In the 16th century, cantuccio was a common food for peasant families. In fact, with the sugar boom of that period, bakers prepared loaves of sweet bread for wealthy customers and the discarded parts, nicknamed cantuccini, were instead destined for peasant and commoner families. Thanks to the intuition of Caterina de' Medici, a delicious connoisseur of gastronomy, the recipe for cantuccini was enriched with peeled almonds and were soon known throughout Europe. In 1691, the Accademia della Crusca defined cantuccini as “sliced cookies, of flour flowers, with sugar and egg white”, but it was only in 1779 that the Prato scholar Amadio Baldanzi codified the first official recipe.