The Inquisitor’s Palace – Inventories

 In TasteHistory

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 between the list drawn on New Year’s Eve of 1631 and the sudden departure of the last Inquisitor prior to the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte to Malta in 1798, these inventories have immortalised the food-related utensils and equipment existent in the early modern Inquisitor’s palace kitchen space.

In 1759 the scrivener is keen to record twenty-one cake moulds and goes through the trouble of listing the five earthenware jars used to store water located in a cupboard. However, no mention is made of the silverware that was kept in a showcase in the 1703 inventory. The cake moulds must have been put to good use because fourteen-damaged cake moulds are mentioned four decades later in the 1798 list.

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