Not The Same: Ensaïmadas

Say sweetbreads to me and I'll come out in a cold sweat. It's all to do with the memory of a meal in the Dordogne. The dish looked appetising enough, until I was told what "ris de veau" actually meant. I had mistaken the "ris" bit to be rice. Tucking into pancreas isn't at the top of my list of culinary experiences to be repeated. Nor, come to that, is sweet bread.

Sweet bread is making an appearance in the US. The separation of bread from sweet presumably overcomes the connotation with offal, making it more a waffle, or maybe the Americans don't know what sweetbreads are. Whatever. Sweet bread is available in Starbucks. Mallorcan Sweet Bread, aka the ensaïmada (so long as the aka is not used, it would seem). The Americans can lard their asses even more, courtesy of Mallorcan lard. Or can they?

The key ingredient of the ensaïmada is pork lard - "saïm". The word is derived from the Latin for fat. An unfathomable peculiarity of an otherwise healthy Mallorcan Mediterranean diet is that they go and wreck it by shovelling lard and sugar down their necks. What on earth are they thinking of?

The reverence shown to the ensaïmada baffles me. It has its own "day". It gets hauled off in boxes by passengers from the airport, intent on inflicting it on unsuspecting relatives and friends on the mainland. It has been 15 metres in diameter, such as at Inca's Dijous Bo a couple of years back. It has been, according to a press reader survey in February 2009, the seventh wonder of Mallorca (at least it wasn't the first).

The ensaïmada has also been a victim of recession and of rival Mallorcan products. Production and sales have fallen.

According to Starbucks' US website, one of its Mallorca Sweet Breads contains a mere 60% of your daily saturated fat intake; indeed it has 39% of total fat intake for the day. The site bigs up the bun by saying that (in Mallorca) "one wouldn't dream of starting the day without a coffee and this traditional sweet bread". Ah yes, you wake up and the first thing that comes to mind is to get off to the bakers or the local café and give yourself a sugary moustache.

Going through the lengthy list of the sweet bread's ingredients on the website, there seems to be no mention of "saïm". Maybe the pork lard is covered by something else, but if not, then it isn't, strictly speaking, the saïm thing. Were it to be, then who knows how high the fat content would be.

The Mallorcan ensaïmada is a registered "brand", but the president of the ensaïmada regulatory council, which has faced its own financing issues, reckons that there isn't a lot to prevent Starbucks from promoting the bread. It is promotion, after all. But the name "ensaïmada" isn't actually being used, albeit that the website gives a brief background to what is "called ensaïmada in Spanish". The president also points out - most important this - that the Starbucks' bread has been coiled in the wrong direction. And yes, there is a right direction. To the right. Clockwise.

The ensaïmada isn't only to be found in Mallorca. It is not uncommon in, say, the Philippines or Latin America, but the pork lard ingredient is what makes it distinctively Mallorcan. It would be telling porkies to claim that the ensaïmadas of the world, without a dash of pig, are really ensaïmadas.

As for my own personal less than great regard for the ensaïmada, don't take this as some holier-than-thou health assault on pastry or cake in general. Not at all. I can have my cake and eat it, too. Many times over, thanks very much. Just that the ensaïmada, rather like another hugely over-rated breakfast bread, the croissant, is terminally dull. And it confirms that the Mallorcans, like the French, don't understand breakfast. Mind you, neither are as mad as the Dutch who put chocolate bits on bread and butter.

No, it's nothing to do with health or the presence of pork lard. It's everything to do with breakfast. Bacon and sausages a-sizzling. And an egg being fried. Preferably in lard. The ensaïmada? Doesn't even get near.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.