Taralli di Avigliano

Taralli di Avigliano, in dialect 'lu mustazzuol cù r' zuccr', are the glazed sweet taralli of Avigliano, a town in the province of Potenza in Basilicata. Ring-shaped and cloaked in a snow-white sugar fondant scented with anise, they are known as the 'bride's biscuits': through the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, well-off families handed them to wedding guests in place of favours, and their dove-white colour tied them to Easter, when they are still eaten most. Their making was a female rite presided over by the mstazzulara, the household's most experienced sweet-maker, who was paid to prepare them in the couple's home and guarded her recipe closely. They are marked by a double cooking, boiled first, dried, then baked, and by the marble-worked fondant, and stand distinct from the region's savoury scaldatelli, the fennel-seeded, figure-of-eight, twice-cooked taralli.

Crisp and dry at the first bite, then crumbling to a light, sandy shortness that dissolves rather than chews. The glaze cracks into a thin sweet shell, and behind the sugar runs a clear thread of anise, with a faint richness from the eggs and oil.

The brief boil gelatinises the starch at the surface and sets a smooth skin, so the rings hold their shape and bake to a compact, even crumb rather than puffing. Baker's ammonia leavens them: when heated, it breaks down entirely into gases that escape the low-moisture dough, leaving countless tiny voids and no residual salt, which gives the dry, friable shortness. The long drying drives off surface moisture so the oven crisps the rings rather than steaming them. The fondant is sugar syrup cooked to concentration and then agitated as it cools on cold marble, which forces the sucrose into a mass of microscopic crystals; these are too small to feel and scatter light, so the glaze sets smooth, opaque and snow-white.