Three ingredients. Sugar, egg white, and apricot kernels — which taste of bitter almond and are what gives an amaretto its name. No flour at all, which is why they shatter rather than crumble.
Lazzaroni has baked them to the same recipe in Saronno since 1718, and the company has kept it secret ever since.
The story attached to them is worth the tin on its own. In the early 1700s a young couple in Saronno learned that a bishop would visit. Having little, they made him a confection of sugar, egg whites, and crushed apricot kernels. He was so taken with it that he blessed their marriage, and wished them a long and happy life.
Each biscuit is wrapped in pairs in tissue paper with the ends twisted into a bow. In parts of England there is a tradition of standing the empty wrapper on end, setting the top alight, and watching the paper lift and float upward as it burns — a wish going up with it.
They are made for coffee. Crisp, dry, and bitter enough underneath the sugar to stand up to an espresso rather than dissolve into it. Crush one over ice cream if any survive the week.
One pound, in the red tin, which people keep long after the biscuits are gone.
