Due to a chain of events, some part of Europe tends to associates the Panettone with Easter holidays, while most of us eat it traditionally at Christmas.
According to a legend, the Panettone was born out of a cooking mistake. One of the most typical Italian sweet breads is claimed to had been firstly cooked in the kitchen of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. On Christmas Eve, the chef burned the feast cake and a servant – named Toni – suggested a recipe made out of yeast, flour, eggs, raisins and candied fruits instead. The result was highly praised by the Duke of Milan who called the cake Pane De Toni (from the Italian word for bread and loaf – pane) to honour the inventor.
A manuscript of late 15th century by George Valagussa reports the Duke of Milan family tradition to celebrate Christmas with wheat bread which contained fruits.
Nevertheless, most likely the Toni story is a culinary legend, but, indeed, the Panettone took its roots from 15th century Milan.
The first written reference to document the Panettone comes from 1606, from the first Italian-Milanese dictionary where it is defined as a big bread baked for Christmas.
It was only in the mid 19th century, when the Milanese-Italian dictionary provided a richer description of a bread enriched with butter, eggs, sugar and raisins which was made all year around but for Christmas – in bigger size and with additional ingredients.
Around the same time, the English reader got to read about the Panettone. The first mention comes from a 1842 manual of tourists, Italy and Its Comforts from Antoine Claude Pasquin Valery – author of travels and librarian to the King at the palaces of Versailles and Trianon, where the index map defines the panettone as a Milanese cake and the author describes it as a very good pastry eaten principally at Christmas.
Is it a bread or is it a cake? Why not half-half, as the next written reference suggests, in her letters from the eternal city Rome Roma Beata, in 1894, the American writer Maud Howe Elliott: “We had much tea, more talk, and most panettone—half bread, half cake, with pignoli [macaroon cookies] and currants.”
And now how did the Orthodox part of Europe end up eating a Christmas cake at Easter?
The tradition of eating Easter bread traces its origin back to the Byzantine and the Orthodox Christian religion, but the traditional orthodox Easter bread has quite the same ingredients and manner of preparation as the Italian Easter bread does. It was the fall of the Iron Curtain and the rise of democracy that attracted the hungry for colours and new culinary tastes people of Eastern Europe to the Panettone, which they now consume with equal pleasure at both Easter and Christmas.
