FORMATJADES CUARESMALES (LENT FORMATJADES)

Lenten cuisine of yesteryear included preparations that are now partially absent from our tables and completely forgotten by chefs and diners. One of them, now only preserved in the areas of Pollensa and Menorca, is the so-called formatjades. Its Pollensa variant is a sweet that is now typical of that town during Holy Week. Its ingredients are lard, oil, water, sugar, egg yolk and flour. When properly mixed, they form the dough on which this sweet is based, filled at will with jam, cottage cheese, cream or pumpkin jam. Both its current composition and its filling differ markedly from its original recipe.

This appears in the pages of the Llibre de Sent Sovi (c. 1324), a medieval recipe book by an anonymous author written in Catalan, which we know was circulating in Mallorca towards the second half of the 15th century. It is the first known recipe book of Catalan cuisine and the oldest European recipe book written in a language other than conventional Latin. It was one of the most influential cookbooks in Europe and some of its recipes were copied in two Italian cookbooks from the 15th century. One is the Libro di arte coquinaria, in whose pages we can see Catalan chefs valued as the best in the world at that time. The second is the prestigious text, more dietary than culinary, by Bartolomeo Sacchi, better known by his nickname Platina, De honesta voluptate et valetudine (1475). Some of his other recipes were reproduced in medieval cookery texts from the rest of the European continent and some of them in the Llibre d’aparellar de menjar, a later medieval Catalan culinary manual.

Its formulation in the aforementioned text is as follows:

FORMAGADES [DE QUARESMA]

Si vols fer formagades de quaresma, ages una llagosta e trenca-li lo coll e mit lo en una caçola e mit hi una dotzena de lagostins e dos pagells, si n·as, sino mit hi un llus, e puys com sia bullit tot pica ho molt, e com ages picat be d ametlles e pinyons, e mit al morter e destempra ho tot ensemps e asabora ho de sal e mit hi un poc de safra e gingebre si.t vols.

The updated version would be as follows:

If you want to make Lenten dishes, get a lobster, break its neck and put it to cook in a casserole dish, and put [in the same dish] a dozen prawns and two redfish (Pagellus erythrinus) if you have them, but if not, use a hake, and then when it is cooked, chop it up finely and when it is well chopped, add a good quantity of almonds and pine nuts and put it all in a mortar and dissolve it with a little stock and season with salt and add a little saffron and ginger, if you like.

This instruction refers only to how to prepare the filling, the result of which would be similar to a savoury fish blancmange. The recipe does not provide details about the container. Probably because at that time it must have been a simple bread dough, perhaps made with some good quality flour and with the addition of some ingredient to enrich it a little.

     They were a common preparation on our medieval tables, as reflected in legislation dated 1424 that appears in the Libre del Mostassaf de Mallorca. The group of provisions mentioned are intended to regulate the relations of Mallorcan bakers and their regular clientele. One of the sections included indicates that every week they should bake a couple of formatjades for their parishioners free of charge, except during Carnival and Easter when they should be paid for their baking. It is clear that this obligation throughout the year is indicative of habitual consumption and its constant presence in our culinary heritage, to which they would undoubtedly have been incorporated previously.

     Its consumption was also widespread in Catalonia, as shown by a couple of news items from Tarragona and Granollers. The one from Tarragona is very similar to the one from Mallorca and appears in the Ordinacions del mostassaf de Tarragona. It decrees that bakers had to bake a loaf of bread, a cassola or a formatgada, without pay or rent to anyone. The same happened in Granollers where bakers had to bake cassoles, penades, flaons and formatgades, except on Easter Sunday when no one had to pay, under penalty of a fine of five sous.

The recipe mentioned in the Llibre de Sent Soví comes from the manuscript kept in a library in Valencia (Bib. Univ. València, Ms. nº 216) where it is identified as formagades de quaresma. This name places the preparation as one of the dishes considered ‘Lenten’. That is to say, a version designed to be consumed on the days of abstinence from meat or meat products. Its identification as a Lenten dish suggests that the recipe described was conceived in the medieval period, certainly beyond the ninth century.

     By then, the period of relaxation of the primitive rigidity of the strict observance of the Lenten rules, rigorously followed according to the dictates of the Church, had already begun. From that time on, these rules were relaxed and the consumption of specific dairy products was authorised. These could not be consumed during the previous abstemious Lenten periods, as cheese was a product that was forbidden during the first three phases of Lent. It was banned because it was a derivative of milk, which in medieval physiology was considered to be the quintessence of blood. This concept meant that the consumption of cheese was excluded from the dates of necessary abstinence.

Because of this, the recipe for the formatjades identified as Lenten was prepared exclusively from fish or seafood. Its ingredients could be lobster, prawns or squillid. If the latter were not available, they could be replaced by hake. Once the whole thing was well cooked and finely chopped, it was mixed with almond and pine nut milk, seasoned with salt, some saffron and ginger, if the future consumer liked these last two spices and could afford them.

The changes that would take place from the first millennium onwards in the Lenten dietary regulations had an undeniable influence on the fact that the formatjada stuck more closely to the formula that probably gave it its name and that undoubtedly included cheese in its preparation or filling. The version that has survived to the present day is notably different from the initial recipe established for one of its variants that must have been consumed regularly.

Antoni Contreras Mas is a researcher and promoter of Mallorcan gastronomy.