Minni di Virgini

The sweet was created in 1725 in the Collegio di Maria, the girls' college and convent of Sambuca di Sicilia, by a nun remembered as Suor Virginia Casale di Rocca Menna, for the wedding of the Marchese Pietro Beccadelli to Marianna Gravina. The name minni, Sicilian for breasts, comes both from the nun Virginia and from the sweet's shape, which local tradition likens to the rounded hills around the town. Like much of Sicily's finest confectionery it was born behind convent walls, where nuns turned the island's sugar, almonds and citrus into elaborate sweets for the noble families who endowed them. Sambuca, in the province of Agrigento, still holds a costumed festival for its patroness Maria SS. dell'Udienza on the third Sunday of May, when the minni are made in quantity; the sweet is listed among Italy's Prodotti Agroalimentari Tradizionali.

Bite through the pale, buttery shell and the filling is cool and creamy: a delicate milk blancmange, sweet threads of candied squash, and little hits of dark chocolate and cinnamon. The sugar glaze adds a thin crackle, and the whole sweet is soft, milky and lightly spiced rather than heavy.

The shell is pasta frolla, a shortcrust in which butter or lard coats the flour and limits gluten from forming, so it bakes tender and crumbly rather than chewy; the high sugar content further weakens the crumb and helps it brown. The filling is a biancomangiare, milk thickened with starch: as it cooks the starch granules gelatinise and swell above roughly 65°C, trapping water so the milk sets to a sliceable cream that firms further as the starch retrogrades on cooling. The zuccata is squash preserved by long steeping in sugar syrup, where osmosis draws out its water and replaces it with sugar, so it keeps and turns translucent and sweet. Baking colours the shell through Maillard browning and caramelised sugar while gently setting the cream inside.