"Parma-style hot chocolate"

After having won international renown for its culinary specialties, Parma, in turn, was conquered by a sweet-tasting beverage from the New World. From the beginning of the 1700s, hot chocolate was all the rage in Parma. 

In particular, the city's gentlewomen, gentlemen and abbots were especially enamored of that prepared by the expert hands of the cloistered orders of nuns of St. Catherine and St. Claire, and those of St. Alexander where the famous poet and rhetorician Abb. Innocenzo Frugoni celebrated mass. Following the mass, with ceremonial pomp, the nuns would bring him sweets and a pot of the hot chocolate this gourmand was so fond of. According to a local commentator, the garrulous abbot would sip it while engaging in pleasant conversation but his discourses gradually took on "a somewhat too wordly tone and his risqu? jokes became so extreme that those pious sisters were forced to forego his lively company." Frugoni, on the other hand, never abandoned his habitual cup of chocolate, and continued enjoying it in the convent's vast, pristine parlor, but without the presence of the nuns who blushed at his gallant language.

 Drinking hot chocolate in the Convent of St. Alexander was very fashionable and remained so for over a half century. Even the ladies-in-waiting and body guards of the Duke himself went there until a "nasty" event occurred. According to confirmed contemporary reports, on the morning of October 6, 1802, Don Ferdinando, Duke of Parma went to pray in the Convent of St. Alexander and afterwards happily drank the hot chocolate offered him by the nuns, only to die a short time later. This created a scandal, and local gossip reported that he had been poisoned by the holy sisters, early exponents of "arsenic and old lace"! In fact, the Duke did not die the day in which he had drunk the famous cup of hot chocolate, but two days later after numerous other cups of the beverage, including one at Fontevivo and three others in the palace on October 8th. But even the Duke's death did not put an end to the tradition of hot chocolate in the convents of Parma where for decades to come, the habit continued to be fashionable at gatherings in which music, conversation, extemporization of gallant poetry and sweet delicacies of all sorts were accompanied by cup after cup of hot chocolate.

From G. Gonizzi, Le memorie del Ciambellano. Storie di cucina nel Ducato. I, in Parma Capitale Alimentare, 43, 2000, pp 45-61.

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