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Dessert

Another Sort of Spongati, or Italian Christmas Cakes

A sweet Italian Christmas cake made with egg yolks, powdered sugar, dried bread, almonds, pine nuts, spices, preserved cedrat, and a gum-based crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Another Sort of Spongati, or Italian Christmas Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix egg yolks, powdered sugar, powdered bread, almonds, pine nut kernels, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, preserved cedrat, and ground pepper in a bowl.

  2. Soak the gum dragon in twice its volume of orange flower water.

Make the crust

  1. Combine powdered sugar and fine starch on a marble slab.

  2. Add the soaked gum to the mixture and strain through a cloth.

  3. Add a little white wine to form a malleable paste for the crust.

  4. Shape the crust.

  5. Fill the crust with the mixture.

  6. Cover the crust with wafer paper, making it an inch thick.

  7. Shape the paste using wooden molds.

  8. Cover the molds with wafer paper.

Bake

  1. Keep the molds in gentle heat for a day.

  2. Bake in a slack oven.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pine + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the filling and add richness and structure as they set.
Almonds
Provide the bulk, texture and body of the filling.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps form the dry, workable crust paste.
Fine starch
Gives the crust paste body and structure so it holds its shape.
Dried bread
Absorbs moisture and thickens the filling so it holds together.
Gum dragon
Thickens the mixture, giving it a firm, malleable texture.

The step that matters

Forming the crust paste with white wine. Too little or too much wine changes the paste's moisture, making it either crumbly and unable to hold a shape or sticky and hard to mold. Add it gradually until the paste is malleable.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, bread, pine, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, bread, pine, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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