5. Zanzarelli  [Keitto Zanzarelli] Medieval Kitchen:  Recipes from France & Italy,  Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban, Silvano Serventi, Patricia gl Smith 57-58

To make zanzarelli. To make ten platefuls: take eight eggs, half a libra of grated cheese, and breadcrumbs, and mix these things together. Then, take a pot of meat broth colored yellow with saffron and put it on the fire; and when it begins to boil put in this mixture and stir once with a spoon. And when it seems to have thickened, remove the pot from the fire and serve up, then sprinkle with spices. (Ma 137?38)

Your Roman friends will love this soup for its somewhat rough, thick richness, like that of stracciatella, a very popular soup in the Italian capital. Indeed, its ingredients are more or less the same as those of zanzarelli, apart from the spices.

From the cook's standpoint, this is an interesting recipe, because the eggs do not play their usual role as a creamy thickening agent; to the contrary, you want them to "curdle;' which gives the soup a special graininess that harmonizes well with the graininess of the breadcrumbs and the grated cheese.

5. Zanzarelli

Imperial	Metric	Ingredient
2  quarts	2 l	chicken stock
8	8	eggs
1 ¼ cups	200 g	freshly grated parmesan cheese (200 g)
3 oz or 1 cup	80 g or 2  ½ dl	dry bread, grated fine or  dry breadcrumbs
		saffron threads
		mixed groudn spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, black pepper, etc.)

Mix the parmesan, breadcrumbs, and eggs to form a soft paste. You can vary the proportions depending on your taste and on the desired consistency of the final soup.

Bring the stock to the boil and add half a dozen threads of saffron. Turn off the heat and let steep for a few minutes, until the broth takes on a nice golden color from the saffron. Return to the boil and add the egg mixture all at once. Stir vigorously with a wire whisk and bring back to the boil for a moment, until the liquid separates: as the eggs cook, they will change the soup's appearance from creamy to slightly granular.

Remove from the heat. Check for salt, ladle into individual soup plates, and sprinkle generously with the spice mixture.