In May of 2023, Natasha Contardi of Montreal, Canada, found a decades-old scrap of paper among her grandmother’s belongings with a handwritten Italian recipe on it. Her grandmother, suffering from dementia, no longer recognized the recipe, so Contardi posted photos on Reddit asking for help with the translation. Not only did the online community translate the recipe, they revealed the food mystery behind it. Originally written down by a great-aunt of Contardi’s, the recipe was for serpentone, a traditional Christmas dessert specific to the northern Italian region of Umbria, especially…
