The Terre Sicane cuisine includes a multitude of dishes able to evoke rites, festivals and ceremonies. It is a gastronomic culture that is strongly governed by the richness of the land and the whims of the climate, all masterly blended by that ancient know-how that is the flavour of tradition.

The novel “Il Gattopardo” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa unwittingly gives an account of nineteenth century food in Sicily which was known as the cuisine of monsù, i.e. Monsieur le Chef, good cooks who took their knowledge and skill from refined French cooking that was so trendy at the time.

The buffet hall in the Lampedusa home is a “documented archive” of the gastronomic opulence and magnificence of the late nineteenth century which the Prince declared as the reason for the apparent and artificial change in his “Sicily”.

The Gattopardo, through his monocle, scans the “culinary delicacies” and the shameless “paste delle Vergini” or “Minni di Virgini”. The historian, Alfonso Di Giovanna, ascribes the patent for these cakes to Sister Virginia Casale di Rocca Menna from the convent  in Maria di Sambuca di Sicilia. In 1725, Donna Francesca Reggio, the Marchioness of Sambuca by her marriage to Don Giuseppe, ordered the nun to “do her utmost to create anything absolutely new within her competence and particularly in terms of sweets” for the wedding of the eldest son Pietro from the noble Beccadelli family.

It is said that the nun was inspired by the Sambuca hills that roll from the Anguillara Valley to the Castellaccio hill and the Minnulazza coast and thus created this winning cake known as “Minni di Virgini”, which Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, through his unparalleled Prince of Salina, defined as the shameless “paste delle Vergini”.