Sbrisolona takes its name from briciola, the Italian word for crumb. This tells you everything about how it should be made and how it must be eaten. It is not a cake to be sliced with a knife and served in neat wedges. You break it with your hands. You let it crumble. The shards and fragments are the point.

Americans want refinement. They want cakes that cut cleanly and hold their shape on the plate. Sbrisolona refuses this. The texture is coarse, almost sandy. The almonds are left in rough pieces, not ground to powder. The cornmeal stays granular. When you bite into it, it shatters. What falls onto the plate, you eat with your fingers.

This is a cake born in the kitchens of Mantua, where cornmeal has been a staple for centuries. The original recipes used lard, which creates a particular tenderness, though butter has become acceptable. What cannot change is the method: you do not knead this dough, you do not press it smooth. You crumble it into the pan and leave it rough. What you keep out, the eggs, the leavening, the overworking, is as significant as what you put in.