Chocolate and its city: Modica

The Chocolate Museum

Modica represents a kind of chocolate eldorado, still prepared according to a traditional Spanish technique, itself imported from Central America. It is a chocolate "of unparalleled flavor," as writer Leonardo Sciascia said, "so that to those who taste it it seems to have arrived at the archetype, at the absolute..." The Modica Chocolate Museum, set up inside the Palazzo dei Mercedari at the beginning of central Corso Umberto I, is dedicated to this unique production.

Demonstration of traditional manufacturing at the Chocolate Museum of Modica

The recipe of the Aztecs

A landmark of local entrepreneurship is theAntica Dolceria Bonajuto, active since 1880, where cocoa is cold-processed, with cinnamon and vanilla, according to the traditional Aztec recipe imported by the Spanish. The result is a very distinctive chocolate: brown in color with gray highlights, crumbly and slightly grainy, somewhat astringent on the palate. The recommendation is to enjoy it with local wheat bread, as in the days when it was a popular food.

In the early 16th century it was the Spanish conquistadors, returning from the New World, who introduced chocolate to Europe. In its homeland, the product of cocoa bean processing was a stimulating food consumed by Aztec warriors before going into battle. The idea was to make it a widely distributed confectionery product, and so it was that under Spanish rule it was adopted by the city Modica, the only remaining custodian of that ancient manufacture.

The display case of Antica Dolceria Bonaiuto

Chocolate in the kitchen

Also a Modican specialty are the 'mpanatigghie, crescents of dough filled with meat and chocolate, which nobles once carried in their carriages as travel food. This is not the only example of Sicily's use of cocoa in savory cuisine: just travel to Enna to taste an amazing rabbit with chocolate.