Nearly each facet of Italian meals and beverage tradition revolves round digestion. There’s “aperitivo hour,” designed to stimulate the urge for food earlier than dinner. Italians typically serve salad after a principal course as a palate cleanser and digestive assist. And in Italian eating places, it’s comparatively widespread to cap off a meal with a shot of some type of digestivo, whether or not it’s an amaro, limoncello, grappa, or sambuca — the final of which is a impartial spirit flavored with aniseed, star anise, fennel seed, elderflower, and different herbs and spices. Some sambucas are darkish blue, dyed with added coloring brokers, and flavored with elderberries. Others are vibrant purple and embrace purple berry infusions. However the most typical kind is crystal clear, tasting of licorice and its core ingredient, anise.
When serving sambuca, custom dictates that it needs to be topped with espresso beans left to drift round on high of the liquid. They don’t make for the prettiest garnish on this planet, and in Italy they name sambuca with one espresso bean “sambuca con la mosca,” which interprets to “sambuca with the fly.” The origins of this time period stay disputed, however some sources level to an occasion that occurred through the filming of Federico Fellini’s 1960 movie “La Dolce Vita.” Allegedly, a number of of the actors have been having fun with a break from filming at Rome’s Through Veneto cafe when one among them dropped a espresso bean into their glass of sambuca and shouted, “There’s a fly!”
No matter origin, the observe has change into custom, however the magic variety of beans has since developed to 3. Is that this all simply rooted in superstition, just like the odd quantity rule related to Martini olives, or is there one thing extra important behind it?
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Based on meals business information outlet Meals Republic, the three beans symbolize well being, happiness, and prosperity. Different sources say well being, wealth, and happiness. Typically, sambuca is served with as many as seven espresso beans to present a nod to the Seven Hills of Rome. It’s actually all that easy.
However that leads us to a different query: Why have espresso beans change into the garnish of selection for sambuca? We’re not speaking about an Espresso Martini right here. It’s a candy, anise-flavored spirit.
Regardless that the custom could have been born from an off-set joke whereas filming a film in Rome, the espresso bean garnish has persevered, as many cite the beans as offering a complementary taste to sambuca. Based on widespread model Molinari, “[combining] the candy and smooth aroma of the liqueur with the bitter and dry aroma of the roasted espresso bean, is an try to reconcile two apparently opposing worlds that have been truly made for one another.” Often, bartenders will gentle the mixture on hearth to briefly toast the beans and improve the olfactory expertise.
So far as what to do with the beans, it’s a “choose-your-own-adventure” scenario. Some individuals will chew on them in between sips to mood the liqueur’s sweetness with the beans’ bitterness. Others will wait till the sambuca is completed earlier than munching on them, however there’s no actual stress to eat the beans in any respect.
One other widespread strategy to take pleasure in Sambuca doesn’t contain espresso beans on high, however reasonably within the drink itself. Based on “The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails,” “In Rome it’s nonetheless typical to eschew sugar in a single’s espresso in favor of a splash of the anise-flavored liqueur.” This drink is called “caffè corretto,” or “corrected espresso,” and may embrace sambuca, grappa, amaro, or brandy — maintain the beans of three.
