Cantuccini La Mattonella – 500g

Half a Kilo of Biscotti di Prato from Antonio Mattei

The 500-gram bag of Cantuccini La Mattonella is the almond pastry with which Antonio Mattei began winning awards in Florence, London, and Paris in 1861. To this day, they are still baked in Prato using the same five-ingredient recipe.

Cantuccini La Mattonella is the name given to the Biscotti di Prato from the oldest operating biscotti bakery in Tuscany, founded on September 29, 1858. The large bag holds 500 grams, sealed with a cord and a paper tag—just as the people of Prato have been carrying their cookies home since the 1880s.

It is worth not tearing the bag open immediately. The blue on it has been registered as a color trademark with the European Union Intellectual Property Office since 2019, and in Italy’s food sector, only one other company besides this house has managed to achieve that. A blue with a title deed, so to speak.

In Prato, you can recognize the bag from a hundred meters away. It sits on the kitchen table on Sundays, it travels across the fence to neighbors on holidays, and it has hardly changed for over a hundred years—rolled paper closure, cord, tag, finished.

Simple, honest, enduring

Break a cookie in two and the almonds are revealed—whole, with brown skin, with small light pine nuts in between.

The dough is crisp and understated in sweetness because it is made without any added fat. No buttery aroma settles over the almond, no yeast makes it airy, no baking powder puffs it up. What remains is nut, egg, and toasted flour—dry in the best sense, with a finish that lingers surprisingly long.

And yes, the cookies are hard. That is part of it, for they are built for dipping, not for casual snacking. Those who eat them dry are in for a serious chew.

The large bag for long evenings

500 grams is the right amount for a household where guests drop by. It lasts through a weekend, through a week of Advent, through a whole afternoon coffee gathering.

Serve the cantuccini at the end of an Italian meal, in a shallow bowl, with dessert wine on the side. They taste especially good with aged pecorino and a spoonful of honey, if you prefer something savory. If you would rather start small, opt for the 250-gram bag; if you would like to add something else to go with them, you will find suitable companions in the Italian assortment.

The leftovers at the bottom of the bag always find a use: coarsely chopped over vanilla ice cream, crumbled into a tiramisu base, or processed with butter and sugar into a tart crust. A hard cookie is not a problem, but an ingredient.

Because there are no preservatives in the dough, the manufacturer indicates three months from the baking date. Stored in a dry, dark place, ideally in a tin, the Cantuccini La Mattonella will easily last that long. The cookies do not like humid kitchen air at all.

Awards from five cities and praise from Artusi

The baker Antonio Mattei began with bread and pasta in 1858 on Via Ricasoli, only later discovering the pastry that would bear his name.

The list of awards reads like an itinerary: Florence 1861, London 1862, Paris 1867, Pistoia 1870, Forlì 1871. Pellegrino Artusi, the patron saint of Italian culinary literature, called him a stalwart man with a "genius for his craft." In 2016, the Italian Ministry of Economic Development dedicated a postage stamp to the house.

The bakery has been in other hands since 1904, just as Emilio Mattei handed it over to Egisto Ciampolini and Tommaso Pandolfini at the time. The Pandolfinis are still baking today, now in the fourth generation. You can find out how that came to be at Antonio Mattei, and more cookies from France and Italy in our sweet pastry section.