They had installed the perch in the kitchen. The feathered ducks swayed there, hanging from a hook. A macabre curtain from which the animals had just dripped the last drops of blood. The scorched skin gave off a metallic and penetrating smell that mixed with the scalded feathers. Those powerful animals that organized the coop with their scandalous comings and goings looked like others, stripped and sad, staring at you from that small head with cloudy eyes.

The combination of meat, sugar, and fruit was for centuries one of the most distinctive characteristics of medieval cuisine. Far from understanding sweet and savory as two separate worlds, cooks sought harmony between different flavors. Andalusian cuisine had developed a wide repertoire of dishes where meat was combined with fruits, nuts, and aromatic spices, an influence that left a deep mark on the territories of the Crown of Aragon. At the same time, the great Catalan medieval recipe books, such as the Llibre de Sent Soví (14th century) and the Llibre del Coch, by Robert de Nola (1520), collect numerous preparations in which the use of sugar and fruit is common, especially in dishes of game, poultry, and veal.

Little did Christopher Columbus imagine that his journey would end up transforming the way half the world ate. They had set sail with the objective of opening a new route to the riches of the East, especially spices, highly prized and coveted for centuries. Instead of the Indies, they found a continent unknown to the Castilians. And, with it, a biodiversity that would forever change the history of gastronomy.

We 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.

Then the street was flanked by plots of land. The almond trees leaned over our path, offering such green almonds that we could still eat the skin. We opened them with our teeth and took out the kernel that burst in our mouths like a small gulp of acidic water. We filled our pockets with them and ran off in fours for fear that some neighbor might give us away. In the month of September, when it was time to harvest the almonds, I always ate some of those we shelled outside the cloths. The pulp broke crunchily in the mouth, milky and sweet, braving such a wonderful transformation, just like a chrysalis waiting for its final state.

The summer solstice, the moment of the year when the day is longest and the night is shortest, has been celebrated for thousands of years by many of the cultures that have populated the earth. These were pagan festivals where ritual celebrations were held and where the triumph of light over darkness was celebrated. This is the case of the festivities of Classical Greece dedicated to the god Apollo, god of the Sun, during which purifying bonfires were lit. When Christianity spread, the Church adapted many of these existing festivities. This is the case of Saint John, the day on which the birth of the saint is celebrated. According to tradition, Saint John was born at 12 AM, at the same time as Jesus was born and exactly six months before him.

Bread, a staple food for humanity, seems to have originated by chance. It is said that the first inhabitants collected wild cereals and then used the grain by crushing it between two stones to make porridge. It is believed that one day, someone forgot some of this porridge near the fire, or perhaps poured it intentionally onto a hot stone. The result was a dry, flat, and crispy paste, the first unleavened bread (without yeast) in history. Bread as we know it today, fluffy, with crumb and volume, was born in ancient Egypt. Chance again played in its favor when some forgotten shepherd captured some of the yeast fungi that live suspended in the air. That dough swelled and when they found it, they decided to bake it. The result was truly a miracle: a soft, tasty, and much easier to digest bread.

An enormous casserole dish presided over the center. We sat around it. Someone cut bread with a small knife and ate directly from the dish with the help of a slice. The others repeated the gesture and took our share without haste. Then the old man said that when he was little, everyone would pounce like a ferret when the plate touched the table. There was hunger. He and his brothers learned to eat quickly and since then he had an instinct, a jolt that twisted his throat and stomach when lunchtime arrived. It was necessary to feed, to calm the groans that echoed in the belly. In his memory lived the smells of his mother's dishes, the taste of dishes he would never taste again and that he still felt. Cuisine made of nothing that configured a world, a handful, a pinch, a trickle.

Doughnuts constitute one of the most widespread types of traditional pastry within the peninsular sphere. This fried dough, generally in the shape of a ring or a closed horseshoe, made with flour, fat, eggs, and some flavorings, refers to a much older origin, to preparations of doughs fried in oil, often sweetened with honey or sugar, already documented in the classical world and which later developed in medieval cuisine.

