# Old Italian pastry recipes



## dominick

I am trying to locate pastry recipes that I grew up with back in the 40's.

1) The Italian rum wedding cake.
2) Partichini pastry
3) Napolitan pastry
All help would be appreciated.


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## mudbug

Welcome to Cheftalk. Can you please describe the Partichini pastry?
What does it look like? What are typical ingredients? Country of origin? Or heritage?

Recipes for Italian Rum Cake:

http://www.google.com/search?client=...ppa+Inglese%22

http://www.google.com/search?num=100...gs&btnG=Search

pastiera napoletana
http://www.ischiamarket.com/english/ricettepastiera.htm
http://www.recipelink.com/mf/2/9542

Neapolitan Cake
http://english.incucina.tv/recipes/r...ke/ricetta.asp

More: http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8


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## dominick

I find it hard to describe what was in this pastry.
The time I tasted this pastry was back in the 40"s.
It was baked by Salvatore Piantedosi from Avellino, Italy. He opened his bread and pastry business in 1916 in Everett, Massachusetts. His sons now bake and distribute bread only throughout the U.S. from Malden Mass.
The only one I know who makes this pastry is in a small bakery in Woodlawn, Mass. In fact they make all of the above pastries.
I am now in my 70's and live in Florida where bakeries never heard of the above pastries. In my opinion, this pastry was to die for.
I don,t know if this info will help.


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## mezzaluna

I know where some Italian cooks and chefs hang out: Slow Travel They have a food and cooking forum. One member is a CIA-trained pastry chef who has her own cooking school; she's very personable and may be able to help you. Here is her site. There are many other helpful food enthusiasts with ideas. They're as friendly as we are here.


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## dominick

MEZZALUNA
Thank you for your help. I'll give them a try.

Thanks to all who responded to my questions.


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## keeperofthegood

Well, not to show late, but to say I understand what you are after. If not the actual pastries. There are many things of my childhood I enjoyed that have dissapeared with time, and my own mind is a sieve. I can close my eyes and remember a taste or an aroma, but I can not remember a name to save my life 

Good luck and keep us apprised of how you make out.


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## dominick

Hi, I'm back.
I just flew in from the North End in Boston and found the pastry I was asking about.
It is called PERUGINI and it's ingredients I'm guessing is as follows:
The top layer is a pastry dough sprinkled with powdered sugar.
Then there is about a 1/4" layer of Italian cream (whatever that is).
The center has some sort of sponge cake between 1" & 1-1/2" thick soaked with boiled run (?)
Then another layer of Italian cream.
Finally a bottom layer of pastry dough.

I don't know if this helps. If it makes sense to you I would appreciate a breakdown of this recipe so I can try to make it myself.
Thanks for all your help,
Dominick


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## nowiamone

epicurious.com had a great italian food forum, you could find most recipes there, and many of them would appear with differant names, as Italian families and regions make there own names for a favorite recipe.


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## dominick

MEZZALUNA
MUDBUG
Did the two of you give up on me?


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## jade

Hi, My grandfather came to this country from Sicliy and settled in the North End of Boston. I have fond memories of him coming to my Dad's house on Sundays with these miniture creampuffs, like a Dunkin munchkin filled with cream and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Also a sunday favorite was the Parigini made with soft cake layers with rum and topped with powdered sugar. You can find these at Mikes Pastry in the North End of Boston. The website to go to would be mikespastry.com. You probably have already found information, but I thought I would pass this along since I long for these old favorites too. They are hard to find in South Carolina! Thanks for the memories.

Jade


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## marzi0510

Dominick,

I know you wrote your message a WHILE ago...but are you still interested in that recipe for the parigini?

Marzi


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## m brown

So, my grandmother called a pastry bikki nuts.

it was an italian sweet with a short crust, pastry cream, lattus top egg wash and pignoli, dusted with 10x.


