Neapolitan cuisine

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Neapolitan cuisine has ancient historical roots that date back to the Greco-Roman period, and enriched itself over the centuries with the influence of different subsequent cultures controlling Naples and its kingdoms, such as the Spanish and French dominations. The contribution of and fantasy of Neapolitan people has been extremely important to further develop and autonomous cuisine culture.

As capital of the kingdom of Naples, Naples' cuisine acquired a lot from the cuisine traditions from all over the Campania region, reaching a balance between dishes based on rural ingredients (pasta, vegetables, cheese) and seafood meals (fishes, crustaceans, mollusks). A vast variety of recipes is influenced by the local aristocratic cuisine, like timballi and the sartù di riso, pasta or rice plates with very elaborate preparation, while the plates coming from the popular traditions contain poor but nutritionally healthy ingredients, like pasta e fagioli (pasta with beans) and other pasta dishes with vegetables.

Contents 1 Historical Background 2 Typical ingredients 2.1 Pasta 2.2 Tomatoes 2.3 Vegetables 2.4 Cheese 2.5 Seafood 2.6 Meat 3 Bread 4 Pasta plates 4.1 Pasta dishes of the poor 4.2 Frittata with macaroni 4.3 Richer pasta plates 4.4 Seafood pasta plates 5 Rice dishes 6 Pizza 7 Fish and seafood plates 8 Vegetable plates 9 Fried food 10 Side plates 11 Salty pies 12 Cakes and deserts 13 Holiday food 13.1 Christmas 13.2 Easter food 13.3 Other holidays 14 Fruit 15 Wine 16 Liqueurs 17 Neapolitan street food 18 References 19 Notes

[edit] Historical Background

Naples has a history that goes back many centuries: the city itself predates many others in that area of the world, including Rome itself. It has endured the Greeks, Romans, the Plague, and dozens of successions of kings from France and Spain and each culture left a mark on the way food is prepared in Naples and Campania itself.

Finding the connections between modern and Greco-Roman cuisine traditions is not always easy. Among the traces of Classical cuisine tastes, different plates from the period of Greek rule found in Magna Graecia (southern Italy) depict fishes and mollusks, an indication that seafood was appreciated during that period. Different frescoes from Pompeii depict fruit baskets filled with (figs and pomegranates). An excavation at Oplontis] in the Villa Poppaea at ]shows a cake is frescoed, whose ingredients are not yet known.

The Roman garum is the most similar ancient sauce to the modern colatura d'alici, typical of Cetara. It can be traced back to the sweet-sour taste typical of the Roman cooking described by Apicius along with the use of rasins in salty plates, like the pizza di scarola (endive pie), or the braciole al ragù (meat rolls in ragù sauce). The use of wheat in the modern pastiera cake, typical of Easter, could have had originally a symbolic meaning, related to cults of Artemis, Cybele and Ceres and pagan rituals of fertility, celebrated in vicinity of the Spring equinox. The Greek word στρόγγυλος (stróngylos, meaning "round-shaped") gives the name to the struffoli, an Christmas cake.

The Spanish and French occupations of Naples started the separation between the aristocratic and the poor's cuisine. The former was characterized by elaborate plates, with more cosmopolitan inspirations and a greater number of expensive ingredients, (including meat.) The poor used foods that were cheaper and could be grown locally (cereals and vegetables). With the embellisments that were made over the centuries colliding with the influence from the aristocratic cuisine, often today the recipes coming originally from the poor's traditional cuisine have acquired a great quality and taste, while preserving the simple ingredients.

One of the most famous chefs from the nobles' courts in Naples was Vincenzo Corrado.

[edit] Typical ingredients

[edit] Pasta

The variety of Neapolitan pastas is very wide. Pasta was not invented in Naples, but one of the best grades available is found very nearby in Gragnano, a few kilometers away from the capital. It was also here that the industrial production of pasta started, with the techniques to dry and preserve it. The main ingredient is durum wheat, harder to manipulate to soft wheat, so the industrial production had greater success than in northern Italy, where home-made pasta is more popular. Pasta must be cooked "al dente" in Neapolitan tradition, where a soft pasta is not tolerated.

