Under two colonial presences, French baguettes and café rhythms entered Moroccan cities while Spanish influence marked the northern borderlands — yet tagine, couscous, and mint tea never left their place at the table.
Between 1912 and 1956, Morocco lived under a colonial order shaped by two foreign presences. France imposed the Protectorate over most of the country, while Spain held authority in the North and in parts of the South. These divisions changed cities, markets, work rhythms, and the places where food was bought, prepared, and consumed.
Before these transformations, Moroccan food culture was already rooted in long-established practices. It drew on local markets, household techniques, regional products, social customs, breads, couscous, tagines, and the food practices of rural regions, plains, oases, mountains, and coastal towns.
The colonial period changed this system unevenly, touching cities before villages and public spaces before domestic kitchens. New products, cafés, bakeries, restaurants, schools, offices, and industrial foods entered Moroccan life at different speeds. Some remained attached to colonial spaces, while others gradually moved into urban habits, local language, and everyday routines.
Morocco's Crisis Before the Protectorate
The Protectorate did not appear suddenly in 1912. It came after decades of military pressure, financial weakness, internal instability, and growing European interference. Morocco remained an independent sultanate, but central authority was uneven. The Makhzen — the sultan's court, officials, and fiscal authority — represented sovereignty, yet it did not control every region with the same force.
This uneven authority shaped the country's material life. Some areas were tied to the Makhzen through taxes, officials, trade, and military expeditions. Others remained more autonomous, organized around tribal authority, pasture, water, harvests, weekly souks, and regional alliances. This unstable relationship is often described through the distinction between bled el makhzen and bled siba.
European pressure made this structure more fragile. Morocco faced military defeats, commercial treaties, foreign protection, customs privileges, fiscal resistance, and a growing trade imbalance. The state needed money to pay troops, maintain authority, respond to unrest, and negotiate with foreign powers, but it could not always collect or command the country's resources.
The crisis deepened at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1901, the fiscal reform known as the tertib tried to replace older taxes with a new tax on cultivated land and livestock, but it provoked resistance and weakened direct tax collection. In 1904, the Moroccan state contracted a major foreign loan. Instead of restoring financial independence, the loan tied Moroccan revenue more closely to foreign creditors, especially through customs income.
Debt became more than a financial burden. Through loans, customs control, banking institutions, and foreign supervision, European influence entered functions that belonged to sovereignty itself. By 1912, foreign pressure had already reached Moroccan finance, ports, customs, diplomacy, and administration.
This situation explains why colonial change first affected the structures easiest to control: cities, ports, roads, customs, administrative centers, and commercial circuits. Rural areas, mountain communities, and domestic food practices changed more slowly. France and Spain therefore entered a country where daily life was still strongly shaped by local resources, regional authority, and unequal access to central power.
French Presence and New Daily Habits
The Treaty of Fez, signed in March 1912, gave France formal authority over the main structures of Moroccan public life: finance, customs, ports, roads, administration, security, and urban planning. French presence was therefore not limited to political control. It entered the practical systems through which people moved, worked, studied, bought goods, and encountered public life.
This colonial reorganization also took place during a wider global shift. Industrial production, international trade, banking, steam transport, and new forms of public consumption were already transforming European societies themselves. In Morocco, however, these changes arrived through domination, not equal exchange. France inserted parts of the country into a material order shaped by administration, commerce, transport, work, and consumption.
The first visible changes appeared in colonial institutions and urban space. Offices, schools, barracks, hospitals, railway lines, European quarters, and administrative centers created new daily spaces beside older medinas, souks, and household economies. These spaces changed how many people spent their days, where they moved, and how they came into contact with new goods and habits.
The change also affected time. School schedules, office work, salaried labor, transport, military service, and administrative routines introduced daily rhythms different from those organized around household production, weekly souks, prayer time, seasonal work, and family meals. The table began to feel these changes through the hours of the day, the distance from home, and the growing habit of buying food outside the household.