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## siduri

Hi Dominick
I grew up in the boston area in the 50s (born in medford, moved to burlington at 4) - actually went to school with piantedosi's daughter - and my parents were born in italy and were brought to the states as children and grew up in the north end and in charlestown. Anyway, i never liked those italian pastries as a kid - too rum-soaked for me! Or too dry. But i remember them pretty well. 

your number `1 is probably a genoise soaked in the kind of rum syrup like you'd use for baba' au rhum - it's fairly common here to soak cakes in liquer-flavored syrup. Then a pastry cream in the middle. I remember looking forward to desert when i'd go to people's houses for dinner as a kid and getting this, which i couldn't stand. Here in rome they tend to use the liqueur alchermes instead of rum, which no kid in his right mind likes, and they still insist on putting this syrup on the cakes for birthday parties. Growing up in an italian household where wine was always on the table, and grownups were always trying to get me to taste it ("just put your finger in it" "yuck! it's sour!") i ended up not much liking alcohol at all. It was never considered a problem to offer kids rum cake. But i hated it.

number 2 is probably a misspelling of "pasticcini" (pronounced pah-stee-CHEE-nee) and probably a typo or a misreading of a handwritten s as an r - but all it means is "little pastries" so i don;t know what it would be. Here pasticcini means little cookies, little cream puffs, little tarts. Maybe you can describe what it is you used to have. 

number 3 you'd also have to describe - it simply means the pastry they make in naples, and naples makes hundreds of pastries - while caterina de medici brought italian pastry to france, the french elaborated them and brought them to naples, and in naples you have baba' and cream puffs and brioche and other stuff that is clearly french in origin. they even have "catto'" which is a mispronunciation and misspelling of gateau!

someone mentioned cream filled things which are probably zeppole di san giuseppe - at the feast of saint joseph they make what is essentially cream puff batter that is fried rather than baked and fill it with cream and with lots of powdered sugar on top - in march the pastry shops are full of them, and i remember them being sold in the north end too.

The one with the sponge cake and pastry crust and cream is what i believe they call a diplomatico. it's just that, thin puff pastry, a layer of liqueur soaked sponge or genoise, a layer of pastry cream and another layer of pastry with sugar on top

someone mentioned the cake with pastry crust and cream and pinoli - that would probably be what they call "torta della nonna" here in rome, and you can probably find a recipe for it. I can't imagine what bikki nuts would be - bicchi (which would be the italian spelling) doesn;t mean anything as far as i know. it may be an Anglification of something but i can't imagine what. 

hope that helps. 
Having the correct spelling helps with the google searches, so you might look them up.


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## mezzaluna

Sorry, DOMINICK, I don't have anything further. Did you get any nibbles at Slow Talk? Shannon has published a book about food in Venice; I don't know if that will help. Otherwise, I could only direct you to "Diva", who is a CIA-trained pastry chef from California. You can try her site, www.divinacucina.com. I think she has given up her cooking school, but she'd have some insights for you. Please tell her I said hello! I met her in Florence five years ago.


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## dominick

Hi Marzi,
I'm sorry about not responding any sooner, but us old folks tend to get sick easily.
I definitely am interested in this recipe . You made my taste buds drool when I read your reply.
Thank you for responding.

Dominick


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## mandarin.mint

Hi Dominick,

Is this what the pasticcini looks like?









Here is a recipe I found :
Adriana's Italian Recipe for Pasticcini

Don't know if that's what you're looking for. Good luck!


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## redvech

Siduri said: "I can't imagine what bikki nuts would be - bicchi (which would be the italian spelling) doesn;t mean anything as far as i know. it may be an Anglification of something but i can't imagine what." 

My grandmother used to call a similar pastry "Boogie-Naught" This spelling only represents the pronounciation, not the correct spelling. Hope it helps.


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## siduri

still doesn;t sound like anything i know, redvech. It sounds like "buchi" (pronounced boo-key) which means holes, buchino wouild mean small holes, but doesn;t make sense and doesn;t have a final t. 
I'm no expert on this, just that i speak italian, but there are so many dialects, now i'm really curious. 
The pastry case, pastry cream, lattice top and pinoli is "torta della nonna" (grandma's cake) in rome. but i think i said that.


