spumoni

The Italian word 'spumoni' is the plural of 'spumone,' and 'spumone' comes directly from 'spuma,' the Latin and Italian word for foam. Latin 'spuma' described sea foam, the head on wine, and the froth lathering a racehorse's flanks. By the time Neapolitan confectioners applied it to a layered frozen dessert in the nineteenth century, the word already carried a long association with lightness, air, and pleasure.

Naples produced spumoni in its mature form sometime in the 1860s and 1870s. The dessert was a cylinder or brick of two or three ice cream flavors, chocolate and vanilla as the outer shells, with a center of fruit and nut-studded cream. Neapolitan confectioners sold it in street stalls and at the city's caffè, where it competed with sorbetti and granita for the custom of those who wanted something cold against the relentless summer heat.

The word arrived in the United States with the wave of Neapolitan and southern Italian immigrants between 1880 and 1920. Italian ice cream vendors on the streets of New York and Chicago made spumoni a common American treat. By 1900 the word appeared in English-language newspaper food columns in New York, usually spelled exactly as the immigrants pronounced it, with the Italian plural already functioning as the singular in American usage.

The American version of spumoni settled into a standardized form by the mid-twentieth century: a tricolor block of chocolate, pistachio, and cherry ice cream, sold in delis and Italian-American restaurants across the country. In Italy, the dessert remained more varied and more seasonal. In America, it became a shorthand for Italian celebration food, present at christenings and Sunday dinners long after it had faded from casual restaurant menus.