The most popular variety, beyond the classic spaghetti and linguine, are the paccheri and the ziti, long pipe-shaped pasta, broken by hand before cooking and usually topped with ragù. Pasta with vegetables is usually also prepared with pasta mista (pasta ammescata in Neapolitan language), that is now produced industrially as a separate variety of pasta, but was once sold once at a very cheap price from the broken pieces of the different pasta formats.

Hand-made gnocchi, prepared with flour and potatoes, are also very popular. Some of the more modern pasta formats are also getting popular, like the scialatielli.

[edit] Tomatoes

Tomatoes are originally from South America and were imported into Europe by the Spanish in the 16th century, but were ignored in most cuisine for about two centuries: the plant is a member of the nightshade family (genus Solanaceae) and was believed by many for some time to be deadly like its European relative. (In fact, they were only partially correct: eating the leaves and stems shall make you sick) In many cases, the bright red fruit would only be used for decoration. It wasn't until the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century that tomatoes became common in many recipes, and their plantation spread, becoming one of the most important in Campania. One of the most important varieties in Naples is the San Marzano tomato, almost extinct in the last decades of the 20th century and recently recovered to plantations. The little tomatoes from the hillsides of Vesuvius can be preserved for long times, and are usually grouped into "bunches" hanging out of balconies ('o piennolo).

The industry of preserving tomatoes was born in Naples, exporting all over the world the famous "pelati" (peeled tomatoes) and the "concentrato" (comcentrated tomato juice). There are traditionally several methods to prepare home-made tomato preserves, from bottled tomato juice, or chopped in pieces. The famous "conserva" (sun dried concentrated juice), tomato is cooked for a long time and becomes a dark red cream with a velvet texture.

[edit] Vegetables

Some of Campanian dishes using vegetables, like the parmigiana di melanzane (aubergine pie) or peperoni ripieni (stuffed peppers) can become real stars of the table. Some of the most typical products are friarielli (a local variety of Brassica rapa), scarola, smooth or curly (two varieties of endive) , several types of broccoli, la verza (a variety of Brassica oleracea sabauda) and others, used to prepare the minestra maritata. Different types of beans, chickpeas and other legumes are very popular.

Zucchini are widely used; the largest ones are fried with vinegar and fresh mint (a scapece). The male flowers of zucchini can be fried in a salty dough (sciurilli)^[1].

Regular red and yellow peppers are widely used, and a local variety of small green peppers (not sipcy), peperoncini verdi, are usually fried.

Salad is a side dish of many dishes, especially seafood ones. Lettuce, and more often the incappucciata (a local variety of the iceberg lettuce), more crispy, is mixed with carrots, fennels, rucola (some time ago it spontaneously grew in landfields, and was sold in the streets together with the less noble pucchiacchella), e radishes, traditionally the long and spicy ones, which today are more and more rare, almost completely replaced by the round and sweeter ones.

Black olives used in Neapolitan cuisine are always the ones from Gaeta.

During the Second World War, it was not rare, in the poorest families, to use less appealing ingredients. Recipes have been reported of pasta cooked with empty pods of fava beans or peas^[2].

