So, what are the features of an amazing modern pastiera? According to Tommaso Esposito it should be three to four centimetres thick, with a faultless, crumbly crust made with good quality eggs and butter. As for the filling, ricotta and wheat (which is boiled in water or precooked and then added to milk, butter and lemon zest to make a sort of cream) must be perfectly balanced and the cereal should keep its crispness. Candied fruit should include lemon, orange and citron, but those who stick to the traditional recipe also add cocozzata (candied pumpkin).

There is no point in adding custard since the wheat filling is already dense and creamy, yet many people do, especially in the Salerno area, south of Naples. This is to follow a tradition which was apparently launched in the twentieth century by a Neapolitan pastry chef called Starace to make it even richer. The crust should not be too thick; since the filling is moist, the pastiera is cooked, sold and served in appropriate tins called ruoti (rounds, from their shape) and if the result is good enough, nobody will be too fussy about the container.

A good pastiera should not be sickly sweet and orange flower water should be used very carefully. To taste the cake at its best, it has to be cooked some days in advance (at home, it is usually made on Good Friday) to allow the different flavours to blend together.

There are other varieties of pastiera which can be found in Campania (and, if you are lucky enough, in other Italian cities where Neapolitan pastry chefs work) which change according to local tradition or personal innovations. In the Caserta area, many people still use pasta (a kind of very thin spaghetti such as tagliolini or capelli d'angelo) instead of wheat – an option that can be tasted at the Mennella bakeries in Naples and Torre del Greco. The pasta is boiled and left to rest for twenty-four hours in a sugar and eggs batter, then added to pastiera without ricotta.

In Sant'Egidio Montalbino, a small village near Salerno, the acclaimed pastry chef Alfonso Pepe – who succeeded in making a panettone considered among the best of Italy, recently created something new. His ‘risen’ pastiera is a fantastic mix of the traditional recipe and a leavened cake such as colomba or panettone. He makes a classic dough for the colomba using a natural starter, which rises overnight; on the day after, he adds the traditional pastiera filling, although without the orange flower flavour; he uses a ‘cream’ of blended candied orange instead. The result is a soft, light cake which has all the seductive aromas of pastiera but doesn’t fill you up like the classic pie does. The final touch is the syrup made with orange blossom liqueur, which he spreads over the cake's crust to give it the unique scent of spring.