Most of us think of chocolate as something for dessert only, but Italians have been adding it to pasta, risotto, polenta, and other savory dishes for centuries. To understand why, it’s important to remember that cacao beans are seeds. Thus, like many other seeds—pepper, fennel, cardamom, and caraway—cacao beans are not naturally sweet and may be used as a spice.
Italian chefs understood this when the beans first arrived from the New World and immediately began experimenting, adding it to many savory dishes. Like fine wine, fine dark chocolate has an amazingly complex taste profile, with hundreds of distinct, nuanced aromas and flavors.
Cacao beans, the seeds of the fruit of the cacao tree, can be used as a spice. Francine Segan
Journey From the New World
Chocolate originated in the Americas, where it was enjoyed as a drink almost four thousand years ago by the Aztecs and Mayans. Archaeologists have discovered many ancient remains of chocolate making, including a vessel with chocolate residue near Mexico that dates back to 1900 B.C.Chocolate’s journey from the Americas to the Old World began with an Italian. Christopher Columbus, during his fourth and final voyage to the New World, became the first European to set eyes on cocoa beans. On August 15, 1502, he and his crew encountered a large Mayan trading canoe off Honduras, filled with an assortment of goods including cotton clothing, tools, weapons, and cacao beans. Never having seen them before, he erroneously thought the beans were almonds.
In an account later published as “The Life of Admiral Christopher Columbus,” Columbus’s son Ferdinand noted that the Mayans “seemed to hold these almonds at a great price; for when they were brought on board together with other goods, I observed that when any of these almonds fell, they all stooped to pick it up, as if an eye had fallen.” Columbus was sailing for Spain’s Queen Isabella, so these cacao beans first entered Europe through Spain, but they quickly made their way into Italy.
Chocolate in Italy
Italians are responsible for the invention of many chocolate dessert dishes, among them chocolate dessert soup, chocolate custard, and even chocolate granita and sorbet, which were created in Naples in the mid-1700s. Italians were also the first to combine chocolate with coffee: In 1678, the then king of Italy licensed a baker from Turin “to sell a chocolate drink” topped with a layer of cream and espresso. The drink, served in a small glass with a metal base and handle, later became known as bicherin, meaning “little glass,” and remains popular today.Recipes for savory dishes with chocolate were published in Italy as far back as 1680, including lasagna in anchovy, almond, and chocolate sauce; pappardelle in rabbit and chocolate sauce; fried liver accented with dark chocolate; and polenta topped with chocolate, breadcrumbs, almonds, and cinnamon. It was such a common practice to season foods with chocolate that the Francesco Arisi, in his 1736 poem, “Il Cioccolato,” poked fun at cooks who overused it.
Pellegrino Artusi’s 1891 cookbook, “Science in the Kitchen,” includes a delicious recipe he calls torta alla Milanese, or “Milan pie,” which is made with minced beef, chocolate, pine nuts, and raisins. Though Artusi attributes the pie to Milan, similar chocolate meat pies, called ‘mpanatigghi, have been eaten in Sicily since the late 1600s.
According to Pierpaolo Bonajuto, sixth generation owner of L’Antica Dolceria Bonajuto, Sicily’s oldest chocolate factory, which still makes this unusual treat, “legend has it that this dish was invented by the nuns of the monastery dell’Origlione di Palermo, and offered to pilgrims as a high-energy food well-suited for their long journey. The chocolate, it was believed, helped the meat stay fresh.”
‘Mpanatiggi. Courtesy of L’Antica Dolceria Bonajuto
