Confetti Crispo

Alomond dragees: the origin

The word CONFETTO (sugared almond) is of Latin derivation, from the past participle of conficere, that means hand-made. In the middle Ages this term was used for jam or for dried fruits covered with honey, not for almond dragees as we know it today.
But, when was the almond dragee born?
This is not an easy question, it's really hard trying to position the birth of this sweet. Maybe the fist dragee was used for therapeutic aims ( the medicine was covered with sugar to make it more tasty), and it seemed to be invented by an Arab, Al Razi.
This is just a little curiosity, because in the opinion of some historian, the birth of dragee was in the 1200, a period in which almonds and aniseed were covered with hardened honey. This products were the ancestors of the dragees as we know them today.
The nobles families appreciated a lot these sweets, and they kept them in precious and decorated boxes that later would have become boxes of sweets (two centuries later). We have notice of this kind of dragees in Venice in the XIII century, they came from the Far East, where it was in the habit to throw these sweets from the balcony of the noble family to the joyful people during the CARNASCIALI celebrations.
But we can still go back in time, because in the opinion of some historian the origin of the dragees was in the roman period, when people used to throw little sweets made of almond, honey and wheat meal, during the wedding or during the celebrations for the birth.
Until now we have spoken about dragees made with honey and not with sugar, this is because we have to wait until the XV century to have sugar, infact it was exported from the west Indies in that period and from that period until now, sugar became the protagonist in the production of dragees.

A lot of writers and poets like Leopardi, Carducci, Verga, Pascoli, D'Annunzio and others spoke about dragees, and they asserted that them enrich the important ceremonies and lunches.

You have even to consider that there is a particular colour for each ceremony, for example the tradition wants white dragees for weddings, that indicate the purity of the bride, pink dragees for the birth of a little girl, that indicate thecolour of the blood and of the fertility, sky blue dragees for little boy, that indicate the colour of the sky and of the future moral loftiness .
We want to conclude this short excursus with some verse:

E non è bella festa veramente dove il confetto non sia presente, e battesimi e nascite e sponsali senza confetti son feste banali.

A party is not really good if there aren't dragees, baptisms, births and weddings without dragees are banal ceremonies.