Mantecados de Estepa

Appearance & taste

Mantecados de Estepa are rounded, toasted brown and weigh at most 55 g. They are compact on the outside and tender on the inside; the surface is slightly cracked and soft on the palate. Their moisture content is below 5 %.

There are nine varieties: cinnamon, home-made style, olive oil, almonds, cocoa, coconut, lemon, hazelnut and vanilla. They are sold individually wrapped, on their own or together with other Christmas biscuits such as polvorones, alfajores and roscos de vino.

Production

The basic ingredients are wheat flour (usually 45 to 55 %), lard (20 to 27 %) and sugar (22 to 26 %). Depending on the variety, cinnamon, sesame, almonds, hazelnuts, coconut, cocoa or essential oils are added, each in set proportions; the almond variety contains at least 8 % almonds, the coconut variety 5 to 10 % coconut. In the olive oil variety, the lard is replaced by extra virgin olive oil. The specification also lays down requirements for the flour, lard, sugar and almonds.

Production and packing take place in Estepa. After baking and cooling, each biscuit is immediately wrapped individually, heat-sealed or in double-twisted paper, by machine or by hand. This keeps the brittle pastry from breaking and prevents condensation from forming in the packaging. The boxes weigh 100 g to 5 kg. In mixed boxes, the Mantecados de Estepa must be individually labelled as such.

Origin & history

The area is the municipality of Estepa in the province of Seville. According to the specification, during the season from September to December large parts of the population are directly or indirectly involved in production, in over 20 mostly family-run businesses; suppliers such as printers and thermoforming businesses have grown up around them.

According to the specification, the origins go back to the 16th century: the archive of the convent of Santa Clara in Estepa records that confectioners worked there, and there are references to old recipes. Cereals were mixed with the surplus lard from the December slaughtering, hence the link with Christmas time. The specification names Micaela Ruiz Téllez, known as La Colchona (1824–1901), as the inventor of today’s mantecado. She refined and toasted the flour and introduced external drying so that the pastry stayed tender and survived long journeys. Mantecados have been made in Estepa since the second half of the 19th century, according to the specification to the same recipe for over a hundred years, and their name spread beyond Andalusia.