Baked goods and pastries for Holy Week and Easter
On the island of Menorca, as in most Christian regions and countries, there are traditional baked goods and pastries associated with Holy Week and Easter.
Formatjades and crespells
In the past, formatjades and crespells, which have Hebrew origins, or as the Sardinians claim, Nuragic or Talayotic origins, were made following the guidelines of Sephardic cuisine. Therefore, no seu (lard) was added to the dough, but rather olive oil to those made with lamb and to the crespells, and butter to the flaons or formatjades made with cheese and to those made with curd cheese, typical of Ciutadella.
With the conversion of the Jews, there were Jewish quarters or significant communities in Maó and Ciutadella, and to demonstrate that they had converted to the Christian faith, lard was incorporated into the pastry, and to the lamb formatjades, a piece of bacon and a piece of sobrasada were added. Crespells with sobrasada also appeared, because until then crespells were those filled with curd cheese, jam, figat, almond paste, quince, sweet potato jam and suquet.
As things evolved, pork formatjades gradually gained prominence, particularly in the last third of the 20th century; these can be found daily in bakeries. Others, however, are unfortunately gradually disappearing, such as the fish formatjades, which were made with dogfish, cod and peppers, or those with vegetables, raisins and pine nuts. Nowadays, the bakeries that still make them fill them with tuna and vegetables such as chard or spinach, or with chopped hard-boiled egg.
The casques
One of the traditional pastries of Lent and Holy Week is the casques, which were the snack eaten on Palm Sunday. The Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria refers to them as ‘rotlos’, due to their cylindrical, ring-shaped form, and they are made from coca bamba dough. The Ciutadella Bakery has started making them again.
The casca, this ring-shaped cake, just like the coca bamba or the Menorcan ensaimada – which we in Ciutadella call the ensaimada de Sant Joan – was eaten dipped in hot chocolate for afternoon tea.
We also know of casques that were filled with cottage cheese mixed with sugar and cinnamon, and garnished with candied fruit or hard-boiled eggs. Could this be the precursor to today’s Easter cakes?
Easter sweets
Another Easter tradition in Menorca related to food is sweets. From entronxats sweets, besitos, peladillas and mint, marshmallow or aniseed sweets wrapped in white paper handed out by the capirotes during the Good Friday procession, to the traditional caramel·lo de Pasqua, a long, thin sweet that grandparents or godparents give to their grandchildren and godchildren on this day.
It is also a custom, amongst the youngest members of the household, to have the caramel·ler, a tree usually planted in the courtyard of the house – which may be a lemon, apricot or pear tree – that is watered with water and sugar throughout Lent; and on Easter Sunday, that tree bears fruit and, early in the morning, appears full of hanging sweets, which are a gift for the children.
The custom of giving sweets at Easter in Menorca was very widespread until a few decades ago. In the shoe factories, the foreman would present each of his workers with a bag of sweets before the start of the Easter holidays. This custom was also followed by local councils and is still observed by many individuals who continue to give them out.
But the quintessential sweets in Menorca are the long, red ones, wrapped in gold-coloured paper, made by boiling sugar with water and glucose, to which a few drops of carmine are added when it starts to boil. Strawberry essence is then added and they are shaped into cylinders.
These sweets, unique to our island and not made in the rest of the Balearic Islands, may be of English origin, given that very similar ones are made in Blackpool, representing yet another of the culinary legacies left to us by the British in the 18th century when Menorca belonged to the English Crown.
Glossary notes
- Seu: lard, fat.
- Formatjades: panades in Mallorca.
- Crespells: pastries made from seu dough in the shape of a star-shaped sphere with various fillings. Nothing to do with Mallorcan crespells.
- Casca: a pastry made from coca bamba dough in the shape of a ring.
Bep Al·lés is the director and editor of Foodies on Menorca, as well as a specialist in Menorcan cuisine and gastronomic academic.