Food entered this transformation through products as much as through places. Some industrial and commercial foods were first attached to European circles, hotels, cafés, institutions, or wealthy households. Others gradually crossed into Moroccan use through local habits, local names, and Moroccan ways of eating.
The French presence therefore changed the world around the Moroccan table before it changed the table itself. Domestic cooking remained rooted in Moroccan techniques and household rhythms, but cities were creating new paths toward food: the school day, the office hour, the café pause, and the bought item carried home.
Spanish Presence in the Northern Borderlands
Spain did not enter Morocco only in 1912. Spanish merchants, diplomats, doctors, artisans, soldiers, refugees, and consular agents had been present in Moroccan ports and towns for a long time, especially after the peace and trade treaty of 1767. This older presence remained limited and uneven, but it created a history of contact around Tangier, Tetouan, Larache, Ceuta, Melilla, and the Mediterranean coast.
The Spanish colonial zone followed a different path from the French Protectorate. It was smaller, more mountainous, and concentrated mainly in the North, with other areas in the South. Military conflict, especially in the Rif, delayed a more organized colonial policy, and Spanish authority was often shaped by security, border control, and local administration.
Spanish authority did leave marks through roads, military posts, public buildings, and local administration, but its material effects remained more limited and uneven than those of the French zone.
Food contacts followed this regional pattern. In northern towns and border areas, Spanish presence, Mediterranean trade, migration, and access to Ceuta and Melilla made certain foreign products, utensils, appliances, cafés, and purchased foods more visible than in other regions. They entered selectively, through proximity, family mobility, urban contact, and local use.
The Spanish presence therefore formed a second colonial layer inside Morocco, most visible in the northern borderlands, coastal towns, family mobility, and the circulation of goods across nearby frontiers.
New Food Habits and Urban Rhythms
The first change was not a dish, but a condition of urban life: many people in expanding towns depended more directly on food they had to buy. Rural migrants, workers, students, soldiers, employees, and travelers could not always rely on gardens, household storage, family supply networks, or long preparation at home. The city pushed food toward nearby markets, groceries, bakeries, cafés, street stalls, dairy shops, and small restaurants.
Bread was the most visible daily example of this shift. In villages and smaller towns, bread could still be kneaded at home and baked in a household oven or a neighborhood oven. In larger colonial cities, bread was increasingly bought from bakeries or shops. Bakery bread, small breads, white flour products, and later baguette-style bread entered urban habits without fully replacing Moroccan round bread. Industrial mills also changed flour itself, altering the texture and taste of everyday bread before many households had made a conscious break with older practices.
Breakfast was another point of change. Older morning foods could include dates, soups, barley or semolina preparations, bread, oil, butter, or leftovers, depending on region and household means. In towns, a more urban breakfast became visible: coffee with milk, bakery bread, industrial butter, jam, cheese, pastries, or bought food eaten before work or school. This breakfast suited a day organized by school, wage work, administration, and movement through the city.
Cafés and small restaurants created new places for eating and drinking outside the home. Coffee with milk, tea, soft drinks, pastries, cakes, small breads, and quick dishes became part of public urban life. These places served Europeans and colonial employees, but also students, workers, travelers, soldiers, and urban Moroccans whose routines passed through commercial streets. The café was a food space, but also a social space of pause, waiting, conversation, and public time.
The kaskrot, from the French casse-croûte, expressed this new rhythm in a particularly clear way. It was not a family meal and not a ceremonial dish. It was built around movement: bread, filling, speed, low cost, and convenience. Its importance lies less in one fixed recipe than in the behavior it represented: eating quickly, individually, and outside the domestic meal.
The Protectorate period therefore changed Moroccan food habits by changing access, time, and place. It added new food moments to urban life: bought bread before work, café breakfasts, street snacks, packaged goods, and quick meals outside the home. The change was not simply what people ate, but when, where, and under what rhythm they ate.
