L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 22 L'Italo-Americano E very October, the pastry shops of C a t a n i a begin filling their win- dows with dark, chocolate-covered cookies called rame di Napoli, or Naples coppers. They are soft, generously spiced with cinna- mon and cloves, and usually finished with chopped pista- chios, and they appear just in time for All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. There is only one The curious thing about them is that, despite the name, they belong entirely to Catania; ask for rame di Napoli in Naples itself and you may be met with a puz- zled look, because the city whose name they carry has no particular tradition of making them. How a Catanese spe- cialty came to be named after a city on the other side of the Strait of Messina is a question that produced several expla- nations, none of them entirely satisfactory. The most popular takes us back to 1816, when Ferdinand of Bourbon united his king- doms of Naples and Sicily into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, with Naples as its capital. According to the story, the new political arrangement brought changes to the currency, including the introduction of copper coins that Sicilians resented because they were worth less than the gold and silver money they had known. The Catanese supposedly responded by producing cop- per coins of their own, made from inexpensive pastry ingredients and darkened with cocoa, which could be eaten instead of spent. There was a political joke involved, so the story goes: if the new coins were of such little value, people might as well make them out of flour and sugar. It is a good story, and it has been repeated often enough to become the explanation most frequently given for the name. Unfortunately, the monetary history does not entirely coop- erate: copper coins were cir- culating in the Bourbon king- doms well before 1816, as the Bank of Italy's numismatic collections demonstrate, and the monetary reforms that fol- lowed the restoration of Bour- bon rule did not replace gold and silver with copper: the legislation of 1818 actually established a system based on silver. Some versions of the tale attribute the disputed coinage to Charles of Bour- bon, although Charles had left the Neapolitan throne in 1759, more than half a century before the creation of the Two Sicilies. None of this proves that the cookies had no con- nection with copper money, but it makes the familiar account of a sudden exchange of precious coins for worthless ones difficult to defend. Other explanations have been proposed, including one discussed by the Sicilian food historian Pino Correnti, according to which the name acknowledged Naples' impor- tance as the Bourbon capital. Another tradition credits the invention to a pastry chef named Napoli, which would settle the geographical puzzle neatly enough, except that nobody has produced con- vincing evidence of who this person was. The name may also have developed through associations that have since been forgotten, as often hap- pens with regional foods whose recipes were handed down long before anyone thought to record their histo- ries. The cookies have also been linked to Sicily's convent kitchens, where generations of nuns developed elaborate confectionery using sugar, spices, nuts and preserved fruit. One religious establish- ment frequently mentioned in accounts of the rame is Cata- nia's monastery of Santa Chiara, founded in the six- teenth century and rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693. The monastery later provided the setting for Giovanni Verga's Storia di una capin- era, published in 1871, although a direct connection between its kitchens and the invention of these particular biscuits has not been estab- lished. The association is plausible within the wider his- tory of Sicilian convent pas- try-making, but it remains more a tradition than a docu- mented origin. What is beyond doubt is the place the rame di Napoli came to occupy in the Festa dei Morti, the Sicilian obser- vance of All Souls' Day on November 2: visiting cemeter- ies, bringing flowers and remembering deceased rela- tives are familiar customs throughout Italy, but in Sicily the occasion traditionally had another side to it, one that children looked forward to with considerable excitement: they were told that during the night their deceased grand- parents, aunts, uncles and other relatives would return to the family home, bringing presents for the younger members of the household, provided they had behaved themselves during the year. The gifts were hidden around the house, and on the morning of November 2 the children went looking for them, discovering toys, sweets and sometimes a cannistru, a basket filled with biscuits, nuts and other treats. The presents were understood to come from relatives who had died but who still remem- bered the children and knew what they would enjoy. Later, families visited the cemetery to pay their respects, so that the day combined the plea- sure of receiving gifts with the remembrance of the people believed to have brought them. Every area developed its own selection of sweets for the occasion. Palermo became particularly associated with pupi di zucchero, colorful fig- ures made from sugar, and frutta martorana, almond paste carefully shaped and painted to resemble real fruit. Around Catania, the assort- ment includes 'nzuddi, almond cookies, ossa di morto, hard biscuits named for their resemblance to bones, and totò, another iced specialty. The rame di Napoli belong to this same seasonal tradition, and their appear- ance in pastry shop windows has long been a familiar indi- cation that November is approaching. The recipe varies between families and pastry shops, although cocoa, flour, sugar, milk and warm spices usually form the basis of the dough. Traditionally, lard was often used, while some versions include vino cotto, concen- trated grape must that adds sweetness and depth of flavor. Baking ammonia, an old-fash- ioned raising agent still used in Italian confectionery, helps give the biscuits their charac- teristic texture. Once baked and cooled, the rounded cook- ies receive a generous coating of chocolate, with chopped pistachios scattered over the top before it sets. As for the filling, older recipes often favor orange marmalade or zuccata, a pre- serve made from candied squash that has a long history in Sicilian pastry-making. Giovanna Musumeci, of Pas- ticceria Santo Musumeci in Randazzo, on the slopes of Mount Etna, still prepares zuccata and uses it alongside orange marmalade. Other pastry shops now offer pista- chio cream, hazelnut spread and even white chocolate ver- sions, although the traditional dark chocolate coating remains familiar. FRANCESCA BEZZONE A popular legend connects the cookies' name to Bourbon copper coins, but the monetary record casts doubt on the familiar explanation (Original image created for L'Italo-Americano with the assistance of AI) LA BUONA TAVOLA RECIPES COOKING TIPS SEASONAL DISHES R a m e d i N a p o l i : c h o c o l a t e , c o p p e r c o i n s a n d S i c i l y ' s sweetest mystery

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