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Acerra dente di morto bean

Slow Food Presidium · PAT · Fruit, vegetables and pulses · Campania

Apulica editorial team · Sources checked:

In brief

History and origin

The countryside of Acerra, on the plain between Naples and Caserta, owes its fertility to water. In pre-Roman times it was crossed by the Clanio, a river whose branches eventually turned the area into marshland; after difficult centuries farming resumed around the year 1000, and from the sixteenth century land reclamation, with bridges and canals, gradually returned new fields to agriculture. Today the canals of the Regi Lagni still cross the fields and mark their boundaries.

White beans already appear in eighteenth-century local chronicles: Canon Andrea Sarnataro, who kept a daily record of life in Acerra from 1736 to 1771, sets them apart from black-eyed beans, called «mostrati» in dialect. In 1931 the Touring Club Italiano's Guida Gastronomica d'Italia named them the town's speciality, exported at the time as far as America.

The name comes from the colour, an opaque white reminiscent of a tooth; according to the Presidium, the ancient burial grounds in the area made the association feel natural to local people. From the early twentieth century until the 1970s the bean trade was an important part of Acerra's economy.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Fagiolo dente di morto di Acerra · Regione Campania — Fagiolo dente di morto (prodotto tradizionale)

Area and method of production

The Presidium area includes Acerra, Brusciano, Mariglianella, Marigliano, Castello di Cisterna and Pomigliano d'Arco in the province of Naples, plus Maddaloni and San Felice a Cancello in the province of Caserta. The Campania Region names the Acerra-Nola plain as the traditional area, with deep volcanic soils of medium texture rich in nutrients: these soils are credited with the thin skin and quick cooking.

It is grown in two seasons, from April to July and from July to October, with a cycle of about 100-105 days. The plant is low and bushy, with deep green leaves and white flowers; it is sown by hand or by machine in rows about 70 centimetres apart and needs water mainly while the seeds swell.

Picking is done by hand; shelling is done with a thresher or by hand, then the seeds are sorted and packed by hand and kept somewhere cool in jute or hemp sacks. After decades of decline the variety survived only in family vegetable plots, until a regional programme to recover vegetable biodiversity brought it back to the fields of a small group of growers.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Fagiolo dente di morto di Acerra · Regione Campania — Fagiolo dente di morto (prodotto tradizionale)

How to recognise it

The dente di morto is a cannellino bean: the seed is opaque white, cylindrical and slightly kidney-shaped, medium-large, weighing about half a gram each. A pod usually holds four to six; at the waxy stage the pod is between light green and pale yellow.

It is eaten in two ways: fresh, still waxy, when in Naples it is called «spollichino», or dried. Its most prized feature is the skin, so thin that it can barely be felt on the palate, together with a creamy texture and a full, distinct flavour.

Cooking sets it apart too: it softens quickly and does not need long hours on the stove, a quality that tradition links to the volcanic soils to which the variety has adapted over time.

Sources: Regione Campania — Fagiolo dente di morto (prodotto tradizionale) · Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Fagiolo dente di morto di Acerra

In the kitchen

For generations the bean was one of the staples of the farming diet on the Acerra plain, grown on almost every farm. Its creamy texture makes it a typical ingredient of Neapolitan cooking, and the dish that best represents it is pasta e fagioli, made smooth by beans that partly break down as they cook.

It also goes into many soups, where the thin skin and quick cooking are an advantage. Fresh, as spollichino, it is cooked in season; dried, it accompanies home cooking all year round.

The Slow Food Presidium works precisely to bring this cannellino back to the Naples market: whoever finds it can try it in the simple dishes where tradition has always given it pride of place.

Sources: Regione Campania — Fagiolo dente di morto (prodotto tradizionale) · Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Fagiolo dente di morto di Acerra

Where to taste it

The bean is found in the towns of the Presidium area, on the plain north-east of Naples: Acerra, its historic home and a supporter of the Presidium, then Brusciano, Mariglianella, Marigliano, Castello di Cisterna and Pomigliano d'Arco, as far as Maddaloni and San Felice a Cancello on the Caserta side.

Production is small, in the hands of a few market gardeners in the Presidium who aim to bring it back to the markets of Naples and the surrounding area; the Presidium page lists the growers' contacts. Harvest follows the two growing seasons, in July and in autumn, while the dried beans keep for the rest of the year.

A visit to the Acerra plain is a chance to see the landscape of the Regi Lagni canals, which made farming on this plain possible.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Fagiolo dente di morto di Acerra

Protection

When

Where

Campania