[edit] Cheese

Cheeses, both soft and aged, are a very important part of the Italian diet and Neapolitan cuisine is no exception. Starting from the freshest ones, the most used are:

• the ricotta di fuscella, very fresh and light, was originally sold in hand-made baskets
• the ricotta fresca, eaten both fresh, and as side ingredient (for instance, on top of pasta with ragù)
• the ricotta salata, salty, slightly aged, typical of the Easter period
• the caciottella fresca, of Sorrento's peninsula, with very delicate taste
• the mozzarella di bufala, fresh cheese made with buffalo's milk, produced mostly on the region of Aversa and in the plain of Sele river
• the fiordilatte, similar to mozzarella, but made with cow's milk; it is best produced in the region of Agerola
• the provola affumicata, a fiordilatte with scent of oak wood smoke, light brown on the exterior, more yellowish inside
• the bocconcini del cardinale, or burrielli, small mozzarellas, preserved in clay pots, flooded into cream or milk
• the scamorze, white or smoked
• the burrini di Sorrento, small provolone cheese with a butter hart
• the provoloni, the caciocavalli of different aging

[edit] Seafood

All kinds seafood from the Tyrrhenian sea are largely abundant in Neapolitan cuisine. Recipes use either less expensive fishes, in particular anchovies, and other fishes, like the ones used to prepare the zuppa: scorfano (Scorpaena scrofa), tracina (Trachinus draco), cuoccio (Triglia lanterna), or fishes of medium and large size, like spigola (European seabass) and orate (gilt-head bream), presently sold mainly from fish farms, or like dentice (Dentex dentex), sarago (Diplodus sargus sargus) and pezzogna (Pagellus centrodontus). Fishes of very small size are also used:

• The cicenielli, baby fishes, very small and transparent, prepared either steemed or fried in a dough
• The fravagli, few centimeter long, mainly of triglia (Mullus surmuletus) or retunni (Spicara smaris), typically fried

The baccalà (cod) and stockfish, imported from northern Europe seas, are either fried or cooked with potatoes and tomatoes.

Most cephalopods are employed (octopus, squids, cuttlefish), as well as crustacea (mainly shrimps).

Shellfish (cozze (mussels), vongole (clams), cannolicchi (Ensis siliqua, taratufi, telline (Donax trunculus), sconcigli (Haustellum brandaris)) are employed in many seafood meals, and sometimes are eaten raw, but this happens more and more seldom nowadays. Clams require a special note. The vongola verace is Venerupis decussata, not to be confused with the Philippines clam (Venerupis philippinarum), very frequently found on the markets, and often called verace in northern Italy's markets), and the lupino (Dosinia exoleta).

Fortunately, it is now forbidden by law to sell and eat the sea dates (datteri di mare, Lithophaga lithophaga), since their fishing seriously damages coastlines rocks, mainly in Sorrento peninsula.

[edit] Meat

Meat is not used very frequently in neapolitan Cuisine, since this ingredient was very expensive in the past, and rarely available in a poor man's household. In Neapolitan traditions, the steaks or filetto are absent unlike the cuisine of Northern Italy. The most common kinds of meat are:

• sausages: salsicce and cervellatine, with not finely hand-cut meat (a ponta 'e curtiello)
• pork liver, rounded in a net of pork's fat and a leaf of bay laurel
• trippa (tripe) and other more humble cuts of pork or beef, like the typical 'o pere e 'o musso (pork's foot and cow's nose), and the zuppa di soffritto, a spicy soup with tomato and hot chili pepper.
• braciole, pork rolls stuffed with raisins, pine nuts and parsley, fixed with toothpicks and cooked in ragù
• lamb and goat are roasted, usually with potatoes and peas, typically around Easter
• rabbit and chicken, often cooked alla cacciatora, pan fried with tomatoes

[edit] Bread

The most popular bread is pane cafone prepared with natural yeast, cooked in a wood-fired oven with hard crust and large holes inside. Also used are sfilatini, somewhat similar to a French baguette, but shorter and thicker. rosetta rolls and other varieties are also present.

[edit] Pasta plates

From the classic "pummarola" (tomato sauce) to the simplest aglio e uoglio (garlic and oil), down to a wide variety of sauces, with vegetables or seafood, up to the ragù, southern Italy's creativity gives with pasta its best pro of.

