Sweet salt cod is the ritual dish of Christmas Eve dinner in Campotosto, a meatless dish prepared in observance of the prescribed abstinence and, at the same time, a preparation of remarkable gustatory complexity in which salted cod meets the dried and fresh fruits of the mountain winter pantry. Its ritual placement is clear and non-negotiable. As Coseta Simoni, one of the oldest bearers of the recipe, recalls, sweet salt cod is “truly sacred” on Christmas Eve. The sequence of the meal follows a strictly predefined order: spaghetti or plain pasta as the first course, sweet salt cod as the central dish, and finally various kinds of fritters — cabbage, cauliflower, apple and even cod fritters — to conclude the meal.

At the level of the recipe, there is no formal codification, and Coseta’s version follows the path of the many micro-variants documented in the kitchens of families in the village and surrounding area, including the nearby hamlet of Poggio Cancelli. The basic ingredients are salt cod — purchased already desalted from the itinerant lorry that weekly supplies Campotosto and the surrounding areas — apples, pears, dried figs, raisins and chestnuts. Since fresh chestnuts are unavailable during the preparation period, they are roasted in advance, peeled, frozen and later softened in water at the moment of use. To this base are added a little oil, half a glass of white wine, two glasses of water, a little tomato and half a teaspoon of sugar, the quantity of which may eventually be adjusted according to taste. Cooking takes place in a single pot over a gentle heat until the apples become soft and the mixture reaches the desired consistency.

Sweet salt cod belongs to a broader family of stewed salt cod preparations with dried fruit and raisins historically widespread across the Umbrian–Abruzzese and Sabine areas, as documented by ethnogastronomic literature: a system of meatless Christmas Eve recipes in which salted cod — the only form of fish available in the inland Apennine areas, together with salted anchovies, before the spread of refrigerated transport — was accompanied by dried plums, apples, raisins and, in some cases, pine nuts and chestnuts, with the addition of tomato or cooked grape must according to local traditions. Within this broad geographical framework, Campotosto represents a northern and mountainous variant distinguished by its marked sweetness and by the combined use of fresh and dried fruit.

Today, sweet salt cod plays a strongly identity-related role above all for communities of emigrants from Campotosto, particularly in the United States, who prepare it every Christmas Eve as a practice of reconnection with their village of origin. Assunta Perilli testifies that, by contrast, local practice has gradually diminished to the point of coinciding with the presence of only the very last elderly bearers of the tradition, such as her centenarian grandmother, for whom the dish is still prepared. The paradox whereby a simple and modest meatless recipe survives more actively in emigrant households than in those of its place of origin represents the most anthropologically significant aspect of the present situation: over recent decades, sweet salt cod has gradually transformed from an indispensable calendrical meal into an object of affective, gustatory and olfactory memory, whose remaining vitality is inseparably linked to the biographies of the older women who still know how to prepare and transmit it.