Schiacciata alla Fiorentina

A sweet of the Florentine Carnival, made in the weeks before Lent when the eggs, butter and lard of the larder were used up before the fast. Its plain name, schiacciata, means 'flattened', for the low cake pressed into a shallow pan; an older name, schiacciata unta or 'greasy schiacciata', marks the richness of the lard. Pellegrino Artusi recorded the Florentine schiacciata in his La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene of 1891, the book that helped fix Tuscan home cooking in print. The cocoa lily on the surface is the giglio of Florence, the city's heraldic emblem since the Middle Ages. Today the cake is a Prodotto Agroalimentare Tradizionale of Tuscany, sold across the city's bakeries through Carnival.

Soft and moist, with a fine even crumb that yields like a light sponge. The flavour is gently sweet and full of orange, the zest and juice cutting the richness of the butter and lard. A veil of icing sugar melts on the tongue while the cocoa lily adds a faint bitter edge, and each square is low enough to eat in a few unhurried bites.

The soft, low crumb comes from a slack, enriched batter rather than a kneaded dough. Fresh yeast ferments the sugars to carbon dioxide, which inflates a loose gluten network into a fine, even sponge; because the batter is rich and wet, the gluten stays tender and the cake never toughens. Fat from the butter or lard coats the flour proteins and shortens them, so the crumb bakes soft and keeps moist for days, while egg-yolk lecithin emulsifies the fat and milk into a smooth batter. Spread thin in a shallow pan, the cake heats through fast and bakes before the surface can colour deeply, staying pale and springy. The aromatic oils of the orange zest, chiefly limonene, are fat-soluble and are carried and held by the butter. Sugar and cocoa go on only after cooling, so the powders sit dry on the surface and the lily stays sharp.