Typical Christmas meal

Typical dishes of Italian cuisine

The Italian Christmas dishes include Baccalá (salted dried cod fish), pasta, baked pasta, capon and turkey. The traditional Christmas dinner includes seven types of fish, or nine, eleven, thirteen or, depending on the city of origin.

This meal is called "The Vigil Napolitana" in southern cities and includes a vegetable: broccoli and therefore is also known as Christmas broccoli, eel and caponata di pesce (fish salad) to complete the main course .

The traditional sweets

The traditional sweets are also important for the Christmas menu in Italy. Many of them originated in convents, where nuns were a special kind of sweets to celebrate religious holidays such as Christmas, presenting them as gifts. Each convent was a particular type of sweet.

These desserts are struffoli (Neapolitan honey pastry), Cenci (strips of fried dough sprinkled with sugar power), dried figs, candied almonds, nuts and marzipan fruits and vegetables.

Also sweet bread, which has different names depending on the region: panforte (a specialty of Siena) and pandolce (a specialty of Genoa).