Cassatelle di Sant'Agata (minne di Sant'Agata)

Minnuzze di Sant'Agata (minnuzzi 'i sant'Àjita or minnuzzi 'i Vìrgini), are Catania's most famous dessert, dedicated to Agata, the city's patron saint. They are small ricotta ?cassatine?, shaped like small breasts, made of sponge cake filled with ricotta covered with a snow-white glaze and topped with a candied cherry.

According to historian Emanuele Ciaceri, the feast of St. Agatha would come from none other than the cults in honor of Isis, and this is recognized in several pagan aspects of the celebrations, not the least of which is the very breast-shaped cake, which would reproduce the effigy of Isis' fecund one as mother goddess. According to other scholars, such as food historian Mary Taylor Simeti, the dessert harks back to ancient breast-shaped desserts, typical this time of ancient Greece, and identified in those prepared at the Thesmophoria festival, when Greeks prepared anatomically shaped cakes with breasts made of sesame and honey in honor of Demeter, goddess of the harvest.

Also during the Eleusinian mysteries, also presided over by Demeter, sweet cakes were consumed that reproduced the appearance of the breasts of Demeter, herself considered a mother goddess. Both cults, the Eleusinian and the Demetrian, are documented in Catania from both written sources and archaeological findings, and it is reasonable to think that they were later completely absorbed by the festivities in honor of St. Agatha, thus symbolically shifting the small cake from the representation of fertility to the very Catholic representation of the value of martyrdom.