Aroma, remedy and drink

PalmaWe had coffee facing each other, sitting at the kitchen table. It was the little pleasure after lunch with my grandmother. She prepared the coffee maker and I took out the cups and the anise. Inside the display cabinet where she kept it, the smells of liqueurs and the wood of the furniture mingled. Some bottles had never been opened, the yellowish seal unbroken betrayed them, others were wrapped in cellophane; presents from France that were savored on special occasions. She poured me that transparent liquid like one perfumes coffee with a pinch of cinnamon. This was our ritual: coffee, conversation, and a teaspoon of sweet anise while she watched me with a mischievous girl's smile.

Green anise, batafaluga or matafaluga, originates from the Middle East and was already known over 3,500 years ago. It is simultaneously a spice, a remedy, a perfume, and a drink. Few aromas have such heterogeneous utility. The ancient Egyptians cultivated it as food and used it for its medicinal properties. It was also used, among other spices, to purify the body in the mummification process of the deceased. The Greeks fully incorporated it into their pharmacopoeia. Hippocrates recommended it to alleviate coughs and aid digestion, while Dioscorides, in the 1st century, describes it in detail in his treatise on medicinal plants. The Romans extended its consumption throughout the Empire and used it in various dishes, such as mustacei, small cakes that were served at the end of large banquets and were prepared by mixing flour, honey, and grape must with spices such as anise, fennel, and pepper.

Distillation

Between the 8th and 12th centuries, the Islamic world perfected distillation. When the technique spread to Europe, anise became one of the favorite plants for flavoring brandies. Anisette arrived in the Balearic Islands as a consequence of the diffusion of these liquors between the 16th and 17th centuries. In the following centuries, many towns had small brandy producers. At the end of the 19th century and during a good part of the 20th, several distilleries appeared that marketed anisettes with their own brands.

In addition to its use in the production of liquors, anise has been one of the most important flavorings in traditional confectionery, especially in cakes, biscuits, sweet cookies, and the Ibizan flaó. One of the first printed testimonies of a Majorcan cake flavored with anise is found, paradoxically, in a peninsular recipe book. It is about the Vizcochos de Mallorca de Anís, included by Juan de la Mata in Arte de repostería (1747), a preparation made with eggs, sugar, flour, Dutch cinnamon, lemon zest, and anise seeds. It is particularly significant that this recipe does not appear in known Majorcan recipe books from the same period or later. This absence, however, does not necessarily imply that anise was not used in the island's confectionery. It should be borne in mind that many recipe books omit ingredients considered usual in the title, such as cinnamon, lemon, or anise itself, and that these often only appear described within the formula or were taken for granted.

Pedro Ballester does mention it in the Menorcan recipe book De re cibaria (1923) in three recipes for batafaluga biscuits, one of which comes from an old Maó manuscript and another from the so-called Receptari Caules (Ciutadella, 18th century). Once cooked, these biscuits were cut into slices and re-baked to ensure better preservation. These sweets would be akin to the small biscuits or sweet biscuits that Tomeu Arbona collects in Rebosteria tradicional de Mallorca and which, due to their shape, remind me of the longed-for aniseed cake from Forn des Paners in Palma.

For today's recipe, I have followed the indications of the aniseed cakes from Estellencs that Antoni Tugores recovered in Memòria de la cuina mallorquina, potato cakes that you can make without anise if you wish and that perfectly accompany a good glass of ice cream.