zabaglione (zabaione, or sabayon in French) is a rich, frothy dessert or thick beverage made with well-beaten egg yolks and sugar slowly thickened by cooking in a bain-marie. Depending on the region, sweet Marsala wine (Sicily, Calabria, and Campania), Moscato d’Asti (Piedmont), or Vin Santo (Tuscany) is added to the egg mixture. The secret of zabaglione lies in the freshness of the eggs and the incorporation of large amounts of air to make the foam light as a feather.
Like blancmange, zabaglione began as a dish that we would no longer classify as dessert: it was made with beaten eggs enriched with Malvasia wine and chicken broth. See blancmange. The first recipe for this dessert can be found in Bartolomeo Scappi’s Opera (1570), where zambaglione is savory and contains no sugar. However, a similar one for genestrata (broom-colored dessert) does contain sugar, which was a widely used ingredient in the Renaissance. In Lo scalco alla moderna (1694), Antonio Latini refers to zambaglione flavored with perfumed waters, cinnamon, and pistachio nuts. See latini, antonio. An early Italian recipe for home cooks calls for the eggs to be left whole in the wine until the shell disintegrates completely, providing an additional source of calcium.
When made with fresh raw yolks, zabaglione was considered an excellent tonic for ailing children or for the elderly, while men readily imbibed it for its supposed ability to increase their sexual prowess. Latini considered zabaglione so uplifting that no other food would be required for the whole day. The secret was supposed to be a pinch of nutmeg to improve the flavor. See nutmeg. Today, zabaglione, often prepared in special glasses, can be enjoyed both as a warm drink in winter or as cold refreshment in summer. The creamy dessert version of zabaglione is often served with berries, fresh or stewed fruits, or plain cakes.
Sambayòn is particularly appreciated in Argentina, Uruguay, and Venezuela, thanks to their substantial Italian populations. As an ice cream flavor it is exceedingly popular in many countries. Zabaglione is also a well-known bottled liqueur with a characteristic bright yellow color; it is drunk neat or poured as a topping onto desserts.
zalabiya is an ancient pastry that has been spelled in a number of ways in Iran and neighboring regions: zalībiyā, zolūbiyā, zolbiyā, zulābiyyah, and, in India, jalebi or jilebi. Its meaning has drifted in several directions as well.
The oldest recipes appear in a tenth-century Baghdad recipe collection called Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh. See baghdad. Some are for frying shaped pieces of leavened dough, and one is for a leavened cake baked in a tandoor oven. But the chief variety, also known as mushabbak (lattice), has been one of the most popular Middle Eastern and Indian pastries ever since. See india and middle east. It remains one of the favorite sweets served at Eid al-Fitr, the feast that ends the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. See islam and ramadan.
Mushabbak is made by dribbling a leavened batter into boiling oil from a special utensil with a hole bored in the bottom (in the medieval books, often a coconut shell). A typical medieval instruction goes as follows: “Put your finger over the hole; then raise your hand over the frying pan and quickly remove your finger. The batter will run out through the hole into the frying-pan as you turn your hand in circles, forming rings, lattices and so on.” All varieties of zulābiyā were soaked with honey or sugar syrup after cooking, and mushabbak might be colored red or green with food coloring during the Middle Ages, as it still often is.
In thirteenth-century Arab cookbooks, the mushabbak variety predominates, but there are also recipes for stuffed zulābiyā, which was a piece of firmly kneaded dough stuffed with nuts, shaped in a mold, dipped in zulābiyā batter, and then in sesame oil. A pastry called qāhiriyya consisted of rings of pistachio paste dipped in zulābiyā batter and then fried. See nuts.
In the modern world, the most widespread shape is a round lattice of overlapping loops, but in Algeria the lattice takes the form of parallel lines that can be separated into batons after frying. In Palestinian cuisine, this sort of shape can come out as a big flat cake. In Egypt, Syria, and Yemen, zulābiyā often means walnut-sized balls of dough (sometimes stretched a few inches in length before frying), which can be a little hard to distinguish from luqam al-qāḍī or the similar leavened fritters called ‘awwāmāt (swimmers). See fritters and fried dough. In these places the lattice shape is called always mushabbak.
Although the mushabbak version might seem to have triumphed over its rivals, the shaped zulābiyā seems to have survived in Syria down to modern times, and it may also have played a role in the creation of one of the best-known Western sweets. According to a well-known story, the ice cream cone was invented at the 1904 Columbian Exposition in St. Louis when an ice cream seller ran out of bowls. A neighboring stall operated by Ernest Hamwy was selling a sort of zulābiyā, which took the form of a wafer cooked between heated metal sheets. Hamwy helped his neighbor out by rolling up his wafers, while still hot and pliable, into cones that could hold a scoop of ice cream. See ice cream cones. Like European wafers (and waffles), they had a waffle pattern to distinguish them as a secular food from the Communion wafers used for Christian sacramental purposes. Other Syrian immigrants named Abe Doumar, Nick Kabbaz, and David Avayu also claimed to have invented the ice cream cone, making it clear that the wafer zulābiyā was known in Syria, despite having rarely if ever been recorded in cookbooks. See wafers.
See also honey.
See fried dough.
zuppa inglese, an Italian version of English trifle, is a typical Italian holiday dessert for Christmas, New Year’s, or Easter. Found in a number of regions of Italy, its name means “English soup,” in recognition of its similarity to trifle. The dessert belongs to a category of sweets known as a dolce al cucchiaio, or a “spoon sweet,” meaning that it is soft and eaten with a spoon. Zuppa inglese consists of génoise cake (pan de Spagna, or sponge cake) soaked with liqueur, pastry cream, jam, and chocolate.
The origin of zuppa inglese is debatable. The food writer Arthur Schwartz argues for Naples, for which there is some evidence, as this dessert was served at a banquet given by King Ferdinand and Maria Carolina to honor the English admiral Horatio Nelson. Other writers, such as the famous Roman cookbook author Ada Boni (1881–1973), argue for Lazio, and still others for Tuscany. The Italian historian and archivist of the Archivio di Stato di Siena, Alessandro Lisini (1851–1945), suggested that the dish, once known as zuppa del duca, was introduced by the sizable and flourishing Anglo-Saxon community of expatriates in Florence in the late nineteenth century. Others contend that zuppa inglese originated in Siena, since it uses pan di Spagna, a sponge cake offered by the Florentine ambassador Ippolito da Corregio to that city in acknowledgment of the agreement between Siena and the Spaniards who were besieged there in July 1552. Yet another conjecture is that Charles V’s (1500–1558) minister in Siena, the duke of Amalfi, preferred this dessert to all others.
See also italy; sponge cake; and trifle.