Mallorca

"At lunch, the main meal, they distribute the escudella, a name taken from the pot it’s served in. The dish is a type of stew made from dry broad beans cooked in salt, cabbage, potatoes and onions. If cabbage is unavailable, they substitute it with squash (carabassa) and, if the season is right, with tomatoes. The same is true at breakfast. Upon removing the escudella from the heat, a little bit of oil is generally added. Between seven and eight in the afternoon, day laborers are given another ration of the stew, the only difference being that they’re given a bit more bread, meager compensation for the lesser quantities of solid contents. All the meals are accompanied by abundant bread and olives. In good times, they’re also accompanied by dried figs (figues) and prickly pears (figues de moro) which, like olives, are preferably eaten at dinner.

The farmers or landowners and their families tend to eat the same things as their workers, though at times they add fried eggs, sausages such as sobrasada, botifarra and camaiot or fatb (xulla) to the stew. On Sundays and holidays, the primary meal for farmhands and even those we could call humble consists of rice with some bits of fat, sobrasada or camaiot sausage and a bit of saffron. Breakfast and dinner don’t vary.

On Sundays and holidays, people in the towns eat just like those in the country. Only wealthier individuals living in the city add meat, fish or other items to their diets. At dinner, the midday stew reappears, though they perhaps add some noodles, while the rich substitute the escudella with cabbage soup, while others or, if fish is available, make caldereta de peix (“fish stew”)."

Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria. Las Baleares por la palabra y el grabado. Majorca: General Part. Ed. Sa Nostra, Caja de Baleares. Palma de Mallorca. 1982.