''Cappon magro'' (; , ) is an elaborate
Genoese salad of
seafood and
vegetable
Vegetables are edible parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. This original meaning is still commonly used, and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including edible flower, flo ...
s over
hardtack
Hardtack (or hard tack) is a type of dense Cracker (food), cracker made from flour, water, and sometimes salt. Hardtack is inexpensive and long-lasting. It is used for sustenance in the absence of perishable foods, commonly during long sea voyage ...
arranged into a decorative pyramid and dressed with a rich
sauce
In cooking, a sauce is a liquid, cream, or semi- solid food, served on or used in preparing other foods. Most sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavour, texture, and visual appeal to a dish. ''Sauce'' is a French wor ...
.
A similar but much less elaborate dish is called ''capponata'' in Liguria (
Ligurian: ''cappunadda''), ''capponata'' in Sardinia, and ''caponata estiva'' or ''caponata di pesce'' in Campania. It is a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, hard-boiled eggs,
bottarga, and
dried tuna dressed with
olive oil
Olive oil is a vegetable oil obtained by pressing whole olives (the fruit of ''Olea europaea'', a traditional Tree fruit, tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin) and extracting the oil.
It is commonly used in cooking for frying foods, as a cond ...
.
Name
''Cappon magro'' means 'fast-day capon'. As the dish contains no ingredients considered meat under the rules of
traditional Catholic fasting, it is a suitable meal for the traditional Catholic fast days, including Christmas Eve. ''Capon'' may be a wry reference to the
poultry capon, a traditional dish for Christmas. Or it may refer to the biscuit base, comparable to the French ''chapon'', a slice of bread rubbed with garlic which is placed in the bottom of a soup or salad bowl.
[Waverly Root, ''The Food of Italy'', 1971, , p. 362] It may also refer to one of the many fish called "''cappone''" (perhaps a gurnard or
red mullet).
[Gillian Riley, ''The Oxford Companion to Italian Food'', p. 290]
Preparation
The foundation of a ''cappon magro'' is a layer of
hard tack biscuits (''gallette'') rubbed with garlic and soaked in seawater and vinegar. Then a pyramid is built up layer by layer.
Each layer may consist of one or many vegetables, fishes, or seafoods. All recipes include boiled white fish, a lobster,
green bean
Green beans are young, unripe fruits of various cultivars of the common bean ('' Phaseolus vulgaris''), although immature or young pods of the runner bean ('' Phaseolus coccineus''), yardlong bean ( ''Vigna unguiculata'' subsp. ''sesquipedali ...
s,
celery
Celery (''Apium graveolens'' Dulce Group or ''Apium graveolens'' var. ''dulce'') is a cultivated plant belonging to the species ''Apium graveolens'' in the family Apiaceae that has been used as a vegetable since ancient times.
The original wild ...
,
carrots,
beets, and
potato
The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...
es. Some authorities insist that
black salsify is essential. Other seafoods and vegetables may also be included. Each ingredient is boiled separately, cut up, and seasoned with oil and vinegar. Each layer is dressed with a sort of cross between ''
salsa verde'' and
mayonnaise
Mayonnaise (), colloquially referred to as "mayo" (), is a thick, creamy sauce with a rich and tangy taste that is commonly used on sandwiches, hamburgers, Salad#Bound salads, bound salads, and French fries. It also forms the base for various o ...
; it consists of parsley, garlic, capers, anchovies, the yolks of hard-boiled eggs, and green olives ground together in a mortar with olive oil and vinegar. The pyramid is topped with a lobster capped with its
coral
Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important Coral ...
. The sides of the pyramid are garnished with green olives,
botargo, capers, anchovy filets, crayfish, artichokes, and quartered hard-boiled eggs.
[Touring Club Italiano, ''Guida all'Italia gastronomica'', p. 192]
Naples ''caponata estiva''
The
Naples
Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...
dish called "''
caponata estiva''" (), "''caponata napolitana''" or "''caponata di pesce''" consists of moistened ring-shaped
rusk
A rusk is a hard, dry Biscuit#Biscuits in British usage, biscuit or a twice-baked bread. It is sometimes used as a teether for babies. In some cultures, rusk is made of cake rather than bread: this is sometimes referred to as cake rusk. In the ...
s (''friselle'' or ''gallette'') dressed with oil, salt, garlic, oregano and basil, and topped with sliced tomatoes and possibly tuna. Any number of additional ingredients are optional, including smoked herring, pickled vegetables, olives, capers, anchovies, sardines, hard boiled eggs, very thinly sliced boiled beef, cucumber, carrot, celery.
Traditions
''Cappon magro'' is a traditional dish for
Christmas Eve.
See also
*
Cuisine of Liguria
*
List of fish dishes
*
List of salads
References
{{Salads
Bread salads
Fish salads
Cuisine of Liguria
Italian seafood dishes
Genoa
Italian cuisine
Christmas food