Domestic medicine

PalmThe oldest trace of Mallorcan recipes is not found in cookbooks, but in books on law, morality, agriculture, medicine, and pharmacology. In moral literature, recipes serve to teach how to live well and correct vices. Moral recipes often appear in sermons, religious teachings, and didactic works in which culinary language is used as a metaphor.

Preachers, for example, spoke of cooking the soul with the ingredients of virtue. Some manuals of conduct even included imaginary recipes: how to prepare a broth of humility or a dish of obedience with exact measures of patience, faith, and perseverance. In the medical field, during the 14th and 15th centuries, doctors prescribed foods with specific recipes. They indicated, for example, how to prepare light broths with chicken or capó for convalescent patients, and how to bake vegetables and legumes to aid digestion, among other things.

The recipes that appear in medieval and early modern pharmacological treatises are key to understanding how the boundaries between cooking, medicine, and pharmacy were very blurred. These texts, often known as 'antidotaries,' 'pestilence treatises,' or 'health books,' contained formulas for making food- and plant-based remedies: syrups, broths, sugared almonds, medicinal wines, electuaries (sweet pastes made with honey), ointments, and honey. Many of these remedies were prepared with everyday ingredients that were also found in the kitchen: honey, olive oil, vinegar, spices, nuts, eggs, milk, and flour.

Catalan versions

In Mallorca, as in the rest of the Crown of Aragon, these treatises circulated among doctors, apothecaries, and convents. Sometimes they were compilations in Latin, such as theAntidotarium Nicolai (1200, originating in the Salerno School and spread throughout Europe), which outlined basic formulas for pharmacies. However, there were also Catalan versions, adapted to the local public, in which we find instructions as detailed as in a cookbook: precise quantities, cooking times, the order in which ingredients were added, and even recommendations on the quality of the product.

The language of the pharmacy was, in fact, very similar to that of the kitchen. Preparing a syrup from herbs required boiling them in water or wine, straining them, and mixing them with honey, vinegar, or sugar. Making a medicinal confit was almost identical to making a sweet: covering seeds or fruits with syrup until they were covered with sugar. The distillations of roses, thyme, and rosemary recall culinary techniques of preservation and flavoring.

These pharmacological recipes not only served to cure but also influenced gastronomy. Many medieval sweets, such as candied fruit, marzipan, and aromatic waters, originated in pharmaceutical formulas that eventually became unused for medical purposes and became festive foods. Sugar and sweets, unlike today, were considered medicinal and beneficial to health.

Cookbooks from the 19th and 20th centuries often include a final section on home remedies, as if the tables had somehow turned. These preparations are not presented as scholarly pharmacy, but rather as practical wisdom passed down from generation to generation and recorded on paper. But the underlying logic is the same as that of the old manuals: using food and plants to make home medicine.

Today's recipe, collected in the book Herbs and home remedies by Lluís Ripoll (1985), is not a recipe; it's actually a remedy to prevent and combat bites from flies and other insects. According to the text, it's also excellent for healing cuts you might get while shaving or for keeping your skin fresh.