Food
Casatta: The Original Sundae
Madhulika Dash
Jul 21, 2016, 04:17 PM | Updated 04:17 PM IST
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Casatta. The name may come across as a puzzle to some, but for a generation (or two), it conjures up images of the ultimate feast – a novelty that brought together some of the best things of their childhood together.
A masterpiece of its time, the Indian Casatta was this glamorous dessert made of three slabs of creamy ice cream (usually vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, interchangeable with pista at times) served on a bed of soaked cake or soft fruit bread (chocolate or marble was the choice) studded with tutti fruity and festooned with slivers of roasted dry fruits (cashew nut, peanuts and almonds). Prized at the princely sum of Rs 3 back then (this is the early 1970s we are talking about) by Kwality that gave it its signature loaf shape, it was a rage much like bell bottoms and Contessa.
“Casatta,” recalls Raju Bharat (owner Kenilworth Hotel, Kolkata),
was synonymous to ‘special occasions’ and was the final word in desserts, in spite of the presence of other delights like the Baked Alaska, Custard and the Bread Pudding, which by colonial standards were for the older generation.
Kenilworth Hotel and United Coffee House were, in fact, among the first few to serve Casatta as part of their a la carte menu, and called it their “in demand signature dessert.”
Agrees Akash Kalra (owner United Coffee House):
Though the variety was more of a marketing gimmick to seduce the well-heeled young scions, it was the sheer brilliance of the way it was put together that made it an all-favourite. It was that stunner that had everything you would want in a dessert – decadence, sinful sweetness and accurately modern in its appeal that could please even the most exacting palates.
“It was the proverbial face that launched a thousand ships (read ice cream trends) with its perfection,” says Chef Sabyasachi Gorai, who considers Casatta a wonder of the 1970s that led to an era of sundaes, over the top milkshakes and double flavoured ice cream that eventually flooded the market.
Here was a dessert that looked simple yet fulfilled desires – you want to have a cake with icing, Casatta had double; you wanted to have an ice cream, Casatta had three layers of the most popular ones; you wanted something rich and exotic, it came with a sprinkling of dry fruits. It was comforting, delicious and glamorous.
But where and how did the dish, which took the 1970s and 1980s by storm, originate?
Funnily, the Indian Casatta has little bearing to its said muse, Cassata Siciliana, arguably the most famous Sicilian sweet, which, in its current form, is an elaborate cake creation made of layered liqueur-soaked genoise interspersed with sweetened ricotta cheese, fruit preserves and jellies surrounded by marzipan and decorated with Baroque garnishes and flourishes of marzipan fruits, rosettes, flowers and curlicues. Considered a legend in elaborate cake making, the original Casatta, which, according to etymologists da Aleppo and Calvaruso, was designed more as a result of the Sicilian’s fascination with sugar - which arrived in the oldest ice cream town around the tenth century - than an ode to ricotta, a theory popularised by Latins.
Interestingly, the first iteration of the tenth-century desserts, as per old Sicilian records (La Vita di lo Beato Corrado) and Tuscan books (Libro Della Cucina), was a far cry from the complexity of today’s desserts. To begin with, it was a not a dessert but a simple treat made of eggs, sugar (lots of it) and ricotta cheesecake, where the signature round shape was because of the Arabian quas’at, a traditional baking tray. Sicilia back then was dominated by the Arabs, who, thanks to the trade connect, not only got sugar and the Chinese style of making ice cream but also the art of using dairy, cream and dry fruits in dessert making. The modern-day cake became a dessert under the aegis of the Arabs and their specially trained al-Qassāṭỉ (Cassata-maker) in the 1600s. It took another two centuries for the frills (read: Baroque garnishes and flourishes of marzipan fruits, rosettes, flowers and curlicues) to appear – and Casatta to get popular.
Kalra adds that while
that version attained popularity among the royalty, the version that really made Casatta popular and inspired the Indian version was the Cleveland one made of sponge cake soaked in syrup or rum, filled with strawberries and custard, and covered with sweetened whipped cream and first served by LaPuma Spumoni & Bakery in 1920.
For anything to gain popularity, it needs to have commercial viability, which the Cleveland Casatta cake brought in, says Gorai, who feels that
the inspiration of using the ice cream flavours could have come from the nineteenth-century Harlequin ice cream, much like how cheese and the use of candied fruit came from the Sicilian variety.
What possibly could have impressed the makers of the Indian Casatta is today hard to fathom, but it was Kwality, which by the 1970s was as good a name in modern food as Nirula, that introduced the first version of the Indian Casatta – complete with the signature loaf shape.
“Of course,” adds Bharat,
there were these special varieties where the Casatta could be made in the traditional round shape. But it was a privy of the Kwality restaurants and was made on request only. For the rest, the commercial Casatta doubled up not only as a gourmet treat but the dish that defined dessert for a generation or two.
It is said that by the early 1980s Kwality had to create a special R&D department that was not only responsible for making Casattas but also versions that were vegetarian, which was one of the key elements that led to the success of ice creams in India.
It is said that Nirula, whose ancestry as the perfect hangout place predates Kwality, in response created a set of 21 premium flavours that could be mixed and matched to create newer ice cream treats like the sundae, the famous banana split, and the brand’s iconic hot chocolate fudge, though industry know-hows refute this theory and instead see the origin of the cake ice cream as the beginning of gourmet ice cream in India, which eventually gave us Vienetta – a treat of vanilla, dry fruits and chocolate.
The popularity of Casatta till date can be gauged from the fact that anything that doesn’t have the loaf shape, tutti fruties and the essential three flavours (pista was a later entry on demand from hotels) isn’t considered authentic at all.
Image courtesy: Chef Anant Bansode, Four Points by Sheraton Hotel & Serviced Apartments Pune
Madhulika Dash is a writer with over 13 years of experience writing features from tech to cars to health. She is also a seasoned food appreciator who writes on Indian restaurants and cuisines across different platforms. She has also been on the food panel of MasterChef India Season 4.
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