A Caldereta from 1895 (I)

Bep Al·lès / Ciutadella – Today I took a look and, in the process, reorganized the Quaderns de Folklore. I opened issue number 62: “Principi i Prostes, a collection of Minorcan stews”, written in 1895 in Ciutadella by one of the great Cuban anthropologists, Fernando Ortiz Fernández, who spent his childhood in our city and authored various works, including this “Principi i prostes”, written at the age of 14—one year before returning to his native Havana—and dedicated to his uncle Llorenç Cabrisas i Caimaris.

“Principi i prostes”, published in Salvador Fàbregues’ “kitchen” in 1895 and described by the author as a “Collection of Minorcan stews, expected to sit well in the stomach,” is not a cookbook, nor is it a gastronomic treatise, but it does contain a good number of references to our dishes, our cuisine, Minorcan customs, and it also opens the path to the gastronomic anthropology of late 19th-century Menorca.

In his prologue, Ortiz tells us: “It is not like Ruiz’s caldereta”—referring to Àngel Ruiz i Pablo and his booklet “Per fer gana”—“which, whenever I think of it, still makes me lick my lips because of its deliciousness (…)”.

The discovery of a word—in this case “caldereta”—may seem like a minor detail, a simple philological curiosity among old papers. But in gastronomy, words also preserve memory, build narratives, and give cultural status to a dish. That is why it is so significant to have located the word caldereta in a booklet by Fernando Ortiz Fernández dated 1895 in Ciutadella. It is not just a linguistic discovery: it is a piece of great value for understanding the history of Minorcan cuisine and, especially, one of its most recognized symbols.

The text in question, Principi i prostes, a collection of Minorcan stews, is not, as we have said, a recipe book nor a gastronomic treatise in the modern sense. However, it is a document of enormous anthropological interest, as it portrays customs, dishes, ways of eating, and references to Menorca at the end of the 19th century. Written by a very young Fernando Ortiz—only fourteen years old, a year before returning to his native Havana—the work reveals irony, observation, and a surprising sensitivity in capturing the domestic landscape and the customs of a Ciutadella that was awakening to the shoe industry.

Ortiz already refers to calderetas in 1895, although he does so metaphorically, alluding to “Per fer gana” by Ruiz y Pablo. From a gastronomic point of view, however, what matters is that he uses the word caldereta and not caldera.