Gianduiotto

Gianduja was born of scarcity. During the Napoleonic era, the Continental System imposed in 1806 and Britain's answering naval blockade choked off cocoa supplies to the Italian states, and Turin's chocolatiers stretched their costly cocoa by cutting it with locally abundant Langhe hazelnuts. The named, ingot-shaped gianduiotto is documented to 1852, created by the Turin house Caffarel — its partner Michele Prochet being credited with refining the roasted-hazelnut paste. The sweet took its name from Gianduja, the Piedmontese mask of the commedia dell'arte and Turin's Carnival: the chocolates were famously handed out at the Turin Carnival of 1865 by figures dressed as Gianduja, and the mask's tricorn hat is often said to have inspired the shape.

It melts almost the instant it meets the warmth of the mouth — softer and lower-melting than a plain chocolate — releasing a deep, toasted-hazelnut sweetness wrapped in cocoa, with no graininess and only the faintest bitterness behind it. The texture is dense, smooth and fatty rather than snappy; a good gianduiotto has no waxy edge and no sandy nut particles. Eaten slightly cool it holds its ingot shape to the first bite, then collapses into a creamy paste. Stale or poorly stored, it blooms grey and tastes flat and dusty.

Two things give gianduja its melt. First, hazelnuts are about 60 percent oil, and grinding the roasted nuts to a paste releases that oil into the mix, so gianduja carries far more soft fat than plain chocolate and softens at a lower temperature. Second, roasting the hazelnuts before grinding develops their flavour through the Maillard reaction, building the toasted, nutty depth that raw nuts lack. As in all fine chocolate, the worked mixture must be brought through controlled cooling — tempering — so that the cocoa butter sets in its stable crystal form; properly tempered, the gianduiotto is glossy and firm at room temperature and resists the dull grey fat bloom that comes of careless setting.