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## siduri

Just got an inspiration. I remember my grandmother and mother used to make pies with pasta frolla and either ricotta, or a sort of rice pudding baked in, and made a decoration with nthe dough around the edge, which if i had a pen here, i could draw, - you make a diagonal cut in the extra dough, fold it over, so you get a triangular point sticking out from the pie, do it all around and then with your hands, bend them in so they go over the pie, making a border of triangles. This was called "i becchi" - the beaks. 
becchi is pronounced "bek-kee"- small ones would be called becchini (though that also means gravedigger). 
couldthis be what you're talking about?


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## boar_d_laze

Crostatta ricotta -- with pasta frolla i becchi. I do that!

BDL


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## redvech

Siduri - 
Mandarin.mint posted a picture closer to what I remember. it did not have a lattice top, and had a pudding-like filling.


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## siduri

yes, torta della nonna has pudding filling, not ricotta, and the pine nuts on top, though generally no lattice. The becchi, as bdl says, are usually on ricotta pie, or rice pie as i know it, but piantedosi might habve been making something from a particular region or even town in italy.


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## pazzo

Interesting, I just returned from living in Perugia for several months and the people there are "i Perugini". I don't recognize that pastry at all, though.


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## poeagle

Dom: Did you ever get the rum cake recipe. I'm looking for one also. Great rum cake from Patsy's Bakery in Somerville Ma but can"t get the recipe.


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## homemadecook

It is somehow but still, can't deny the real goodness of this recipe. Sometimes, I miss eating and making one of those. 

Thanks for sharing.


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## linny29

All this talk of Italian cookies and pastries around the holidays is making me miss my grandma 

As far as the names go, I can remember my grandma arguing with her sister about the names of things. When I asked what the argument was, she explained to me that when a baker/cook changes something in the recipe they usually rename it to show that change (example: "chocolate chip cookies" changed to "chocolaty chunk cookies") ... so your name problems are probably just revisions of an recipe or a regional version of a recipe.

As far as recipes, I had planned to raid "grandmas recipe box" when I visit family over the holidays and I plan on getting most of the recipes listed here for me!


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## jayn

Parigini  - rum soaked sponge cake, layers of pastry and cream (cut into squares)  are a pastry at Mike's Pastry n the North End of Boston where I grew up. They still sell them.  Also had them in a few now out of business Italian pastry shops in east Boston, (Quality Bakery comes to mind) I am sure there are now others. I have had another version of this made into a cake - same ingredients. I think it is called Diplomatico.

Italian rum Cake can be bought at  most good Italian bakeries. Call ahead and ask. I just bought my mother one for her birthday when I drove to Boston. Also there are many good online recipes of this if you search.


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## lasvegaschef1

I am a Chef and do not bake (with good results). I am also a lover of Italian cakes, cookies & pastries.  My years of cooking and studying in Italy enabled me to make a great tiramisu -no cooking required. That is the extent of my "non savory cooking".   Canoli is something I grew up eating and learing to love.  The local Italian baker, Peter, spoke no English.  He was right "off the boat" and made the best  Italian pastry and cake I have ever eaten in my 50+years.  His canoli still has never been duplicated in my mind.  He also made fanstic baba au rum pastry and a rum cake that I remember my parents raving over.  Once I turned 18- I was allowed to eat a full piece of his rum cake.  Wow- what a memory.  All homemade fresh ingredients, no "cool whip or boxed pudding", Peter was one of a kind.  When I turned thirty, I went back to my old neighborhood to find Peter and get some pastry.  He was gone, the neighborhood had changed.  All I have  are my memories and the desire to someday find out what happened to him and his bake shop.


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## siduri

Lasvegas chef, where is your home town?


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## lasvegaschef1

I am originally from Long Island, NY.  I now live in Las Vegas, NV


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## patpastrychef

Hi Dominick:

Yes ... the pastry you are describing is, in fact, called a Paragini Pastry in Italian American pastry shops. In Italy this same pastry is called Il Diplomatico and uses Alchermes Liquor instead of Rum Flavoring in a simple syrup which is what Italian American Pastry Shops prefer in this wonderful pastry.