[edit] Pasta dishes of the poor

Cuisine traditionally attributed to the poor often mixes pasta with legumes. The most popular are: pasta e fagioli (pasta with beans), sometimes enriched with pork rind (cotiche), pasta e ceci (pasta with chickpeas), pasta e lenticchie (pasta with lentils), pasta e piselli (pasta with peas). Nowadays cicerchie (Lathyrus sativus) have become very rare. Similarly to legumes, other vegetables are associated with pasta, like pasta e patate (pasta with potatoes), pasta e cavolfiore (pasta with cauliflower), pasta e zucca (pasta with pumpkin). The most traditional cooking method consists in cooking the condiments first, for instance, pan fry garling with oil, then add steamed beans, or fry onion and celery, then add potatoes cut into little dices; then, after frying, water is added, brought to boiling temperature, salted, and pasta is added and stirred frequently. While cooking with all the other ingredients, pasta does not lose its starch, which would have lost if cooked separately in salty water and then drained. Cooking pasta together with vegetables makes the sauce more creamy ("azzeccato"), and is a way to prepare pasta opposite to the tradition of "noble" cuisine, that prepares similar plates in a way more similar to broth or soups, adding pasta after cooking it separately. One more nutritious plate in the cuisine of the poor is pasta simply cooked with cheese and egg's stracciatella (pasta caso e ova).

Spaghetti, dressed with tomato sauce, black olives from Gaeta and capers are called spaghetti alla puttanesca. An imaginative recipe was created on the tables of the poor, where the expensive shellfishes were missing: spaghetti, dressed with cherry tomatoes sauce, garlic, oil and parsley are called spaghetti alle vongole fujute (spaghetti with escaped clams), where clams are present only in the fantasy of present people.

[edit] Frittata with macaroni

The frittata can be prepared with pasta leftovers, either with tomato sauce or white. Pasta, cooked al dente is mixed with raw scrambled egg and cheese, then pan fried. It can be enriched with may different ingredients. Must be cooked on both sides, flipped with the help of a plate. If well cooked, it is compact, and can be cut into slices. It can be eaten during outdoor lunches.

[edit] Richer pasta plates

The aristocratic cuisine used pasta for elaborate recipes, like the timballi, rarely used in everyday food.

Richer sauces, more elaborate than the vegetable pasta plates mentioned above, that are frequently used to dress pasta include:

• The Bolognese sauce, vaguely inspired by the ragù emiliano, prepared with minced carrot and onion, ground beef and tomato
• The Genovese sauce, not inspired by Genoa in spite of the name, but prepared with meat browned with abundant onions and other aromas

With the ragù the most traditionally used pasta are the ziti, long macaroni, that are broken into shorter pieces by hand before cooking. The Neapolitan ragù is also used, together with fiordilatte, to dress the gnocchi alla sorrentina, then cooked in oven in a small single-portion clay pot (pignatiello).

[edit] Seafood pasta plates

Spaghetti, linguine and paccheri match very well with fish and seafood. From this union come the plates typical of importan lunches or dinners (weddings, in particular). The most typical ones are:

• Spaghetti alle vongole or other shellfishes (clams, mussels, and other)
• Paccheri con la zuppa di pesce (scorfani, cuocci, tracine and more)
• Pasta con i calamari, with squid sauce, cooked with white wine

There are many more varieties, for instance spaghetti with a white sauce of mediterranean cod.

Sometimes the traditional plates of pasta with legumes can be mixed with seafood, so there are, for instance, pasta e fagioli con le cozze (pasta with beans and mussels), or other more modern variations, like pasta with zucchine and clams, that loose anyway any traditional connotation.

[edit] Rice dishes

The most famous fice plate is the sartù di riso, a sort of timballo made with rice, stuffed with chicken livers, sausage, little meatballs, fior di latte or provola, peas, mushrooms, and with ragù, or, in the white version ("in bianco") with béchamel sauce sauce.

In the cuisine of the poor, rice is also cooked as riso e verza (rice with cabbage), flavored within little pieces of parmigiano-reggiano cheese crusts, that slightly melt while cooking.

