been beaten to hold air, which gives a soft crumb that gently falls apart. Its name means “paradise,” and two accounts of its origin are told: a story of a commission, handed down at a pastry shop, and a legend handed down at a monastery.

A Story of a Marquis’s Commission and a Legend of a Monk

Vigoni of Pavia gives 1878, the year Enrico Vigoni opened his shop facing the university, as the year this cake was created. According to the story handed down at the shop, he created it when the Marquis Cusani Visconti asked him for a sweet that would stay delicious for many days, and the name is said to come from the words of a noblewoman who ate it: “like paradise.”

By contrast, according to an account recorded in the 1931 “Guida Gastronomica d’Italia,” Vigoni devised this sweet in 1878, taking as his cue the gâteau fondant of Geneva that the marquis had eaten in Switzerland. Its original name is also said to have been torta inglese. This account names the same person and year as the shop’s present-day explanation, yet preserves a storyline in which the cake was inspired by a different sweet.

According to the legend of the Certosa monastery, a monk who had gone out in search of medicinal herbs learned how to make a soft cake from a young bride living nearby. When he returned to the monastery and baked it for his brothers, it was so delicious that it came to be called “the cake of paradise.”

The shop also notes that it won a gold medal at the 1906 International Exposition. Today, the Chamber of Commerce features Torta del Paradiso as a traditional food of Pavia, so the history of a single shop overlaps with the cake’s standing as a sweet of the area.

Combining Wheat Flour and Potato Starch with Butter and Eggs

The main ingredients are eggs, butter, sugar, wheat flour and potato starch, and this combination can also be seen in Vigoni’s product. Because potato starch can make up part of the flour without adding wheat protein, it restrains bread-like elasticity and creates a fine crumb that breaks apart easily.

In the recipe (the ingredient proportions and method) published in the recipe collection of ERSAF, Lombardy’s agriculture and forestry agency, equal amounts of wheat flour and potato starch are used. First the butter is worked for a long time, then sugar and egg yolks are added, and then egg whites whipped separately are folded in. The two sifted flours and lemon zest are then mixed in, and the batter is poured into the pan no more than two-thirds full, leaving room for it to rise. This method combines whipped egg whites with a batter of butter and egg yolks, whereas Vigoni’s current product also contains baking soda.

In the home recipe from “Il Cucchiaio d’Argento,” butter and powdered sugar are beaten together, and whole eggs plus additional egg yolks, the flours and a leavening agent are mixed in. The cake can also be made without whipping egg whites separately. In each case, the flour is combined with ingredients that have first been beaten to hold air, but how the eggs are divided and how the cake is leavened differ from one method to another.

Formulations Using Clarified Butter or Maraschino, and Ways of Eating It

The product of pastry chef Iginio Massari is characterized by clarified butter and the aroma of maraschino, a cherry liqueur. It also uses acacia honey and candied lemon peel. The generous use of butter is shared, but it differs in switching to clarified butter and in adding sweetness and aroma with honey, liqueur and citrus.

Besides large cakes cut into slices, Vigoni also offers a small single-serving size. In the morning it is paired with milk, and after a meal it is served as dessert. The ERSAF recipe collection recommends eating it not only freshly baked but also after letting it rest. Placing a paper stencil, such as a star shape, on top of the cake, dusting it with powdered sugar and then removing the stencil creates a pattern of white and baked color. Even without layering fruit or thick cream, this finish lets you enjoy the contrast among the powdered-sugar surface, the baked edge and the yellow interior, whether the cake is large or small.

Glossary