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EveryCow

Milk sweets

Panna cotta

Sweetened cream set softly with gelatine, a pudding of Piedmont served with caramel, fruit or berry sauce.

Panna cotta, cooked cream, is cream warmed with sugar and vanilla, set with a little gelatine and turned out of a mould. It should barely hold its shape and tremble on the plate. It is linked to Piedmont, in north-western Italy, and particularly to the Langhe hills. It is served with caramel, berry coulis, or fruit.

What goes in

Cream: 59%59%Milk: 18%18%Sugar: 12%12%Gelatine: 6%Vanilla: 6%5parts
  • Cream1059%, Fresh and rich.
  • Milk318%, For a lighter set.
  • Sugar212%, Sweetens.
  • Gelatine16%, Just enough to hold.
  • Vanilla16%, A split pod.

Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.

Made step by step

Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.

  1. Step 1: Cook Warm the cream and milk with sugar and vanilla without boiling.
  2. Step 2: Cook Stir in softened gelatine until dissolved.
  3. Step 3: Strain Strain into moulds.
  4. Step 4: Set Chill for several hours until softly set.
  5. Step 5: Serve Turn out and serve with caramel or berries.
  6. Cream: 59%59%Milk: 18%18%Sugar: 12%12%Gelatine: 6%Vanilla: 6%
    Finished Panna cotta, by share.

A Piedmont pudding

Piedmont is dairy country, with cattle in its Alpine valleys and plains. Panna cotta appears in Italian cookbooks only from the later twentieth century, though similar set creams are older. The region lists it among its traditional food products. It spread across Italy and abroad from the 1980s and 1990s as a restaurant dessert.

Getting the set

The art is in using as little gelatine as possible, so the cream is just set. Some cooks add milk for lightness or infuse the cream with coffee or citrus peel. In the Langhe it is often served with caramel or with the local hazelnuts. With so few ingredients, the quality of the cream shows.

Where it is used

DessertWith berriesWith caramel

The breeds behind it

PiedmontesePiedmont's own breed, once milked as well as worked.Brown SwissCommon dairy breed of the Alpine valleys of Italy.Holstein FriesianMain dairy breed of the Po plain.

More on EveryCow

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Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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