A seafood rice plate is the risotto alla pescatora ("Fisherman's risotto"), prepared with various mollusks (different types of clams, squids, cuttlefishes), shrimps and a broth made from the boiling of seafood shells.

The Arancini (palle 'e riso), more typical of Sicilian cuisine, are also frequently used in Naples.

[edit] Pizza

Pizza is the most popular creation of all Neapolitan cuisine, and certainly the best known. Its roots are much older than the tomato that tops it, and is probably one of the oldest foods. An early type of pizza was present in the Roman age; it was a sort of wheat bun. But the pizza, as we know it today, (with the tomato sauce) is about two hundred years old. It soon became very popular among the people as well as barons or princes: it was largely present in the Bourbon court. King Ferdinand I experienced to cook pizza in Capodimonte's porcelain ovens. After Italian unification, the new kings were also attracted by this southern food. The pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito created in 1889, in honor to queen Margherita of Savoy, a patriotic pizza, where the colors of the Italian flag were represented by the mozzarella (white), tomato (red) and basil (green). This pizza is called, since then the pizza Margherita. Pizza has a great taste, is cheap and is nutritious, so it had very quickly a great success. Sometimes pizza is also made on home's ovens, but the real Neapolitan pizza must be cooked in wood-fired oven, hand-made by an able pizziaiolo who makes the dough disk thinner in the center and thicker in the outer part; the ingredients and olive oil are rapidly spread on the disk, and with a quick movement the pizza is put on the shovel, then slided in the oven where it is turned around a few times for the best and uniform cooking.

[edit] Fish and seafood plates

One of the most famous main courses is a seafood dish recipe coming from the quarter 'Santa Lucia': polpi alla luciana, octopus cooked with chili pepper and tomato. Octopus is also simply steamed, and prepared as salad with lemon juice, parsley and green olives. A reacher seafood sala can be prepared also mixing squid, cuttlefish and prawns.

Medium size fishes are cooked all'acqua pazza, with tomato, garlic and parsley; the larger ones are also simply grilled, accompanied, in the most important meals, with king size prawns.

Mussels are prepared in different ways: rapidly steamed with black pepper (all'impepata), and dressed with a few drops of lemon juice each; also cooked al gratin. Clams and other shellfishes are also cooked sauté, rapidly passed in a large pan with olive oil, garlic, and served on crust breads.

Cheap fish can also produce very tasty recipes. The most popular one is anchovy. The best recipes are:

• Alici dorate e fritte, boneless anchovies, passed in flour, egg and deep-fried
• Alici marinate, raw anchovies marinated in lemmon juice or vinagler, then dressed with olive oil, garlic and parsley
• Alici arreganate, boneless anchovies, rapidly cooked in a large pan with olive oil, lemmon juice and origanum

Cicenielli, the tiny baby fishes, are either steemed and dressed with oil and lemmon, or deep-fried in a light dough, which is also used to deep-fry little pieces of some sea algae.

The frittura di paranza (deep-fried fishes) is usually done with small-sized local fishes, like cod, goatfish, anchovies and others. It should be eaten very hot, right after being fried (frijenno magnanno). Baby shrimps, sold alive, are fried with no flour, unline the paranza.

[edit] Vegetable plates

Vegetable platescan become very rich and elaborated. The most famous are:

• The parmigiana di melanzane, aubergine pie with tomat sauce and fiordilatte
• The gatò di patate, potato pie stuffed with cheese and salami
• The peperoni ripieni, stuffed whole peppers
• The melenzane a barchetta, aubergines cut in half, escavated in the center and filled with different types of stuffings.

