The Italian icon - Panna cotta

Everything you need to know about this Italian dessert

At first glance, it may look like an ordinary pudding, but panna cotta offers much more – this creamy, white, tower-shaped dessert is the ultimate milk pudding.

This sublime dolce al cucchiaio (spoon dessert) is an Italian dessert most popular in Northern Italy and most likely originated in the Piedmont region. Its Italian name literally means "boiled cream", although it is not actually boiled too much. Milk and cream, plus a little sugar or some other flavoring, are boiled together for a short time, and then a thickening agent (usually gelatin) is added.

A brief history of the famous treat

The exact origin of this dessert is not fully known. Many secondary sources cite a legend about a Hungarian woman who arrived in the Lango area of ​​Piedmont in the early 1900s and brought a recipe similar to that of panna cotta. Beef and cream are abundant in this part of Italy and therefore her recipe was easily accepted in the region. Others claim that it is a local adaptation of other similar continental puddings, such as the Sicilian dessert biancomangiare (a dessert traditionally made from almond milk) or the French dessert crème bavaroise.

Until 1960, the recipe for the dessert panna cotta was not mentioned at all in Italian cookbooks, however, it was often mentioned when talking about the traditional desserts of the northern Italian region of Piedmont. In 2001, panna cotta was included in the list of traditional foods from the Piedmont region.

Traditional recipe and today's variations

Traditionally, panna cotta was prepared according to the Piedmontese recipe - by boiling cream and sugar with fish bones. Today, however, gelatin is almost always used as a thickening agent. Vegetarians and others who do not want to use gelatin can use agar agar or other thickening agents (guar gum, xanthan gum). Today's version of the traditional Piedmontese recipe consists of cream, milk, sugar, gelatin, rum, vanilla and the Sicilian dessert wine Marsala. The prepared mixture is poured into a mold that is coated with a little caramel.

Since the traditional panna cotta recipe gives a very light taste, the dessert is often topped up and served with various sauces – such as berries, summer or even tropical fruit sauce. In addition to traditional vanilla, various other aromas can be added to the cream, such as mint, chocolate, coconut, saffron (which, in addition to the aroma, also gives color to the cream), lavender and coffee, among others. Caramel sauces, chocolate, fruit liqueurs and creams, and fresh fruit are just some of the many toppings that will decorate the served panna cotta. With all these options, it's not hard to see why this dessert is described as every chef's dream.