Panforte

Panforte is one of the oldest documented sweets still made in Europe, and one of the hardest to file under a familiar category. It is not a cake, because nothing in it rises. It is not a biscuit, because it never dries out. It is closest in structure to nougat or to a very dense fruit-and-nut bar: candied citrus peel and whole almonds bound by honey and sugar cooked to the soft-ball stage, with just enough flour to hold everything together and a spice blend doing the heavy lifting on flavour.

The finished object is a low disc, 2 to 3 cm high, baked in a ring on a sheet of ostia, the unleavened wafer used for communion hosts and for Italian nougat. The wafer stays attached to the base, appears as a thin white film on every slice, and is meant to be eaten. A standard 250 g disc is about 15 cm across and feels startlingly heavy for its size.

Panforte di Siena was registered as a Protected Geographical Indication by the European Union in 2013, with production limited to the province of Siena. The recipe is medieval in origin: documents from 1205 record honeyed and peppered breads, pani melati and panes pepatos, being handed over as tribute to the nuns of the monastery of Montecelso near Siena. The spices came through the city with the pilgrim traffic of the Via Francigena, and the Sienese apothecaries who controlled them were a powerful guild long before panforte had its modern name.

You will hear that panforte contains seventeen ingredients, one for each of the seventeen contrade of Siena. It is a lovely story and it is a story: no rule in the IGP specification prescribes a symbolic number, and several historical recipes count differently. Treat it as civic folklore rather than as a formula.

The first impression is honey rather than sugar: rounder, slightly floral, with the resinous depth that comes from cooking honey rather than simply stirring it in. Then the candied citron and orange arrive, and they are the reason panforte works: real candied peel is faintly bitter and resinous, and it cuts the sweetness rather than adding to it. Cheap panforte skips this and tastes flatly sugary.

The spices come next and they are warm rather than hot: cinnamon and nutmeg forward, cloves and mace behind, coriander giving a citrus lift you notice without identifying. In panpepato the black pepper hits at the end, a real prickle at the back of the throat, and the balance shifts from perfumed to almost savoury.

Texture is the part nobody expects. Panforte is chewy, properly chewy, the way a fresh nougat is, with resistance that makes you slow down, and then the almonds snap through it. It is emphatically not soft, not crumbly and not cakey. A sliver of it lasts a surprisingly long time.

Panforte Margherita, the pale version dusted in icing sugar, is the gentler entry point: less spice, no pepper, more citrus. Panpepato is the one to try second, once you know what the structure is doing.

Serve it at room temperature and cut it with a smooth-bladed knife. A serrated blade tears the candied fruit and shreds the edge; a smooth blade warmed under hot water and dried goes through cleanly. Cut from the centre outward into thin wedges, about 5 mm at the widest point. That looks mean and is correct: panforte is dense enough that a sliver is a portion.

Its natural place is the end of a meal, with coffee or a glass of sweet wine, and it needs nothing else alongside. The one variation worth making a habit of is a cheeseboard: a wedge of panpepato next to an aged pecorino, a mature blue or a soft washed-rind cheese does exactly what a fruit paste or mostarda does, with more spice and more texture. This is how it is most often eaten in Siena outside of Christmas.

Do not cook with it. Heat melts the sugar structure and destroys the point. The two exceptions are dicing it small through vanilla or fior di latte gelato, and toasting crumbs of it briefly in a dry pan to scatter over panna cotta or fresh ricotta.

It also happens to be one of the best edible things to travel with: it survives a suitcase, a warm climate and weeks in a cupboard without changing. That durability is not a modern convenience, it is the reason the sweet exists.

Panforte was built to keep and it keeps. Whole and sealed it holds six months or more at room temperature, and industrial packs often carry a date a year out; the only care it needs is distance from direct heat and from damp. Once opened, wrap it tight in baking paper and then foil, or put it in a tin, and reckon on three or four weeks. The cut face is the weak point: exposed to air it dries and hardens, so press the paper against it.

The fridge is the common mistake. Cold sets the cooked sugar hard enough to make the disc difficult to cut, and the damp in a fridge makes the sugared surface tacky. If it has been in the cold, leave it an hour at room temperature before the knife goes in. A disc that has hardened softens with ten seconds in a warm oven or a hot knife. If the surface turns damp and sticky instead, that is humidity in the cupboard: dust it with fresh icing sugar and move it to an airtight box. The freezer does nothing for it.

Judge the slice, not the box. In a good panforte the candied pieces and the almonds are individually visible: cubes of citron and orange with the peel still readable, almonds whole or in halves. A section that is uniformly brownish, with indistinct specks drowned in a compact mass, means offcut candied fruit and very few nuts; in the best versions almonds approach a fifth of the weight. Weight is the second check: a 250 g disc should feel heavier than its size suggests, since a light one is full of air and flour.

The label is the third. Real ingredients are named one by one, candied citron, candied orange, almonds, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, and they sit at the top of the list. Read carefully when glucose syrup comes before honey, when spices turn into generic flavourings, or when vegetable fats appear. Panforte di Siena IGP carries the geographical indication and the European mark on the pack. Underneath there should be a wafer base, white, thin and stuck fast. Panpepato, its darker cousin with pepper and cocoa, and British Christmas cake are different sweets that often sit on the same shelf.

In the US, Italian importers and specialists such as Eataly, Gustiamo and Market Hall Foods carry it year-round, and it turns up in Whole Foods and gourmet grocers from November onward. Expect roughly $13-20 for a 8 oz (227 g) disc of a good imported panforte, which works out to about $26-40 per pound; supermarket versions of the Margherita run closer to $9-12.

In the UK, Italian delicatessens and online shops such as Sous Chef and Natoora stock it, and Waitrose and Ocado carry it seasonally. A 250 g disc costs about £8-14, so £32-48 per kilo, with mass-market Margherita nearer £5-7.

Read the label the way you would read one in Siena. The Panforte di Siena IGP mark tells you the province of origin. The ingredient list should name candied citron and candied orange peel, almonds and honey near the top; glucose syrup ahead of honey, generic 'flavourings' instead of named spices, and vegetable fat of any kind are all signs of a cheaper product. Look at the cut face through the wrapper if you can: distinct, identifiable pieces of fruit and nut are what you are paying for.

One practical note for gift-buying: panforte ships well and needs no refrigeration, which makes it the easiest Italian sweet to send internationally. It is also naturally free of eggs and dairy, which solves a surprising number of dietary problems at a Christmas table, though never gluten, and never vegan, because of the honey.

Siena is the whole answer. In the historic centre, the axis of Via Banchi di Sopra and Via di Città, running from the Duomo down to the shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, is lined with the pasticcerie and old grocers that sell panforte cut from a whole disc, and most will let you taste before you buy. The city's historic producers, Sapori, Nannini, Fiore and Parenti among them, span everything from small-batch to export-scale.

The month before Christmas is the peak, when production is highest and the discs in the windows are freshly made. But panforte is sold in Siena all year, and finding it in a July window is normal rather than suspicious.

Siena is an easy day trip from Florence: a little over an hour by the fast coach, and the more comfortable option than the train, which requires a change. Build the day out with Montalcino for Moscadello and Brunello, Montepulciano, or San Gimignano, with the Crete Senesi in between.

Time your visit carefully around the Palio, run on 2 July and 16 August. The horse race in the Campo is extraordinary and the city is unmanageable for anything else on those two days, including buying a disc of panforte in peace. Buy it the day before.