The pastry of central-southern Italy includes some confectionery preparations that have similar denominations (sise, sighs, minni) both with reference to the nuns and to the figure of Sant'Agata. In the city of Guardiagrele in Abruzzo, the "sise delle nuns" are a confectionery preparation already patented in the late 800s; a simple circular base of sponge cake, on which a rich layer of custard is placed, then covered with three rounded protuberances that clearly resemble breasts.
Before being served, the dessert is dusted with icing sugar. The recipe actually contains undisclosed ingredients that allow the dessert itself to keep soft and elastic for many hours. The atlas of typical Abruzzo products includes the preparation among the Traditional Agri-Food Products of the region.
The legend creates an assonance between the shape of the cake and the three peaks of the Maiella, located right next to the city; perhaps the shape seems to be inspired by the handkerchief that the nuns inserted into the breast and which involuntarily produced a third protuberance.
Despite the relatively recent patent, it is not excluded that the dessert was prepared by the nuns as an activity necessary for the maintenance of the convent and that only in a later phase, when the new Kingdom of Italy had assumed its marked institutional connotation, was it patented by a craftsman in order to be authorized for sale. Only two pastry shops in the city of Guardiagrele produce this dessert today.
In reality, these 'anthropomorphic' foods originate from the ex-votos which already in Greek times were presented at the temple of Asclepius in Greece, to curry favor with the divinity. There are numerous similar votive offerings found in numerous sanctuaries in central Italy, three of which are on display at the Civitella museum in Chieti.
The martyrdom of St. Agatha by removal of her breasts is documented in numerous paintings from the Renaissance period and the event was used by the Church to remove the rampant paganism still in use in rural populations.
The offering of the breast was the highest form of renunciation of femininity that martyrdom itself had imposed on Agata. The subsequent invocation of graces that women addressed to the transcendent for the breast was connected to the availability of milk to raise the offspring and the number of breasts was functional to the abundance of mother's milk needed.
In Frascati, a dessert that is still very popular today is the pupa depicting a girl with three breasts, a legacy of those ancestral votive offerings so widespread between Lazio and Abruzzo. It is therefore no wonder that in the distant past the nuns produced a sweet in which the representation of the breasts was the symbol of a generous and original motherhood which they had renounced for the benefit of the local population.
