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Binding loosely with honey and shaping into a mound or ring<\/h2>\n
Once the pieces are fried golden, they are drained of oil and added to honey warmed in a separate pan. They are mixed gently, without breaking them, so that the honey thinly coats each piece. Rather than being kept submerged in liquid honey, the pieces are coated on the surface so that they stick loosely to one another.<\/p>\n
While still warm, they are transferred to a plate and shaped, then decorated with colored sugar sprinkles and candied citrus or other fruit. Small dots of red, green, white, and other colors are scattered over the brown honey and golden dough. Because the decorations are also small granules, the sweet as a whole looks like a pile of round dots, large and small.<\/p>\n There is also more than one recipe (the proportions of ingredients and the method) for the sweet coating. In one method, sugar and a little water are added to honey and brought to a boil, and the fried pieces are coated in it. On the other hand, in the recipe that Annito Abate reconstructed from his family\u2019s handwritten notes, the honey is warmed and used as is, and adding sugar and water is described as a separate method. The sweet coating, too, varies in proportions in these ways.<\/p>\n The paper Abate found was his grandmother\u2019s recipe as written down by his mother, and it still bore corrections added by the cooks. With his mother\u2019s advice, he recorded every step, from resting the dough, cutting the ropes, and frying in small batches to binding the pieces with honey. In addition to the proportions of eggs, fat, and citrus, the size of the pieces and the amount of honey also reflect the personal touches of generations of cooks.<\/p>\n One theory links the name to the ancient Greek strongylos<\/em> (\u201cround\u201d). Another links it to the motion of rubbing the dough against the work surface while rolling it out. The resemblance to ancient Greek is a candidate etymology, and it is not known whether the present-day Neapolitan recipe came directly from Greece. The two theories focus, respectively, on the shape of the round pieces and on the motion of rolling the dough into ropes.<\/p>\n The Naples cultural heritage authority cites the menus of the 17th-century cook Crisci and descriptions in Latini\u2019s cookbook from the end of the same century. What Crisci included was not limited to Christmas menus. The occasions on which it was eaten also differed from today.<\/p>\n The same authority also describes the custom of nuns giving it to their noble patrons at Christmas. Today it is still a sweet associated with both Christmas and Carnival. Small pieces of fried dough piled high have spread to festive occasions, centered on the family table at the end of the year. In neighboring Molise, cicerchiata<\/em>, small balls likewise bound with honey, is presented as a Christmas sweet. Although they are similar in appearance and preparation, they are called by different names in each region and eaten at festivities.<\/p>\n Similar sweets in southern Italy are not necessarily the same balls under another name. The University of Bari\u2019s catalog of traditional Apulian food products describes purceddhruzzi from the province of Lecce. In the recipe it gives, flour is combined with olive oil, salt, and warmed dry white wine, and no eggs are used. Ropes of dough are cut into short pieces, pressed against a grooved board or a fork to mark ridges, and then fried. They are coated in warmed honey and decorated with pine nuts, almonds, cinnamon, and so on. They differ from struffoli, which are cut into round pieces, in the fat and liquid used and in how the surface is made.<\/p>\n Spain also has comparable sweets. For the pi\u00f1onate that \u00c1ngeles, a cook from Andalusia, demonstrated on a television program, eggs, oil, aguardiente, and flour are kneaded, shaped like thick noodles, fried, and broken into small pieces while hot. Because the pieces are coated in honey and spices and pressed into a square wooden mold, the finish differs from sweets made by heaping individual round pieces. Both combine honey with fried flour dough, but whether the sweet spread from Spain to Naples is not known.<\/p>\n In this way, similar ingredients give rise to short grooved pieces, broken pieces pressed together, and round pieces heaped into a mound. The small size of struffoli comes from the process of cutting even pieces from a rope and frying them as individual pieces, and each piece keeps its crisp bite even inside the honey coating.<\/p>\n Campania<\/strong>: A region in southern Italy whose capital is Naples.<\/p> Candied fruit<\/strong>: Fruit or peel steeped in sugar syrup and preserved in sweetened form.<\/p> Annito Abate<\/strong>: A writer who published the proportions and steps for struffoli handed down in his family.<\/p> Crisci \/ Antonio Latini<\/strong>: A cook and a cookbook author of the 17th century. Both are associated with early menus and descriptions of struffoli.<\/p> Strongylos<\/strong>: An ancient Greek word meaning \u201cround.\u201d It is cited as a candidate etymology for struffoli.<\/p> Cicerchiata<\/strong>: A regional sweet of central and southern Italy in which small balls of fried dough are bound with honey.<\/p> Purceddhruzzi<\/strong>: A honey-coated fried sweet from the province of Lecce and elsewhere. One method involves marking grooves on a dough made with white wine.<\/p> Pi\u00f1onate<\/strong>: A name for a Spanish honey sweet. In Andalusia, there is a version made by breaking fried dough and setting it in a wooden mold.<\/p> Aguardiente<\/strong>: A general term for distilled spirits in the Spanish-speaking world.<\/p> \u00c1ngeles<\/strong>: A cook who demonstrated how to make pi\u00f1onate on a traditional cooking program.<\/p> \u30fbItalia.it: Food culture of Campania<\/a> \u2014 The sweet\u2019s place among Christmas sweets.\n\u30fbItalia.it: Carnival food culture<\/a> \u2014 The two etymological theories; present-day festive occasions.\n\u30fbAnnito Abate, \u201cStruffoli di Natale\u201d<\/a> \u2014 The handwritten recipe passed from grandmother to mother and its corrections, the full process, the honey version.\n\u30fbCampania Region Department of Agriculture, \u201cStruffoli\u201d<\/a> \u2014 Presents strongylos as a possible etymology, not a confirmed one. Some pages returned a 502 error when accessed, so the relevant description was checked against the search index.\n\u30fbItalia.it: Christmas sweets of southern Italy<\/a> \u2014 Festive comparison with cicerchiata from Molise.\n\u30fbSABAP Napoli, \u201cGli struffoli\u201d<\/a> \u2014 17th-century cookbooks, gifts from nuns, the honey, sugar, and water formula.<\/p><\/li>![\"The](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Struffoli2.JPG#Licensing\")
\nProportions and personal touches preserved in a family\u2019s handwritten recipe<\/h2>\n
Two theories: the round shape and the motion of rubbing the dough<\/h2>\n
\n17th-century menus and gifts from nuns<\/h2>\n
A grooved fried sweet made in Puglia<\/h2>\n
An Andalusian sweet made by breaking fried dough and pressing it together<\/h2>\n
Glossary<\/h2>\n
References<\/h2>\n
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