Easter, the gastronomy of passion

The island’s Easter cuisine – from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday – is determined by the precepts of Catholicism together with local food products. Apart from its spiritual significance, Easter symbolises the end of the hardships of winter, and so, in popular culture, it begins a period of festivities in which food plays a pre-eminent role.

In Mallorca, the main dishes on this day are based on lamb. Since the beginning of culture in the Mediterranean, lamb has served as a food staple and also as a cult reference and the basis of many rituals. In Mallorca there is a saying that is quite clear: ‘Per Nadal s’indiot i per Pasqua es xot’. This is a tradition rooted in Passover, a culture that eats lamb accompanied by salads and endives, along with unleavened rolls (matzo). In Mallorca, roast or oven-baked lamb, fried lamb (also eaten at Easter), oven-baked lamb offal plaited into shapes, lamb ribs and meat pies made with lamb have always been very common.

While the first courses mentioned are typical of family cooking, the pies – the queens of Easter – have gone beyond this framework and can now be found in every oven in Mallorca, and throughout the year.

As for the empanada types, the most common at Easter was (and is) lamb, although since ancient times there is also evidence of pork accompanied by sobrasada. But every rule has its exceptions: in places like Sóller it was customary to make lamb meat pies with angel’s hair, while in coastal areas they were also made with fish – especially musola. Ancient recipes also mention vegetable pies, with artichokes as the main ingredient. The most exceptional – because it was also a mark of class – was the sweet pasty, made especially in the home of the lord of the manor. Today, although it is not widespread, it is easy to find in some bakeries, such as the Pastelería Real in Palma. A unique pasty with a long history is the pasteló pasty, which can be tasted at this time of year at the Forn Fondo in Palma.

The most representative is the rubiol (from the Latin rubeolu, meaning ‘reddish’), a recipe already documented in one of the reference cookbooks from the end of the 15th century, the Llibre del coch, and which has variations throughout the Mediterranean. One of the characteristics of Mallorcan rubiols is their half-moon shape. The most common filling throughout history is cottage cheese, which is abundant on the island from the end of winter and the beginning of spring; although there are also jams, pumpkin jam, sweet potato or even almond paste or, more recently, chocolate. In certain households they were also fried, as the Archduke observed, and they were even made from puff pastry. The latter can be tasted at the Forn de Sant Francesc in Inca.

Alongside rubiol comes crespell, a word that comes from the Latin crispu, which means ‘curly’ or ‘wavy’. The first pastries documented in Europe to share this etymology are found on the Italian peninsula and were always fried (which is why they were curly). On our island, crespell takes on shapes that refer to symbols related to spirituality, such as fish or stars. The word crespell, however, does not refer to the same sweet throughout the Mallorcan geography: a crespell in Inca or Lloseta is a type of coca bamba (the ones from Can Pistola in Lloseta are magnificent) and a crespell in Alcúdia is a sweet made up of two layers topped with a beaten egg and sugar (Forn Can Torres).

As a geographically specific and at the same time exquisite confection, we must mention the formatjades, already documented in medieval times and today surviving only in Pollença and which can be tasted, for example, at the Forn de Can Payeras, located in Port d’Andratx. At the other end of the Tramuntana mountain range, the greixonera of Andratx is also made, which differs significantly from the classic sweet Easter greixonera.

In Mallorca, Easter flaó has been completely forgotten, although it was a sweet as popular as rubiol itself. When the young men went to ‘sing panades’ they would also ask for some flaó: ‘From this good and honourable house / no one leaves; / last year we were given panada; / this year, panada and flaó’, says the song. Today it is identified with one of the most popular cakes in the Pityusic Islands, where they are made daily. Unfortunately, on the main island it is already a memory, with the exception of the one made individually by the Fornet de la Soca.

Likewise, Easter rolls and Easter shells have practically disappeared from private homes, and the visibility of the tombat, the doublegats del divendres (the Fornet de la Soca has brought them back for the good of all) and, in a not so dramatic way, the sugared almonds, which can still be found in the Can Roca pastry shop in Manacor or in Can Delante in Inca, has already diminished.

On the other hand, Easter cakes – which come to us via Catalonia – are booming. They were originally round cakes with eggs, which were eaten as a symbol of fertility and prosperity. From the 19th century onwards, the eggs gained prominence and were decorated with sugar, aniseed or jams, a close antecedent of the chocolate eggs that we can now see in many island bakeries. The baked goods from Can Rafel in Búger, Can Pomar in Campos or Forn Nou in Sa Vileta in Palma are a real treat.

Tomàs Vibot is a writer, researcher and promoter of culture and heritage.