[edit] Fried food

Fried fish was already mentioned above in the text; many vegetables are deep-fried with flour and egg (dorate e fritte): artichokes, zucchini, cauliflower. The richest version add pieces of liver, ricotta and, in the past, cow's brain. Mozzarella can be prepared dorata e fritta as well and also in carrozza, passed in flour and egg together with two bread slices softened in milk, to form a small sandwich. Typical Neapolitan fried food are also the crocchè, stuffed potato balls passed in breadcrumbs and deep fried, or also the sciurilli, zucchini's male flowers fried in a dough, that can also be bought on the streets of Naples historical center in typical fried food shops together with scagliozzi (fried slices of polenta), pastacresciute (fried bread dough balls) and aubergine slices.

Onions, fried up to a golden color, are the base for the famous frittata di cipolle (onion omelette).

[edit] Side plates

After pasta, the main second plates are frequently accompanied by side plates. The most popular ones are:

• Zucchini alla scapece, deep fried sliced succhini dressed with vinager and fresh mint
• Melenzane a funghetti, fried aubergines, in two versions: stick-shaped and fried, then dressed with cherry tomato sauce, or dice-fried, with no tomato
• Peperoni in padella, sliced peppers pan fried with black Gaeta olives and capers
• Peperoncini verdi fritti, local small non-spicy green peppers, dressed with cherry tomato sauce
• Fiarielli, local vegetable leaves, pan fried with oil, garlic and chili pepper. They often are side plates of fried sausages and cervellatine, which are sometimes also accompanied by potato fries, typically cut as small dices

[edit] Salty pies

Salty pies are convenient for outdoor food. The most popular salty pies are:

• The pizza di scarole (endive pie), prepared with fried scarole with garlic, pine nuts, rasins, black Gaeta olives and capers. Those vegetables are the stuffing for the pie, which is made with a simple dough of flour, water and yeast
• The casatiello, or tortano, typical of Ester holidays, usually prepared for the day after Easter, usually spent outdoor

[edit] Cakes and deserts

Neapolitan cuisine has a large variety of cakes and desserts. The most famous ones are:

• babà
• sfogliatella, in two varieties: frolle (smooth) o ricce (curly). Two variation are the santa Rosa, larger and with an additional stuffing of cream and black cherry, and the code d'arargosta (lobster tail), with a bignè inside and stuffed with various types of cream.
• Zeppole di San Giuseppe, deep fried or baked
• Pastiera, prepared for Easter holidays
• Struffoli typical Christmas cake
• Delizia al limone

Ice creams are famous as well. The most traditional are the coviglie and the spumoni.

[edit] Holiday food

Holiday recipes deserve a dedicated section because of their variety and richness.

[edit] Christmas

Christmas eve dinner is usually the time when all family members join. It is typically done with spaghetti alle vongole followed by capitone fritto and baccalà fritto (deep fried eel and stockfish); as side plate there is the Insalata di rinforzo, a salad made with steamed cauliflower, giardiniera, spicy and sweet peppers (pupaccelle), ulivs and anchovies, all dressed with oil and vinager vinagner.

Christmas cakes are:

• Struffoli
• Roccocò
• Mustacciuoli
• Susamielli

Christmas eve dinner is completed with the ciociole, which are dried fruits (walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds), dried figs and the castagne del prete, baked chestnuts.

Christmas lunch has typically the minestra maritata or hand-made pasta with chicken broth.

[edit] Easter food

The main Easter plates are the casatiello or tortano, a salty pie made with bread dough stuffed with various types of salami and cheese, also used the day after Easter for outdoor lunches. Typical of Easter lunches and dinners is the fellata, a banquet of salami and capocollo and salty ricotta. Typical plates are also lamb or goat baked with potatoes and peas. Easter cake is the pastiera.

[edit] Other holidays

Carnival has the Neapolitan version of lasagna, that has no béchamel sauce, unlike other Italian versions. As dessert, there is the sanguinaccio with savoiardi biscuits, or also the chiacchiere, diffused all over Italy with different names.

