Store

Andalusian Foodways in Morocco

Historical period

Between 1492 and the early seventeenth century, Muslims and Jews expelled from Iberia settled in the northern Moroccan cities, and the documented result is legible in the food of FES, TETOUAN, CHEFCHAOUEN, RABAT and SALE in particular. What arrived: a taste for SWEET WITH MEAT — the fruit-and-honey tagines, prune and apricot with lamb, the sugared-and-cinnamoned pastilla; almond pastry and marzipan work; candied and preserved fruit; orange-flower water; rice; and a court and guild tradition of elaborate cooking which is why Fassi cuisine is the most technically demanding in Morocco. ⚠ AND THE DISCIPLINE THE SPEC ASKS FOR: NOT EVERY ELABORATE MOROCCAN DISH IS ANDALUSIAN. Many of the techniques are shared across the whole medieval Islamic Mediterranean and appear in thirteenth-century Andalusi and Baghdadi cookbooks alike, so the direction of travel is often unrecoverable. This row records a documented migration and its documented culinary consequences, and declines to attribute anything further on the strength of a Spanish-sounding name.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Andalusis community documented

Languages: Moroccan Arabic

What is recorded

  • The fall of Granada and the expulsions from Iberia begin; Muslims and Jews settle Fes, Tetouan, Chefchaouen, Rabat and Sale, carrying the sweet-with-meat and almond-pastry traditions into northern Morocco. documented
  • Muslims and Jews expelled from Iberia between 1492 and the early seventeenth century settled in northern Moroccan cities, and documented culinary consequences are concentrated in Fes, Tetouan, Chefchaouen, Rabat and Sale: sweet-with-meat preparations, fruit tagines, sugared pastilla, almond pastry and marzipan, candied fruit, orange-flower water and an elaborate guild tradition. Many of the techniques are shared across the medieval Islamic Mediterranean and appear in thirteenth-century Andalusi and Baghdadi cookbooks alike, so the direction of transmission is often unrecoverable and is not asserted beyond the documented migration. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • originates from Spanish Foodways documented

    ⚠ A documented MIGRATION, not a general derivation: many techniques are shared across the whole medieval Islamic Mediterranean and the direction of travel is often unrecoverable.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.