Crocchè di patate – potato croquettes

The story of ’e panzarotte

The crocchè di patate is a croquette of boiled potatoes, mashed, seasoned and fried. In Naples it is also called panzarotto, in the plural ’e panzarotte.

In Naples the word “panzarotto” has had two meanings. In middle-class homes it was a fried filled pastry: in the first half of the nineteenth century Ippolito Cavalcanti describes “panzerotti” of eggs, provola, mozzarella and prosciutto fried in lard. For ordinary people it was the croquette of potato alone, sold by the street friggitori. In 1884 Matilde Serao writes that for a soldo you got “four or five panzarotti, that is to say little fritters”; in 1931 Vincenzo Caravaglios recorded the sellers’ cry: “Panzarotte, caure ca còceno!”.

The name “crocchè” comes from the French “croquettes”. And potatoes, a cheap and filling food, have left a saying too: “Napulitane, magnapatane”.