Foreign Observers at the Moroccan Table
Foreign observers did not define Moroccan cuisine, but their accounts sometimes preserve useful details. Read carefully, they show what outsiders noticed at Moroccan tables: hospitality, markets, bread, cafés, domestic habits, elite service, and dishes already recognizable in the twentieth century.
Budgett Meakin — 1905
Budgett Meakin, Life in Morocco and Glimpses Beyond, London, Chatto & Windus, 1905.
“the preparations for tea, orange-flower water, incense, a well-filled tray, a samovar, and two or three dishes piled high with cakes”; “gazelle’s hoofs”; “honey cakes”; “f’kakis.”
Meakin records a Moroccan reception built around tea, scent, trays, and sweets still recognizable today: kaab l’ghzal, honey sweets, and fekkas.
“his basket will contain meat, fish, vegetables, fruit and herbs”; “a loaf of sugar, and a quarter of a pound of tea”; “Bread they make at home.”
This gives a direct image of daily food before the Protectorate: market provisions, tea, sugar, and bread still made at home.
“a caravansarai or fandak, in which beasts are tethered, goods accumulated and travellers housed”; “Round an open court a colonnade supports the balcony by which rooms on the upper story are approached.”
Meakin’s fandak is a traditional inn: animals and goods below, rooms above, organized around an open courtyard.
“green tea or a sweet, pea-soupy preparation of coffee may be had at all hours of the day”; “his regular customers gather with tiny pipes, indulging in flowing talk.”
The café inside the fandak shows Moroccan public sociability around tea, coffee, smoking, talk, and evening gathering before the Protectorate.
George Edmund Holt — 1914
George Edmund Holt, Morocco the Piquant, or Life in Sunset Land, London, William Heinemann, 1914.
“But best of all was the salad. This salad is made of exactly the same materials as those used in some of ours, but the Moorish variety is quite different.”
Holt’s point is that Moroccan difference comes not only from ingredients, but from preparation, cut, seasoning, proportion, and way of eating.
“one crisp cucumber, one large white onion, two sweet green peppers, two solid tomatoes, one section of garlic, vinegar, salt, and pure olive oil.”
The ingredients are familiar, but Holt presents them as the base of a distinctly Moroccan result.
“Do not slice the vegetables, but cut them in chunks about half an inch square.”
The cut gives the salad its texture and character.
“with your hands — with your hands — thoroughly mix the salad.”
The gesture matters: the salad is shaped by hand, not only assembled from ingredients.
“take a piece of bread, dip it into the salad until it absorbs some of the dressing.”
Holt also records the Moroccan way of eating it: bread carries the salad and its dressing.
Edith Wharton — 1920
Edith Wharton, In Morocco, London, Macmillan & Co., 1920.
“the stalls with fruit, olives, tunny-fish, vague syrupy sweets”; “garlands of red and green peppers”; “griddle-cakes sizzling on red-hot pans.”
Wharton records the food presence of the Moroccan market: fruit, olives, fish, sweets, peppers, and hot griddle-cakes.
“black figs, purple onions and rosy melons”; “fluttering hens”; “tethered goats.”
At Salé, she shows the market as a living food space, with produce, poultry, animals, and provisions gathered outside the walls.
“a metal tray bearing a Britannia samovar and tea-pot was placed on the tiles of the court”; “he gravely proceeded to infuse the mint.”
Wharton records Moroccan tea service through tray, samovar, teapot, mint, and a formal gesture of preparation.
“glasses of steaming mint and trays of gazelles’ horns and white sugar-cakes.”
The tea scene closes with mint tea and sweets, including gazelles’ horns, recognizable as kaab l’ghzal.
Walter B. Harris — 1921
Walter B. Harris, Morocco that Was, Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood and Sons, 1921.
“it is the custom at Moorish feasts to sprinkle the guests with rose and orange-blossom water, and to perfume their robes with incense.”
Harris records feast etiquette through scent, rose water, orange-blossom water, incense, and guest reception.