The Pastry is like a Napoleon or what Italian American pastry shops called a Neapolitan except that it contains the added bonus of a rum flavoring soaked sponge cake between the Italian Cream (Vanilla Pastry Cream) and puff pastry. See the image below:

*Paragini Italian American Pastry*


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## italian baker 1

Hi Domminick, Here is the recipe that I believe you are looking for. 

TORTA DIPLOMATICA

INGREDIENTS
2/3 batch of pasta sfogliata (RECIPE ON BOTTOM OF PAGE)

SPONGE CAKE
4 lg eggs
2 lg egg yolks
pinch salt
3/4C sugar
1C All Purpose flour

RUM SYRUP
1/4C sugar
1/3C water
3T dark rum

PASTRY CREAM FILLING
1/2C currants or golden raisins
3T dark rum
1C milk
1/4C sugar
3lg egg yolks
pinch salt
3T All Purpose flour
1 stick unsalted butter

confectioners’ sugar for dusting

PUFF PASTRY
Roll out the sfogliata dough on a floured surface into a 10 by 15 inch rectangle. Cut the dough into 2 rectangles each 10 by 7 ½ inches then roll each into a 10 inch square. Pierce the squares of dough all over with a fork and slide each onto a 10 by 15” pan lined with parchment or buttered wax paper. Chill the layers of dough overnight or several hours

Bake the layers at 350 for about 30 minutes until they are an even, deep golden color. Change the positions several times while cooking so that it is baked evenly. If they begin to puff excessively pierce the bubbles in the dough with a fork so that the layers remain flat. Remove the baked puff pastry layers to a cutting board and cut each layer into a 9” disk. Return the baked disks to the pans and cool. Crumble all the scraps finely to be used for finishing the torta

SPONGE CAKE
Butter a 9” by 2” deep round cake pan and line it with a disk or parchment or wax paper. Cut to fit. Combine the eggs, egg yolks, salt and sugar in a heat proof bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer. Whisk to mix. Place the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water and whisk until warm. About 100 to 105 degrees. Remove the bowl from the pan and whip on high speed with a hand mixer or heavy duty mixer fitted with a whip. Continue whipping until the mixture has lightened in color, cooled and increased about 4 times its original volume. Sift the flour over the egg foam in 3 or 4 additions, folding it in gently but thoroughly with a rubber spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake the layer at 325 for about 30 minutes until it is well risen, firm to the touch and a deep golden brown color. With a knife, loosen the cake from the sides of the pan and invert so your bottom side is now up. Invert again with the parchment still on the bottom of the cake so that your cake is right side up. Wrap in plastic and chill

RUM SYRUP
Bring the sugar and water to a boil in a small saucepan. Cool and stir in the rum.

PASTRY CREAM
Place the currants or raisins in a sauce pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, drain, and pour into a bowl and cover with rum. Allow to stand at room temperature while preparing the pastry cream. Bring the milk to a boil with half the sugar. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl with salt and whisk in the remaining sugar. Sift the flour over the yolk mixture and whisk it in smoothly. When the milk boils, whisk 1/3rd of it into the yolk mixture. Return the remaining milk to a boil and whisk in the yolk mixture. Continue to whisk until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Whisk constantly to prevent scorching. Scrape the cream into a clean bowl. To finish the filling beat the butter on medium speed until soft and light. Beat in the cooled pastry cream all at once then continue beating until the filling is smooth and light. Stir in the rum and currants (or raisins) by hand.

