Capirotada

When dry bread is soaked in a sweet liquid and layered with cheese, fruit and nuts, it becomes a soft dish that still keeps the shape of the cut bread. Mexico’s capirotada is known as a Lenten sweet, but the result changes depending on whether it is made with a water-based syrup or a milk-based liquid, and whether it is baked or left to rest. Older dishes called by the same name also used meat, and a method of moistening bread and layering fillings over it is on record.

Soaking bread in syrup and layering on salty cheese

The base is bread such as bolillo or birote, cut, dried, and then fried or toasted. Piloncillo is dissolved in water and flavored with cinnamon, cloves and other spices to make a syrup, which is allowed to soak into the inside of the bread. When bread, fillings and liquid are layered alternately, sweetness and moisture pass into each layer, and the result is a soft sweet that still keeps the shape of the original slices.

Cheese adds saltiness and a dairy flavor to the bread that has soaked up the sweet liquid. Cotija in Jalisco, fresh and aged cheeses in Chihuahua, and fresh goat’s milk cheese in Nuevo León also differ in saltiness and in how they melt. Some regions layer bananas, coconut and candied fruit along with the crunch of peanuts, almonds and walnuts. There are also home recipes that leave out cheese.

Choosing water or milk, and differences in cooking method

The difference in liquid is clearest in Colima. There is “de agua,” made with piloncillo syrup, and “de leche,” made with milk. For de agua, a syrup with tomato and onion added is layered with fried bread, cheese, raisins and almonds and then baked. De leche is made by moistening the bread with a liquid of milk, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla and other ingredients cooked together, then leaving it to rest to finish. De agua is characterized by the strong aroma of unrefined cane sugar, and de leche by the mellow flavor of milk.

There is also more than one way to finish the cooking. In Coahuila, there is a method in which fried bread is combined with syrup and fillings and served without being baked again. In Valle de Allende, Chihuahua, some versions use thin buñuelos or sopaipillas instead of bread. Besides soaking bread and baking it in the oven, there are ingredients and finishing methods specific to each region.

The tortillas laid on the bottom of the pot in Michoacán and elsewhere serve to keep the bread, soaked in sweet liquid, from touching the hot bottom of the pot directly and scorching; they are removed when the dish is brought to the table.

A Sonoran recipe collection also includes a finish in which the baked capirotada is covered with egg whites whipped with sugar and lemon and browned once more. It is one example of layering a light egg-white layer over syrup-soaked bread and fruit.

There are also preparations in which bread prepared in different ways is layered in the same dish. The capirotada taught by Naomi Nakahama on a 2021 television program uses fried bread in the lower layer and toasted bread in the upper layer, combined with fried bananas and nuts. Kokuto (Japanese brown sugar) and johakuto (Japanese soft white sugar) are added to a liquid of simmered tomato, onion, cinnamon and cloves; the liquid is strained and poured over each layer, grated cheese is layered on, and the dish is baked.

The New Mexican method using caramel

In northern New Mexico, a method that uses cheese but no eggs has been handed down. White bread is torn into small pieces and toasted, and sugar is caramelized before water, brown sugar, butter, cinnamon and other ingredients are added to make a deeply aromatic liquid. This is layered with the bread, mild cheddar, raisins, and pecans or piñones.

The syrup is not poured into one spot but drizzled little by little over all of the bread, which is pressed lightly to absorb it. When it is then baked, the bread soaks up the liquid and comes together softly even without an egg custard. In Chimayó, an apple-growing area, there is also a method that adds apples lightly sautéed in butter to the layers. As in the various regions of Mexico, combinations of familiar bread, fruit and cheese create the local flavor.

A name derived from “covering,” and older dishes with meat

Dictionaries explain that the Spanish name derives from capirote, a hood that covers the head. Covarrubias’s dictionary of 1611 likens to a head covering the act of placing a dish made with garlic, oil, cheese, eggs, herbs and the like over another dish. The etymology does not refer only to the pointed Lenten hood; it is a metaphor for the “covering” in cooking itself.

In the 1529 edition of Ruperto de Nola’s cookbook, the “almodrote que es capirotada” moistens toasted bread with mutton broth, layers roasted partridge and Aragonese cheese over it, and tops it with a sauce of garlic, egg yolks and meat juices. Moistening bread and layering it with fillings is a common point, but when and where it changed into a sweet is uncertain.

In 1780, the friar Jerónimo de San Pelayo recorded a recipe (the proportions of ingredients and the method) for capirotada using tomatoes. The old dish with tomato and today’s Colima de agua, which adds tomato and onion to a sweet syrup, both use tomato, but the overall seasoning of the dish differs.

Symbols of the Passion and the seasonal table

Lent is a period of prayer and abstinence in preparation for Easter. Capirotada is made in Jalisco, Nuevo León and elsewhere, and a Catholic diocese in Texas has also presented a home recipe layering bread, unrefined cane sugar, fruit, nuts and cheese. In Comitán, Chiapas, on the other hand, it is also eaten for Independence Day in September.

In Lenten households, there is an explanation that likens the bread to the body of Christ, the syrup to his blood, the cinnamon stick to the cross, the cloves to the nails and the cheese to the cloth. The meanings vary from teller to teller, and this is not a uniform liturgy of the Church. Reading the story of the Passion into the familiar ingredients that form the layers has also tied this sweet to the seasonal table.

Glossary