History and origins of dishes from Elba

Tasting a typical dish means taking a journey into the culture, history, customs, and traditions of a people. The flavors of Elban cuisine tell stories of miners, farmers, sailors, and lovers, but also of Etruscans, Romans, Spaniards, Saracens, soldiers, and emperors.

The Elban dishes are all based on simple, humble ingredients that the creativity and skill of the old folk turn into true delicacies every day.

Eastern Side

Particularly sought-after are those dishes that require long and complex preparation: among these, the stoccafisso alla riese stands out, a sublime dish of stockfish with Iberian-Moorish origins, accompanied by salted anchovies, onion, tomatoes, basil, parsley, green peppers, black olives, pine nuts, capers, and, of course, oil, chili, and salt. This dish, along with the sburrita di baccalà and gurguglione – a stew of vegetables, peppers, and eggplants that in Porto Azzurro, due to the Spanish influence, is also called gaspaccio – was for centuries the meal of miners and farmers on their way to work.

Also of eastern origin is the schiaccia briaca, the quintessential Elban dessert that won the first prize at the 2010 Olympics of Flavors. Made from raisins, pine nuts, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, oil, wine (Aleatico), and Alchermes, without yeast or eggs, it was given to Riese sailors as a substantial and long-lasting comfort food. The same applied to the sailor's bread or pan ficato, a bread made with plump figs, traditionally dried with grapes, tomatoes, almonds, and walnuts on the walls (murelle) that lined the streets of the town.

Other Riese traditional sweets are the sportella and ceremito, anise-flavored breads exchanged between lovers during Easter: on Palm Sunday, the suitor would have a basket of flowers delivered to the girl, along with the ceremito (or cerimito); if the girl accepted the gift and the proposal of love, on Easter Sunday, she would reciprocate by sending him a blessed sportella. The day after, during the traditional picnic at the Hermitage of Santa Caterina, the two lovers would meet to consume their token of love. To this day, every Easter Monday, the sportella celebration is held at the Santa Caterina Hermitage, a place of glances and love.

Western Side

The same symbolic charge as the Riese sportella is carried by the corollo, a leavened ring-shaped cake baked in ovens after the bread. The typical ring shape dates back to the tradition of the "Maggio campese," where young men, looking for a partner, would serenade girls under their windows. The girls, the following morning, would gift the young serenaders with the typical ring-shaped cake, which they would string one after the other on decorated sticks planted in carts.

Typical of the western area are also the schiacciunta, a shortcrust pastry decorated with imprints made with a thimble or wedding ring, the frangette, a Carnival sweet made from thin layers of sweet dough fried and dusted with sugar, potato bread, the ferettato bread of San Piero, an Easter bread shaped by skilled hands into small birds, and the [page id="762"]schiaccia di Pasqua, a sweet leavened for 100 hours, flavored with aniseed, vin santo, and orange flower water.

From the mountainous Marciana area, covered in chestnut groves, come typical dishes made with chestnuts, such as castagnaccio, chestnut fritters, and boiled chestnuts with wild fennel seeds.

Before the rise of tourism, this area was also known for its pastoralism (evidenced by the large number of goat farms found in the hills) and with it, the production of cheeses and ricottas – primarily for family needs and bartering – and the consumption of goat meat. A typical dish was ventrazzino, goat tripe stuffed and usually prepared by men, who would enjoy it as a hearty snack, generously washed down with red wine.

Coastal Towns

Fish-based dishes are typical of coastal towns such as Marciana Marina and Portoferraio, where recipes abound that combine the poorest fish or leftover catch with the products of the land, and vice versa, the products of the land are enriched with the flavors of the sea. Thus originated dishes like cuttlefish with chard, stuffed cuttlefish or simply spicy (cooked in a pan with garlic, oil, rosemary, white wine, and plenty of chili), salted cod with chickpeas, and stockfish with potatoes (typical Christmas Eve dishes), octopus with potatoes or simply boiled, which in Portoferraio is eaten with a fork, called octopus Elban-style (those over twenty remember the Portoferraio octopus seller, armed with a large pot and forks, selling octopus at the corner of Via del Mercato Vecchio, accompanied by the small wine from Castagnacciaio), the more refined spaghetti alla margherita (a local name for the spider crab), stuffed sardines, and black cabbage with anchovy paste.

With the leftover fish, they would prepare cacciucco, a fish soup made from less valuable fish left in the fisherman's basket (which, it is said, Napoleon was particularly fond of), rice with cuttlefish ink, and panzanella, made from stale or toasted bread (originally from Portoferraio, where there was the island's only biscuit factory, now the site of the town hall), soaked in water and enriched with onions, green peppers, tomatoes, tunny (the by-products of tuna processing), and anchovies.