A cornetto (Italian: [korˈnetto]; meaning 'little horn'[1]) is historically the Italian name of a product similar to the Austrian kipferl,[2] although today it is an interchangeable name for the French croissant.[3]

Cornetto
TypeSweet
Place of originItaly
Main ingredientsPastry dough
VariationsMany types of fillings

The main ingredients of a cornetto are pastry dough, eggs, butter, water and sugar. Egg yolk is brushed on the surface of the cornetto to obtain a golden color during baking.

The cornetto vuoto (lit.'empty cornetto') is commonly accompanied by various fillings, including crema pasticcera (custard), apricot jam or chocolate cream, and covered with powdered sugar or ground nuts. A cornetto with an espresso or cappuccino at a coffee bar is considered to be the most common breakfast in Italy.[4]

The name cornetto is common in southern and central Italy, while it is called "brioche" in the north.[2][5]

History

The recipe of kipferl became popular in Italy, and more specifically in Veneto, after 1683, thanks to the intense commercial relations between the Republic of Venice and Vienna.[6] In France, it was not until the 1770 marriage between the Austrian Marie Antoinette and the future King Louis XVI that the pastry gained popularity there. Its recipe was modified by the pastry chefs, who replaced the brioche dough for a leavened puff pastry and called it a croissant. French chef Sylvain Claudius Goy records a yeast-leavened laminated croissant in his 1915 book La Cuisine Anglo-Americaine.[7] The croissant became popular in France mainly in the 20th century.

See also

  Media related to Cornetto at Wikimedia Commons

References

  1. ^ )Wach, Bonnie (22 June 2016). "One Day, One Place: Eat up Rome during tourist season". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 5 June 2019.
  2. ^ a b "Breakfast at a Café in Italy: Brioche, Croissant or Cornetto?". La Cucina Italiana. November 2, 2019.
  3. ^ The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets. Oxford University Press. 2015-04-01. ISBN 978-0-19-931361-7.
  4. ^ "Cornetti aren't croissants: Conjure memories of Italy at home". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 18 July 2017.
  5. ^ "Brioche in vocabolario - Treccani". Treccani (in Italian). Retrieved 2023-08-08.
  6. ^ "La storia del cornetto". Isacco,it (in Italian). 2020-07-05. Retrieved 2022-06-29.
  7. ^ Goy, Sylvain Claudius (1915). LA CUISINE ANGLO-AMERICAINE (1st ed.).