“there remained great plates of fresh butter, the very first of the season, hard and rolled into large balls.”
The passage gives a rare detail on seasonal fresh butter at a Moroccan courtly feast.
“Food was borne in and out; tea, with all the paraphernalia of its brewing, was served.”
Harris shows tea as part of formal courtly routine, with its equipment and service.
“we were served with dishes of cooked meats, green tea, with its flavouring mint and herbs, and coffee.”
At Raisuli’s pavilion, Harris records meat dishes, mint-and-herb tea, and coffee as part of elite hospitality.
“one perpetual procession of great cooked dishes and flocks of sheep and crates of chickens and pigeons.”
This scene shows hospitality as abundance: cooked dishes, live animals, camp service, and large-scale reception.
Vincent Sheean — 1926
Vincent Sheean, An American Among the Riffi, New York and London, The Century Co., 1926.
“my Metalsa and I shared the bread and tea”; “two hard-boiled eggs”; “goat’s meat cooked in zeite.”
The meal is simple and local: bread, tea, eggs, goat meat, and zeite, the country’s olive oil.
“a great woven basket filled with black bread”; “dried figs, any quantity of them”; “many steaming glasses of tea without mint.”
Here, “black bread” should be understood as barley bread, with dried figs and plain tea forming a northern mountain food scene.
Colette — 1932
Colette, Prisons et Paradis, Hachette, 1932, pp. 205–213.
“pains ronds de pur froment, anisés”; “plats couverts, en terre rouge, à chapeau conique”; “l’aiguière à laver et son bassin de cuivre étaient fezzans.”
Colette records the setting of a Moroccan lunch through round aniseed wheat breads, red clay covered dishes, and Fez copper vessels.
“Nous étions six, assis à la turque autour de la table basse.”
The meal is served around a low table, in a form of seated Moroccan hospitality.
“des pigeons baignant dans une huile succulente, accompagnés d’olives vertes, de pois chiches… d’oignons doux.”
The lunch includes pigeon cooked with olive oil, green olives, chickpeas, and sweet onions.
“des poulets… sous la fève fraîche… sous le citron cuit et recuit.”
Colette records chicken with fresh fava beans and cooked lemon, a pairing still close to Moroccan spring dishes.
“le couscous… d’oignons doux et de raisins muscats”; “les bols de babeurre à peine aigri.”
The couscous appears with sweet onions, muscat raisins, and lightly sour buttermilk, corresponding to what Moroccans call lben.
“notre hôte se leva pour préparer le thé vert à la menthe.”
The host personally prepares green tea with mint, closing the meal through tea service.
Colette, Prisons et Paradis, Hachette, 1932, pp. 198–200.
“Dîner chez le chambellan du Sultan.”
This second passage places Colette at an elite Moroccan dinner connected to the Sultan’s chamberlain.
“La pastilla, feuilletée, aux œufs, et poulet sucré.”
Colette records pastilla with pastry, eggs, and sweetened chicken.
“Le mouton recouvert d’olives et d’écorces de citrons.”
This is mutton with olives and lemon peel, a Moroccan meat-and-preserved-lemon logic still recognizable today.
“Les fonds d’artichaut, posés sur une viande très cuite.”
Artichoke hearts are served over very slow-cooked meat, a dish still close to Moroccan artichoke-and-meat preparations.
“Du mouton, servi avec les pommes vertes cuites.”
Colette records mutton served with cooked green apples, a sweet-savory meat dish that still belongs to Moroccan culinary memory.
“Le couscous aux raisins et pois chiches, avec le lait caillé.”
Couscous appears with raisins, chickpeas, and curdled milk.
“Le turban du Cadi”; “Les oreilles du Cadi.”
The pastries correspond to r’zat l’qadi and wdinat l’qadi, names still intelligible in Morocco today.
“L’orangeade sans eau”; “Le café, le thé à la menthe”; “Et, plus tard, le lait d’amandes.”