2 November (All Souls Day) cake is the torrone dei morti, which, unlike the usual torrone is not made with honey and almonds, but with cocoa and a variety of suffings, like hazelnuts, dried and candy fruits or also coffe and more.

[edit] Fruit

Fruit is often present af the end of a meal. Local production is abundant, one of the most popular local products is the mela annurca, a local type of apple whose origins are old indeed: it is believed to have first been planted by the Romans. Slices of watermelon ( 'o mellone) were in old times sold in little street shops (mellunari), nowadays disappeared. The sweet and tasty yellow peach ('o percuoco c' 'o pizzo, in Neapolitan) is also sometimes used, chopped in pieces to add flavor to red wine coming from Monte di Procida, cold and somewhat similar to Spanish sangria.

[edit] Wine

Many wines from Campania match very well to the local cuisine. Among white wines the most famous are Greco di Tufo, Falanghina, Fiano di Avellino and Asprinio di Aversa, while the most famous red wines are Aglianico, Taurasi, Piedirosso also known as pere 'e palummo, Solopaca, Lacryma Christi from Vesuvius, that is produced both white and red.

[edit] Liqueurs

The most abundsnt lunches or dinners end with coffe and liqueur. Limoncello is now world famous, but once upon a time the most preferred one was the liquore ai quattro frutti, with lemmon, orange, tangerine e limo (not to be confused with lime), which is a local variation of bergamot orange, now very rare. Nocillo is also very popular all over Italy, and is the most appreciated bitter liqueur.

[edit] Neapolitan street food

In Naples the use of buying and eating foot in the streets dates to very ancient times. The origins probably date back to Roman thermopolia or maybe earlier. Typical fried food can still today be bought in little shops, like pastacresciute (deep fried bread dough balls), scagliozzi (deep fried polenta slices) and sciurilli (deep fried male zucchini flowers), or deep fried aubergines. Pizza is also prepared in small sized to be eaten in the street, the so called pizza a libretto, still found in Naples pizzerias in via dei Tribunali, port'Alba and piazza Cavour. In via Pignasecca, in the historical center, there are still some shops of carnacuttari, selling various types of tripe, 'o pere e 'o musso (pork's foot and cow's nose) or the old zuppa 'e carnacotta (tripe soup).

From Mergellina to via Caracciolo there are still several little shops selling taralli nzogna e pepe (salty biscuits with pork's fat and black pepper). Nowadays the old typical 'o broro 'e purpo (octopus broth) has become extremely rare to find. Few decades afo, street shops sold 'o spassatiempo, a mix of baked hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds, toasted chickpeas and lupins under brine.

[edit] References

The oldest Neapolitan cuisine is reported in the books of classic authors, like:

• Vincenzo Corrado, Il cuoco galante, in Napoletan language, III edition, 1786, editby Forni, Sala Bolognese (BO), 1990.
• Vincenzo Corrado, Pranzi giornalieri variati ed imbanditi in 672 vivande secondo i prodotti della stagione, in Napoletan language, III edition, 1832, re-edit by Grimaldi, Naples, 2001.
• Ippolito Cavalcanti Cucina casareccia, in Napoletan language, 1839, re-edited by Il Polifilo, Milan, 2005 (ISBN 88-7050-324-0)
• Ippolito Cavalcanti Cucina teorico - pratica, in lingua napoletana, 1852, re-edited by Grimaldi, Naples, 2002

Many Neapolitan cuisine books report classic recipes, but also re-interpretations in Neapolitan style of other ricette. So, it is not unusual to find recipes like cotoletta alla milanese, carne alla genovese, sugo alla bolognese, and other. Books with both classic and revisited recipes are:

• Jeanne Caròla Francesconi, La vera cucina di Napoli, edit. Newton, 1995, (ISBN 88-8183-021-3)

The following book contains a large variety of recipes, sometimes production of neapolitan creativity:

• Frijenno magnanno, Salvatore di Fraia Editore, Pozzuoli (NA).

[edit] Notes