ASSEMBLY

Place one of the puff pastry disks onto a cardboard or platter. Spread with half the pastry cream filling. Moisten the top of the sponge cake with half of the rum syrup using a brush. Place the cake layer on the filling top side down. Moisten the other side with the remaining syrup. Spread the remaining filling on top. Top with remaining filling. Spread the filling that’s on the SIDES of the cake all around as if you were icing the side of a cake. Then press the scraps from the puff pastry on the side and dust with confectioners’ sugar

*****************************************************

Pasta Sfogliata
(Italian puff pastry)

Ingredients

DOUGH
2C AP flour
1t Salt
4 T unsalted butter, softened
1/3C white wine or white vermouth
1/3C cold water

BUTTER SQUARE
1/4C AP flour
2 sticks COLD butter

DIRECTIONS

For the dough, combine the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Cut the butter into 3 or 4 pieces and rub it thoroughly into the flour with your fingertips so that no pieces of butter remain visible make sure that the mixture remains cool and powdery and does not become pasty.

Combine the wine or vermouth with the water. Blend the liquid into the flour and butter mixture with a fork, working the fork, tines up, through the mixture from the bottom of the bowl upwards being careful NOT to stir, which would toughen the dough. Once all of the flour and butter mixture is evenly moistened it will look like a mass of rough curds; do not attempt to make the dough smooth. Cover the dough loosely and refrigerate it while preparing the butter square.

For the butter square, spread the remaining flour on a work surface and unwrap the chilled butter onto it. Turn the sticks of butter to coat them with the flour and pound them with a rolling pin to soften them to the point where you can easily make an indentation by pressing with a fingertip. With floured hands, press and squeeze the butter into a rough square, about 4 inches on a side. If the kitchen is warm, refrigerate the butter square while forming the dough that will envelop it.

Scrape off any bits of butter sticking to the work surface and scrape it out on the bowl onto the surface. Press the dough well with the palms of your hands once or twice to make sure all the bits of dough adhere. Flour the dough very lightly and roll it gently into a 5 x 10 inch rectangle.. place the square of butter at the narrow end of the rectangle closer to you and fold the other half of the dough over it.

Turn the package of dough so that the fold is on the left and roll it into a 6 x 12 inch rectangle. This time fold each narrow end of the dough towards the middle and fold again at the middle to make 4 layers.

Wrap the dough loosely in plastic and refrigerate about 1 hour. When you remove the dough from the fridge unwrap it and position it on a floured surface so that the fold is on the left. Flour the dough and roll it again into a 6 by 12 inch rectangle and give it another 4 layer fold. The dough is no finished and needs to rest again for about 3 to 4 hours before you use it to make your dessert


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## siduri

Ah, ok, I don;t know long island.  Oh well.


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## neculae

Great recipe!Delicious!


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## oli

Lasvegaschef1 said:


> I am a Chef and do not bake (with good results). I am also a lover of Italian cakes, cookies & pastries. My years of cooking and studying in Italy enabled me to make a great tiramisu -no cooking required. That is the extent of my "non savory cooking". Canoli is something I grew up eating and learing to love. The local Italian baker, Peter, spoke no English. He was right "off the boat" and made the best Italian pastry and cake I have ever eaten in my 50+years. His canoli still has never been duplicated in my mind. He also made fanstic baba au rum pastry and a rum cake that I remember my parents raving over. Once I turned 18- I was allowed to eat a full piece of his rum cake. Wow- what a memory. All homemade fresh ingredients, no "cool whip or boxed pudding", Peter was one of a kind. When I turned thirty, I went back to my old neighborhood to find Peter and get some pastry. He was gone, the neighborhood had changed. All I have are my memories and the desire to someday find out what happened to him and his bake shop.


I know the feeling exactly. It is kind of depressing and a feeling of loss. You sometimes wish you had gone back earlier, perhaps you could have recaptured those feelings and connected with people you knew. A real feeling of loss and of being left behind. Anyway that's how I've felt in going back to my old neighbourhoods.


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## nonnas favorite

Hello Everyone,

Just found this site and am so happy to be a new member!

