APULICA / FRESH PASTA, BREAD AND PASTRY
Ceglie biscuit
PAT · Slow Food Presidium · Fresh pasta, bread and pastry · Puglia
In brief
- A roughly cube-shaped almond-paste sweet, made from almonds partly blanched and partly toasted, with a jam centre. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie · Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Biscotto di Ceglie Messapica)
- The dough includes sugar, honey, lemon zest, citrus rosolio and eggs; it may be glazed with sugar and sometimes cocoa. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie · Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Biscotto di Ceglie Messapica)
- The Presidium's rules require raw materials from the Ceglie Messapica area, starting with the local cegliese almond. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie)
- In Ceglie it is a fixture of feast days and was once put in wedding favours; it is made all year round. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie · Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Biscotto di Ceglie Messapica)
History and origin
In Ceglie Messapica, a small gastronomic capital of the Brindisi area, an almond-paste biscuit has been made for hundreds of years; locals call it piscquett'l and regard it almost as a town emblem. The bond with the almond is old: as early as 1792 Vincenzo Corrado, describing the produce of the Kingdom of Naples, singled out these lands for their excellent almond groves.
The biscuit has a long rural tradition. In Ceglie homes it was never missing at major feasts and wedding banquets, and it was a fixture of wedding favours. The women of the town make it in endless variations, as an essential part of their culinary know-how.
Over time the original ingredients were lost and the process was simplified. To recover them a protection consortium and the Slow Food Presidium were created; the biscuit is also listed among Puglia's traditional products.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie · Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Biscotto di Ceglie Messapica · Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026)
Area and method of production
The main ingredient is the almond, preferably of the Cegliese variety, called du riviézz in dialect, the robin's almond, because it is so tender and juicy that small birds love it. The almonds, half blanched in water and half toasted, are finely ground without losing the grain of the nut, then mixed with sugar, honey, grated lemon zest and citrus rosolio, and firmed with eggs, about four per kilo.
The dough is spread by hand into strips 12-14 centimetres wide and 35-40 long, a centimetre and a half thick. Jam is spread along the edge, the strip is folded over and rolled, then cut into squares of about five centimetres that bake for some twenty minutes.
The Presidium's rules require every ingredient, eggs and citrus included, to come from the Ceglie countryside, with the sole exception of sugar.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie · Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Biscotto di Ceglie Messapica
How to recognise it
The Ceglie biscuit is irregularly cube-shaped and dark in colour. Inside it hides a heart of jam: in the Presidium's tradition made from local cherry varieties such as capa di seta, mascialora and cirasona, or from grapes of native Brindisi vines; the regional record also mentions versions with sour cherry or fig.
The almond paste stays slightly grainy, because the grinding never quite erases the texture of the nut. It may be flavoured with coffee or finished with a light sugar glaze, sometimes with cocoa, which locals call gileppatura or gileppapura and which helps the biscuit keep longer.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie · Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Biscotto di Ceglie Messapica
In the kitchen
The Ceglie biscuit is a dessert for the end of a meal and for celebrations. The regional record suggests pairing it with a rosolio, the sweet home-made liqueur, or with the area's sweet wines, such as Aleatico and naturally sweet Primitivo.
It is the sweet of special occasions: in Ceglie homes it is always there at festivities and in the past it was the star of wedding favours. It is made all year round, and its light glaze, as well as adding shine, serves precisely to make it last longer.
Sources: Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Biscotto di Ceglie Messapica · Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie
Where to taste it
The Presidium's production area is the municipality of Ceglie Messapica, in the province of Brindisi, a farming territory of some 13,000 hectares still rich in biodiversity, where around forty local almond varieties survive, from Sepp d'amic to Spappacarnale, from Zia Pasqua to Mingunna, though reduced to a few trees.
In Ceglie the biscuit can be found in the town's bakeries, bars and pastry shops, and it also appears on the menus of Ceglie restaurants, sometimes in reinterpreted versions; the regional record also mentions direct sales by producers. Visitors to Ceglie can taste it where it was born, perhaps with a glass of local sweet wine.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie · Atlante dei PAT di Puglia (Regione Puglia, Università di Bari) — Biscotto di Ceglie Messapica
Protection
- Traditional agri-food product (PAT) — Puglia, n. 206, 26th revision (Masaf — Elenco nazionale dei prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali, XXVI revisione (2026))
- Slow Food Presidium — biscotto-di-ceglie (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie)
When
- Production: all year round (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Biscotto di Ceglie)
Where
Read more
Ceglie biscuit
Ceglie Messapica's piscquett'l: local almonds, Brindisi cherries and grapes, Slow Food Presidium and PAT, weddings and favours, and a day between castle, collegiate church and trulli.
Read the guide →