Spumoni

Spumoni is the dome-shaped, layered Italian ice cream that long predates the American spumoni-and-candied-fruit version. Born in Naples in the late nineteenth century, it is built as a brick or a dome of alternating flavours: usually a stratum of cherry, one of pistachio, and one of chocolate or vanilla, with the layers separated by a ribbon of whipped cream and sometimes a fine dice of candied fruit. The finished mould is unmoulded onto a chilled plate, sliced like a cake, and served as a finish to a long Italian meal. The Neapolitan canon is firm on the cherry-pistachio-chocolate axis, and good spumoni uses real Sicilian pistachio paste and not green food colouring. Outside Naples the form travels: in Apulia it leans toward almond and chocolate, in Sicily it sometimes carries a layer of zabaglione. In Italian-Canadian and Italian-American gelaterie, spumoni is the most familiar ice cream of the family, often studded with candied fruit and served in slices at Christmas and Easter. The texture is dense and creamy, with a hint of meringue in the whipped-cream layers, and the flavour jumps from sour cherry to nut to cocoa in three successive bites.