The dinner closes with concentrated orangeade, coffee, mint tea, and milk with almonds.
Prosper Ricard — 1936
Prosper Ricard, Le Maroc, Guide Bleu, Hachette, 1936.
“La cuisine marocaine est excellente. Le menu des grands repas citadins ne manque pas d’originalité. Pendant que les invités prennent le thé parfumé à la menthe, les serviteurs apportent et alignent devant eux de nombreux plats surmontés de couvercles coniques en sparterie.”
Ricard opens with a direct judgment: Moroccan cuisine is “excellent.” The value of this testimony is not only descriptive; it recognizes Moroccan food as a refined cuisine. He then places that judgment inside the setting of a formal city meal, without attaching it to one specific city: mint tea before the meal, numerous covered dishes, and a service organized around expectation, abundance, and hospitality.
“Puis on se lave les mains au-dessus d’une bassine en cuivre ciselé, tas, et l’on se groupe assis sur des matelas, autour d’une table ronde et basse, teifor.”
The scene continues with handwashing, a copper basin, cushions, and a low round table. Ricard is describing the ritual order of reception before the food itself is eaten.
“Sur laquelle passent successivement : la bestilla, gâteau de pâte feuilletée de hachis de pigeon fourré et saupoudré de sucre et de cannelle ; un plat de mouton rôti au four, choua ; des plats ou tajine nombreux et variés de poulets et pigeons préparés au beurre ou à l’huile, entiers ou en ragoût, relevés d’olives, d’amandes, de citrons, de fèves, de pommes, d’artichauts, de carottes selon les saisons ; des gâteaux au miel, haloua ; le couscous, seksoa, à la viande ou au lait.”
Ricard’s guidebook description is valuable because it records the formal Moroccan urban meal in the middle of the Protectorate. The dishes he lists are precise: bastilla prepared with pigeon, oven-roasted mutton, varied tagines of chicken and pigeon, and seasonal combinations with olives, almonds, lemons, fava beans, apples, artichokes, and carrots. He also mentions honey sweets and couscous served either with meat or with what he calls “milk,” which in the Moroccan meal context most likely refers to lben, the fermented buttermilk traditionally served with couscous. It is not an intimate literary testimony, but it is a strong documentary witness to the Moroccan city table in the 1930s.
Zette Guinaudeau — Fez from 1929; published 1958
Zette Guinaudeau, Fès vu par sa cuisine, Rabat, 1958; later translated as Traditional Moroccan Cooking: Recipes from Fez.
“She moved to Fez in 1929 and lived there for more than three decades. She made it her joy to pursue recipes and culinary information in the kitchens of Fez.”
Guinaudeau’s record begins with long residence and direct access to Fassi kitchens, not with a passing visit.
“I offer this book which is the result of search and investigation, by smell, by touch and by taste, during more than twenty years among both the rich and the poor families of Fez.”
Her method is sensory and domestic: smell, touch, taste, repeated observation, and work among both wealthy and modest households.
“Each cook has her speciality, the tagine in which she will put the perfect quantity of spices, from recipes handed down through generations by word of mouth.”
Guinaudeau records the Fassi table from inside its domestic transmission: women’s knowledge, oral recipes, exact seasoning, specialized cooks, and dishes gathered in Fez over decades.
What Changed, What Remained Moroccan
By 1956, the food changes of the Protectorate were visible less as a single break than as a set of layered adjustments. Urban life had introduced new habits of purchase, movement, public eating, and foreign goods.
The foreign observers gathered here make that pattern concrete. Their accounts return to bread, couscous, tagines, tea, olives, preserved lemons, seasonal vegetables, formal service, and domestic knowledge. Much of what they noticed still remains visible today: the same gestures of service, the same place of bread, the same clay and copper tools, the same seasonal logic, and many of the same dishes carried through households, markets, and memory. The table changed at its edges while keeping its center.
By Khalil Noramine
Published June 9, 2026