The Specialty of the Sisters

Fruits and sugar, love and patience: these are the ingredients of the sweets made by the nuns of Manacor.

In the sole convent of Benedictine nuns on Mallorca the motto is: "Ora et labora" [Pray and Work]. This Order receives no type of monthly subsidy. "It’s up to us to decide how to earn a living from day to day", the abbess who runs the convent tells us. And business is going well.

These pious ladies of the Lord make the very finest delicacies for gourmets. At their Monestir de la Santa Familia, they cook jams, bottle sun dried tomatoes and make a delicious olive paté.

These are all delicacies that the sisters themselves like very much. "Of course we don’t lead a life of luxury, but we certainly appreciate the good things in life", says the mother superior, smiling as she touches the point of her tongue with the middle of her index finger. These ladies of the Lord also produce figs, pomegranates and oranges, as well as a tonic-giving herbal liquor that you knock back from a small carafe.

The area of the plot cultivated by the nuns, whose ages range from 40 to 82 years, amounts to 20,000 sq. m. No man treads this ground; instead the sisters themselves carry out even the heaviest tasks. "We are feminists", exclaims the Abbess, without any pretension to seriousness.

They harvest the fruits used in their products, there being numerous fruit trees in the convent grounds. But the inhabitants of Manacor also make donations of fruit from their own plots. At the convent they then experiment with unusual mixtures: orange marmalade and chocolate, kiwi y apple, whisky and oranges. To spread on bread they prepare pastes of fig, quince, apricot, lemon, tomato, onion, melon, carrots and even pumpkin. All the recipes are of great age and largely derive from the Order itself within which they have been transmitted from generation to generation.

A lot of fruit and little sugar: per kilo of sun-dried fruit ‘only’ 750 grams of sugar are used. But, above all, no preservatives nor additives! There is no other secret. "Many housewives put in the same quantity of sugar as fruit", explains Sister Elena. "Then they wonder why it just tastes of sugar rather than the fruit."

The ‘Nine Sisters of Manacor’ would not be true nuns if they did not also have some curative remedy to hand. Thus they offer a tincture against gout in the joints and muscular tension. This is an essence based on Rosemary – although only intended for external use. The ‘delicacies’ of the Benedictine nuns, the ‘Monges Benedictines’, are sold in specialist shops, at the markets and in the popular fiestas held in the villages.