Genovese Ericina

Erice's genovesi were born in the kitchens of its cloistered convents, above all the Convento di San Carlo, where the nuns made almond sweets, marzipan mustazzoli and these cream pastries. Between the 14th and 16th centuries noble families raised dozens of churches in the town; as the families left, many of them passed to the convents. When 19th-century laws suppressed the religious houses the recipes nearly died out, only to be saved by Maria Grammatico, born in 1940, orphaned as a girl and placed in the San Carlo institute, who learned the guarded pastry by watching the nuns, then opened her own shop with three kilos of almonds and carried the genovesi to the world; her story is told in the book 'Bitter Almonds'. The name is said to echo the caps of the Genoese sailors who once traded through Trapani.

Warm and fragile: the snow of icing sugar dissolves at the lips, then a thin, buttery, tender crust gives way to a rush of warm lemon custard. The pastry itself is barely sweet, so the cream carries it, and it is at its best eaten straight from the oven, when crumb and cream play off one another.

Pasta frolla bakes 'short' and crumbly because the fat coats the flour and holds gluten back; worked cold and quickly, it sets tender rather than chewy. The filling thickens as egg yolks coagulate and starch gelatinizes together into a pipeable custard that stays soft, the starch also shielding the yolks from curdling. In the oven the shell browns by the Maillard reaction and steam lifts the crumb, while the sealed dome traps the cream so it heats through without drying out. Warm, the fat in the crust is soft and the custard loose; cold, both firm up.