Dominick's query is what got me interested, although I notice his last post on this thread was in 2008. I hope he's well (he mentions getting ill) and will check back because I might know to what he is referring! I am from Boston and my favorite Italian pastry shop is "Mike's" on Hanover Street in the North End, Boston's "Little Italy."  They make a wonderful pastry called "Paragina" (which translates to "The Parisian Girl") which is as Dominick described above---first pastry leaves, then Italian sponge doused in rum flavoring, a sweet Italian yellow pastry cream, another layer of all the above topped by the pastry leaves and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Although I love the version at Mike's, there is a good-natured rivalry in the North End that says "Modern Pastry" just down a couple of blocks, makes the best Paragini. You'll all have to come up to Boston and do your own taste test!  BTW: When I visited New York's "Little Italy" a few years ago and stopped at the famous Ferrara bake shop, what they called a "Paragina" was anything but the wonderful pastry that I described from Boston. Additionally, Dominick mentions a pastry called Napolitan.  I think he's referring to a "Napoleon" which, although a French dessert, has been borrowed (and improved upon, she says with some partisanship)  by Italian bakeries all over.  The problem is that as many bakeries as there are there are that many Italian variations.  Anyway, I've enjoyed reading all your comments and will check back from time to time.  My Nonna was a professional recipe developer for a major gourmet food company now long gone, and taught me all her secrets. Perhaps I'll be able to share some of them with you in the times ahead...Ciao for now!


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## brwneyedbaker

I believe the pastry you are talking about is called an Italian Napolean!

http://www.lucibellospastry.com/pastries/pastry7.jpg

It is puff pastry, PASTRY cream, white sponge cake that gets rum syrup brushed onto it, then more pastry cream and then another layer of puff pastry. I make it at the Italian bakery where I work.

The pastry cream you can find a recipe for online, white cake is easy to make (use a box if you must), the puff pastry you can probably just purchase at a grocery store in the freezer section and just cook it in the oven before assembling.  Then just shake powdered sugar on top. OH and the rum syrup would just be a simple syrup (water/sugar boiled on stove till boiling) then take off stove and add any rum you like, usually a dark rum. Let me know if this is what you wanted.


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## margcata

@ Italian Baker,

Thanx for posting the pastries ... and photo. They sound delicious and can certainly stimulate one´s appetite. I shall try out the next time we have dinner guests.

Margcata.


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## skihead

Hi .


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## ht2249

Hello Dominick

I'm very familiar with the North End, my grandparents and mother lived there before my grandfather moved them to Medford. Actually the name of the pastry you're looking for is a padigina.  I was up in Boston last week and bought some at the Modern.  The top is a layer similar to a puff pastry topped with powdered sugar and it is filled with a rum soaked sponge cake and the Italian Pastry cream.  I live in Virginia and Boston is the only place I know where you can buy them.  I do have good recipe for the pastry cream if you want to try.

Helena


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## siduri

Helena, you may have heard the rolled R in Parigina as a D (or maybe someone transliterated what they heard from someone else, and wrote it with the d.    Padigina is not a likely italian name, but parigina (meaning "Parisian") would make sense.


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## ht2249

Hi Siduri

The reason I spelled it with a "d" is because that's how it's spelled on the signs at the Modern Pastry and Mike's in the North End in Boston.


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## ht2249

Hi Nonna

I just found this site too, love it.   I was in Boston last week and I thought the written sign at the Modern spelled it with a d,  I'll check when I'm there in December.  You're right about the Modern,  theirs are the "best".  I grew up in East Boston and used to buy them at a pastry store that is long gone.  I'm going to be in NYC in Nov,  will have to stop at Ferraras and check out.  Where do you live in the Boston area?


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## siduri

ht2249 said:


> Hi Siduri
> 
> The reason I spelled it with a "d" is because that's how it's spelled on the signs at the Modern Pastry and Mike's in the North End in Boston.


Figured. Most italian americans are second generation and have never written italian or read it, so they transliterate what they remember their grandmothers saying, or the deformation when their parents said it. So since Modern Pastry was around when even I was a kid 60 years ago, i presume the current owners have never seen the original spelling. I always laugh when i go back to see how things are written - capicola for capocollo comes to mind.


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