Apart from being the king of Milan, panettone is one of those few Italian words that requires no translation. We know that in the 19th century, the traditional Italian Christmas cake took on shape that is so familiar to us today, so it’s in the 1800s that we’ll linger a little today. In a letter to their son, Teresa Borri, wife of Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni, wrote that her day had begun nicely, having slept and “panettoned” well (i.e. eaten lots of panettone). Words have their own onomatopoeia, and this verb makes us think of slinking around with Sunday-morning feline indolence, when we can put off dealing with all the things that need our attention…
Mrs Manzoni may not have been the only one to use the aforesaid verb in those days, although it seems to have since become obsolete. However, we can still recover something of its fragrance: for example by gliding around languidly in spite of the Christmas shopping frenzy going on all around us…
Name Day:
St Barbara