When Africans arrived in Puerto Rico, they had to immediately relate to the island's agriculture and they planted and produced crops they knew for their subsistence, including rice.
However, the rice culture in Puerto Rico started when they saw the potential for diffusion and effective techniques to cultivate it in the 16th century. Along with this, different ways of cooking it also emerged. One of the cooking techniques for rice was the incorporation of other elements such as legumes or meats, which became known as composite rice.
To cook composite rice, they began to make the sofrito, which at that time was simply the part of adding spices and other seasonings to give it more flavor. But why did Puerto Ricans start making rice with pigeon peas as the typical party dish?
According to various sources, composite rice was specifically prepared on special occasions or festivals because it was a way to cook two different foods and "increase the volume of a meal". Rice was also combined with ingredients available during the seasons. This is the case of pigeon peas.
The absence of the dish [rice with pigeon peas] on Christmas Eve, New Year’s, and Three Kings' Day dinners is now considered a real lack of Christmas culinary tradition. However, what is not widely known is that, during a time when cuisine was not shaped by agroindustry but by agricultural cycles, the harvesting of pigeon peas coincided in the calendar with Easter celebrations.