I propose a mental exercise, traveling back in time 500 years to dine in a manor house in Palma. I enjoy taking this trip, being the guest at a banquet of a noble family on a festive day, perhaps a wedding or an important celebration. The dishes that will be cooked there will not be very far from those we appreciate in recipe books like the Llibre de Sent Soví, written in 1324 and considered one of the oldest in Europe, one of the great sources for understanding the diet of the Crown of Aragon in the late Middle Ages, and by extension, of the cuisine practiced in Mallorca in noble settings after the Catalan conquest.

Ink was a decisive invention in human history because it allowed us to fix and transmit knowledge with ease, permanently and simply. The word 'ink' is a very broad term that includes any pigmented liquid or paste used for writing, drawing, or printing and comes from the Latin tincta, meaning 'dyed'.

The imposing mulberry tree offered shade and fruit to the hens when it was the season. There was enough space to roam all day, to peck at small blades of grass that didn't have time to grow, or to put an end to some insect that had had the bad luck to enter. At the back was the old nesting box where the birds went to lay their eggs and the old rabbit hutches that now served to store grain. A metal bed base converted into a door that never closed invited the hens to enter when the sun set. I liked to go looking for the eggs, discovering that offering that the little animals left us inside a box covered with straw. It surprised me that they were so unconcerned, absent of jealousy for that perfect little box that had come out of their bodies.

The acidic smell of vinegar wafted through the kitchen, cutting through the bitterness of the green beans and the aromas of boiled vegetables. I knew that when I sat down at the table, the ordeal would begin. Spring had burst, the pods were flowering and the beans grew tender and crisp, stuffed with small green pearls inside. There was always a small furrow or two of broad beans in the yard, and some days some of these fruits would arrive at our table in a formidable, unavoidable green bean dish.

Few plants have accompanied humans throughout history as much as gourds. Present in cultures on every continent, they have been much more than food: they have served as containers, tools, musical instruments, and even life preservers. Currently, we associate them with gastronomic terms, as part of creams, in stews, pickles, and desserts.

My slaughtered animal hung from a scaffold. It had its belly open, a large empty cavity from which the gold that would be offered fried had been extracted. It seemed that its eyes had followed point by point the entire sequence of its dismemberment and had been horrified by it: the drained blood, the offal, further on the gut that was beginning to be limed to remove all dirt, the clean and lemoned intestines hanging from some reeds. A wild scene, an impossible puzzle to reassemble.

The streets awaited the passage in silence while the songs were still heard in the distance in a dull murmur. The procession passed, the mournful songs of the mourners chilled our blood with their sadness. They spoke of death and forgiveness, of promised paradises that fled, winding with the jingle of the chain of a penitent and anonymous Christ. We knew nothing of all that, of the grief, we were children and our paradise was a pocket full of sweets.

Making crespells is one of the most deeply rooted traditions of Holy Week in Mallorca. Beyond the recipe, it is also a shared moment: floured hands, molds of various shapes, and children starting in the kitchen almost as if it were a game.

The kitchen filled with a white light, as if flour had taken the place of light.

The porch was small, and the steam from the cooking pot fogged the windows, making the space even more sheltered from the outside world—a little haven for everyday cooking. Inside the pot, a thick, yellowish broth simmered, its aroma heavy and pungent. Chopped parsley awaited its turn on the wooden chopper. Sometimes it was enriched with a snail found among the weeds in the yard, with asparagus from the edges, or a mushroom when it was in season. If I was lucky, it would be rice; if not, noodles or burballes (a type of sausage), and woe betide me, for I would struggle to finish whatever dish they placed before me.

The history of gastronomy cannot be understood without the constant movement of cooks. Long before culinary schools existed, knowledge circulated among those who controlled the kitchen. In the case of royal cooks, it was not surprising that they traveled from one kingdom to another, serving kings, nobles, or high dignitaries. With them traveled not only techniques, but also ingredients, serving styles, and the very essence of a banquet.