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.

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.

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.

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.

The bakery was bright and clean. A sweet, milky air filled the air, thanks to the freshly baked treats, ensaimadas, and cakes that were so tempting. I peered into the oven; more than one person could fit inside, a thought that both unsettled and intrigued me. On the marble counter lay the pastries that would later become cakes, and beside them, whipped cream, fruit, chocolate cream, and a large, pristine, glossy bowl of meringue—a mound of sticky snow, the sweetest of fillings.

We used to play on the seashore, mostly digging holes that would soon fill with water. We would have loved for starfish and seahorses, like the ones we saw in other children's plastic buckets, to suddenly inhabit them. Sometimes we went to the reefs where the rocks fiercely sheltered the snails. I was never able to bring myself to eat them. They had the strength of the sea in their bodies and their taste, perfectly camouflaged in their surroundings. If the waves wouldn't let us swim, we would look for crabs in the crevices of the rocks. It wasn't easy to fool them because our little feet betrayed us, and they would soon retreat into dives impossible for us. Some of these species are now protected, and although I'm relieved I was never the cause of their disappearance, it pains me to know they are in such a fragile state.

I often saw her lying among the trees. The sun's rays melted into the shadows of the holm oaks, and she basked in the warmth. I saw the piglets born; they were like mice wrapped in whitish slime, disproportionately small next to their mother. In summer, they grunted and splashed in the muddy water while the sow grunted. Now that their life cycle was over, she seemed defeated and alone. Huddled on a bed of leaves, she resembled an altar touched by the light, the great sacrificial stone.

With this enthusiastic and apt phrase begins the prologue of one of the most unique and valuable recipe books of the island's gastronomic tradition, Popular Mallorcan cuisinePublished in Sóller in 1931. The small-format work was printed at the printing establishment of Salvador Calatayud, who had already participated in some of the many editions of the work The guinea pig of MallorcaAttributed to Pere de Alcántara Peña.

Anthony Bourdain said that the best way to get to know someone is to share a meal, and that when someone invites you to sit at their table, they are really inviting you into their world. Because in every dish, however simple, there is a story, and every recipe is a journey of no return. The municipality of Algaida travels the world through the kitchens of the families who live in the town and in the villages of Pina and Randa, transforming gastronomy into a meeting place where diversity is experienced, shared, and celebrated.