Pasticceria Savarese, opened in 1982 by sisters Piera, Pina and Grazia Saverese, sits in south-east Rome doing what good neighbourhood bakeries do: holding a tradition in place through sheer consistency. The house speciality is la pastiera Napoletana — the ricotta-and-wheat-berry latticed tart that is technically Easter food but, here, available year-round. The mostaccioli are the shop's secondary recommendation, the diamond-shaped, chocolate-enrobed biscuit-cakes that a Neapolitan friend who 'dislikes cooking as much as she likes eating' told Roddy to try. That provenance — the friend who knows — is load-bearing. These are not the pastry shop's signature for nothing. Mostaccioli belong to a category of heavily spiced sweet confection that runs through medieval European cookery and never quite left. The Renaissance chef Bartolomeo Scappi mentions them from both Naples and Milan in his encyclopaedic work; his Milanese version whips eggs, sugar, flour, coriander and anise into a twice-baked batter. Three centuries later, Vincenzo Corrado — the 'gallant cook' of the Neapolitan court — gives several versions, including one with flour, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and water, kneaded, left to ferment for two days, then rolled and baked free-form. Roddy sides with Vincenzo: good instinct. The fermentation step and the aromatic openness of his recipe is where the depth comes from. The name's folk etymology loops back to mustum — grape must, the dense syrup from boiled-down grape juice — and there's a plausible class argument here: Scappi and Corrado wrote for courts with sugar budgets; grape must (mostocotto, or saba) was the affordable sweetener in humbler kitchens. Roddy offers the substitution triangle honestly: mostocotto if you can find it, golden syrup or treacle otherwise. The modern irony is that mostocotto is no longer cheap — but it does deliver more complexity, a fruity depth that honey approximates but doesn't match. The recipe itself is structurally honest. Five hundred grams of plain flour, 150g ground almonds, 50g cocoa powder, spices (cinnamon, cloves), orange zest and juice, sugar dissolved with honey in water. Mixed to a dough, rested 30 minutes, rolled to 6-8mm, cut into 8cm diamonds, baked at 180°C for 12-14 minutes — crucially, until still soft and light, not darkened. Then full submersion in melted dark chocolate via a two-fork dipping method, returned to a rack to set. The chocolate-setting window is wide: 20-50 minutes depending on kitchen temperature, with a 10-15 minute fridge rescue available if things are dragging. The comparison Roddy draws — mostaccioli as relatives of Yorkshire parkin, gingerbread and lebkuchen — is exactly right and genuinely useful framing. These are all slow-improving baked goods: the spices deepen, the honey keeps the crumb supple, and the chocolate shell locks in moisture rather than drying the biscuit out. Store in a tin, cool place, and what you have in a week is better than what you had on day one. This is not a caveat — it's the whole point. Roddy's recipe produces about 30, which means you can eat some immediately (you will) and still have enough to age properly.
