Crunchy on the outside and light inside, struffoli are mixed with honey and other sweet ingredients and formed into mounds or rings.

[citation needed] A similar dish is described by Archestratus, an ancient Greek poet from Gela, Sicily.

It was called enkris (Greek: ἐγκρίς)—a dough-ball fried in olive oil, which he details in his Gastronomy; a work now lost, but partially preserved in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus, which mentions enkris thirteen times, in various inflected forms.

[1] The most complete description of it in the Deipnosophists is a passage that reads: πεμμάτιον ἑψόμενον ἐν ἐλαίῳ καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο μελιτούμενον, μνημονεύει αὐτῶν Στησίχορος διὰ τούτων χόνδρον τε καὶ ἐγκρίδας ἄλλα τε πέμματα καὶ μέλι χλωρόν.

These are cakes boiled in oil, and after that seasoned with honey; and they are mentioned by Stesichorus in the following lines:— Groats and encrides,