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A cursory look at the data collated from the Second World War Police Occurrences reports for the rural towns of Siggiewi and Zebbug provides interesting insights into the various products [...]

Used by the Aztecs and brought to the Mediterranean some four centuries ago from Central and South America, the prickly pear (bajtra tax-xewk) is a large cactus of the genus Opuntia. Each part of [...]

Writing about Malta in the 19th century, Louis de Boisgelin states that ‘figs when dried, furnish with a little barley bread the principal sustenance of the numerous and finely formed [...]

With its hooks and lockable box for meat, terracotta jars to store oil, and various tables, the dispensa served as a pantry or larder where to store food supplies. In 1798 the ground floor plans [...]

A 1611 dictionary defines the tinello as a common hall where ordinary servants and waiters attend and dine. As a matter of fact, inventories refer to benches and dining tables, among other [...]

In the 1798 inventory of the Inquisitor’s kitchen utensils and equipment, hurriedly drawn up before Napoleon’s invasion of the Maltese Islands, the sorbettiere in the credenza have [...]

The credenza was an integral part of every respected kitchen. It betrays an interesting development from an area where to store utensils to a sideboard, a furniture piece to store dishes. At the [...]

Although no menus, shopping lists, or food purchases specifically related to the daily needs of the Inquisitor have been unearthed, Food Historians do have five inventories to go by. Compiled [...]

The Inquisitor’s Palace ‘Cucina’ was no ordinary kitchen, but a remarkable setup furnished with all sorts of pots, pens, caldrons, tin and copper baking trays, fish-poachers, [...]

Despite its 500 years of chequered history, the Inquisitor’s Palace is a unique centre of power in early modern Malta, for between 1574 and 1798 it served as residence and tribunal to the [...]