For a firm dough
4 ounces of fine sugar to 1 pound of the best flour
2 ounces of melted shortening ["butiro"]***
lots of egg yolks

For topping
Icing sugar flavored with citrus or lemon

Original Italian text
Once quattro di zucchero fino una libra di fior di farina
Due once di butiro liquefatto
Tanti rossi d'ovi

Zucchero
Senso di cedro o limone

***The word, "butiro," possibly means butter, but as Italian-English dictionaries on the web don't include it, it's hard to be sure if this is the case.

Take four ounces of sugar to a pound of flour, two ounces of shortening melted, and mix with a lot of egg yolks, so as to make a firm dough.

Form into ginetti, making as many tarallini as possible.

Cook in a slow oven.

Remove (cool).

Top with an icing sugar flavored with lemon or citrus.

Place back in oven, and let them dry.



Original Italian Text

"Prendi once quattro di zucchero fino, una libra di fior di farina, due once di butiro liquefatto, ed impasterai tutto con tanti rossi d'ovi, per quanto siano batanti a far una pasta soda, che la farai fermentare per un pajo d'ore. Ne formerai i ginetti come tanti tarallini, l'aggiusterai in tortiera, e quindi li farai cuocere lentamente nel forno: dopo cotti farai del giulebbe al boulet che e l'ottova cottura del zucchero, in dove ci rivolgerai li ginetti con senso di cedro, o limone, e mescolandoli bene, onde s'inverniciano del zucchero, l'accomoderai in tortiera, che porrai nel fornno aperto ove precedentemente l'hai cotti, per farli asciugare, e cosi saran fatti."

The recipe in this entry was taken from the book, "Cucina Teorico-Pratica" by Ippolito Cavalcanti (Naples: Di G. Palma, 1839). For the complete copyright-free Italian cookbook visit www.archive.org. P.S. This recipe was challenging to do as I had no idea what shortening I was supposed to use. The ingredient asked for is "butiro" which possibly means butter, but as Italian-English dictionaries on the web don't include this word, it's hard to be sure if it is butter or not. Also, I didn't know how many egg yolks were appropriate. Still, as this is probably the first tarallini recipe ever published in Italy or any other place on the planet, the difficulties outweighed the excitement of doing such an old recipe. Actually, the recipe is so old that the word, "ginetti," is no longer in use to describe tarallini. Images of "ginetti" on Google contain pictures of individuals with this name, but few if any of the images indicate that the word once upon a time in Naples referred to tarallini-style Italian biscuits. Comments and photo: Mary Melfi.

Back to main list