Amaretti Guide: From Crisp Saronno to Soft Sassello

Published 14 Oct 20266 min read

An amaretto, in the Italian dictionary sense, is a little bitter thing. Treccani, the standard Italian dictionary, derives the word from amaro, bitter, as a diminutive, and defines the cookie as a round, flattened, crunchy sweet made from a paste of crushed sweet and bitter almonds with sugar and egg white, baked in the oven. Every amaretto on a plate today is some variation on that formula. The variations are the interesting part: why one snaps like a cracker and another bends like marzipan, where the sharp perfume comes from, and how a cookie ended up inside a plate of pasta.

What amaretti are made of

Strip an amaretto to its ingredient list and there is almost nothing there. Chiostro's crunchy amaretti, made in Saronno in Lombardy, list sugar, egg whites and apricot kernels. La Sassellese's crunchy amaretti from Liguria list sugar, apricot kernels, almonds and egg white. There is no flour and no butter in either. The egg white whipped with sugar gives structure, the nuts give body, and the small measure of something bitter gives the cookie its name.

That bitter element is the signature. Italian bakers call apricot kernels armelline: the almond-shaped seed inside an apricot pit. Chiostro's own description is that the armelline supply the bitterness that balances the sugar. Some recipes use bitter almonds instead, or a blend; the effect is the same.

Where the marzipan smell comes from

The aroma that rises from a just-opened amaretti tin is a single molecule doing most of the work. Bitter almonds and apricot kernels contain amygdalin, the compound that makes them taste bitter. A 2018 study of California almond varieties in Acta Horticulturae lays out the chemistry: amygdalin breaks down in steps into glucose and benzaldehyde, and benzaldehyde is associated with the almond-like aroma. Food scientists working with apricot kernels describe the same breakdown of the kernel's amygdalin into benzaldehyde.

That is why a cookie made mostly of sweet almonds smells intensely of almond once a few bitter kernels go in. Sweet almonds carry very little amygdalin; the kernel carries the perfume. It is also why amaretti, almond extract, marzipan and amaretto liqueur all smell like relatives. They share the molecule.

Crisp or soft: two traditions

	Crisp (Saronno style)	Soft (Sassello style)
Home	Saronno, Lombardy	Sassello, inland Liguria
Base	Sugar, egg white, apricot kernel; little or no almond	Almonds with a measure of armelline, sugar, egg white
Texture	Light, dry, shatters	Small, soft and crumbly, chewy at the center
Keeps	Long, if kept dry	Softness fades as it dries
Use first	Crushed into fillings and crumbles	With coffee, on a dessert plate

Crisp amaretti are the ones most people picture: domed, crackled, each wrapped in tissue paper. Chiostro describes its tower-tin amaretti as following the historic Saronno recipe, flourless, slow baked for moisture reduction, prominent in sweet almond and bitter apricot kernel notes and distinctly crunchy (shop Chiostro crunchy amaretti). With so much sugar and so little moisture, they keep a long time in a closed tin and crush into fine, even crumbs, which makes them the amaretto for cooking.

Soft amaretti belong to Sassello, a hill town in the Ligurian Apennines inland from Savona. The Italian parks portal lists the Amaretto of Sassello as a traditional agri-food product (PAT), made to a recipe that dates to the 1800s. A Liguria-funded regional food guide describes the result as small, soft and crumbly pastries, with almonds, sugar, egg white and a small proportion of armelline in the dough. More almond and less baking leave a moist center that gives under the teeth. La Sassellese makes a crunchy Ligurian amaretto suited to crumbling (shop La Sassellese amaretti).

Between the two sit the tender, almond-rich amaretti of Tuscan bakeries. Le Dolcezze di Nanni, near Siena, flavors its tender amaretti with lemon and orange; the ingredient list leads with almonds at 44 percent, and each one is wrapped individually (shop Le Dolcezze di Nanni lemon and orange amaretti).

Amaretti in the pasta

The most surprising place an amaretto turns up is inside a plate of tortelli. In Mantua, tortelli di zucca, pasta parcels filled with roasted pumpkin, are a signature dish, and the filling is unexpectedly sweet. A 2002 bill in the Italian Chamber of Deputies to promote the "tortello di zucca" lists the fundamental ingredients of the filling, to be mixed and left to rest: pumpkin, chopped Mantuan mostarda (the mustard-spiked candied fruit), crushed amaretti and grana cheese.

The same bill quotes a Christmas Eve custom recorded by the food writer Renzo Dall'Ara: the tortelli were dressed in layers in a large tureen, and some were left in the tureen overnight for the family's dead, who would come to eat them on Christmas night. The tortello, the bill says, should be seen as a relic of the food history of a province rich in trade, and many believe it dates from the Middle Ages.

Making the filling at home is straightforward. Roast a dense, sweet winter squash until very soft and dry, then mash about 500 g of the flesh with 40 g of finely crushed crisp amaretti, 40 g of finely chopped mostarda, 50 g of finely grated grana and a little nutmeg and salt. Rest it overnight so the crumbs soak up the squash, then fill fresh pasta. Butter and sage are the classic dressing. Mantua uses apple mostarda; a pear mostarda brings the same sweet heat (shop Casa Forcello pear mostarda).

Other ways to use amaretti

With coffee. The simplest use. A soft amaretto beside an espresso, or a crisp one dipped into it. The coffee collection has the beans.
Crumbled over fruit. Crushed crisp amaretti over roasted peaches, baked pears or a bowl of berries and cream add crunch and almond perfume at once.
Stuffed peaches. Mix crushed amaretti with cocoa, an egg yolk and a little sugar, pile it into halved peaches and bake until soft.
In a crust. Swap some or all of the graham crackers in a cheesecake or tart crust for amaretti crumbs.
In tiramisu. Scatter crushed amaretti between the layers for crunch, or soak crisp ones in coffee in place of some of the ladyfingers.

Keep crisp amaretti in a sealed tin away from humidity, and keep soft ones wrapped so they stay tender. A crisp amaretto that has gone soft is still fine for crumbling into a filling; a soft one that has dried out can be crushed the same way.

Short answers

Are amaretti made with amaretto liqueur? No. The cookie and the liqueur share a flavor because both rely on bitter almond or apricot kernel, not because one contains the other.

Are amaretti gluten free? Traditional recipes contain no flour, as the ingredient lists above show. Check each package for the maker's own statement, since cross-contact depends on the bakery.

What is the difference between amaretti and biscotti? Biscotti are a flour dough baked twice; amaretti are a flourless meringue of nuts, sugar and egg white baked once. The guide to biscotti, cantucci and butter cookies covers the twice-baked family, and the sweets and bakery collection has both.

Three ingredients and one bitter kernel turn out to be enough for a cookie that runs from coffee bar to Christmas table. Taste a crisp one and a soft one side by side and the whole story is on the plate: the same perfume, two different ideas of what a cookie should do.