Susamielli

Susamielli are among the oldest of the Neapolitan Christmas sweets. Their name joins the Latin sesamum and mel, sesame and honey, recalling a time when the biscuits were coated in sesame seeds later replaced by almonds; one tradition even carries their ancestry back to the sesame-and-honey cakes offered to Demeter and Kore in the rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries. They are also called sapienze, after the Clarisse nuns of the convent of Santa Maria della Sapienza in the historic centre of Naples, who by the sixteen-hundreds were making a celebrated elliptical version. Tradition held three social grades: the coarse susamielli dello zampognaro of rough flour and reused trimmings, for the bagpipers and servants; the buon cammino filled with sour-cherry jam, for friars and priests; and the fine susamielli nobili of white flour, pisto and almond paste, for noble houses. It is this noble version, recorded in the recipe book of the Neapolitan cook Vincenzo Corrado, that survives today; the philologist Antonio Altamura holds that the S-shape was first given in honour of the nineteenth-century Neapolitan writer and patriot Luigi Settembrini.

A susamiello eats dense and satisfyingly chewy, its crumb bound and darkened by honey and thick with ground almond. The pisto comes through warm and layered, cinnamon and clove over a whisper of pepper, while the honey keeps everything moist and lightly sticky, and a whole almond pressed into the curve adds a toasty crunch.

Honey does most of the work here. As the main sweetener and the only liquid, it is strongly hygroscopic: its invert sugars, fructose and glucose, pull moisture from the air, which is why a susamiello bakes firm but softens and improves over the following days. Fructose also browns readily, so the dough colours and deepens in flavour at a relatively low oven heat. With almonds supplying fat and protein and little else to build a gluten network, and no chemical leavener, the biscuit sets dense rather than airy. The dough must be worked quickly and briefly, because the warmth of the hands melts the honey and fat and turns it sticky and unmanageable.