Morocco’s age-old winter tradition of serving warm, comforting dishes like hssoua and rice with milk continues to reflect recipes found in 13th-century Moroccan and Andalusian cookbooks. These medieval texts reveal that dishes still common today, made from simple ingredients such as flour, bread crumbs, milk, and honey, were already staples of Almohad cuisine centuries ago.
In 1754, Morocco witnessed one of its rarest winters, when heavy snow blanketed Fez and Rabat, an event so extraordinary it became known as «Aam Tlija», the Year of the Snowfall. Chroniclers described it as a divine sign, recalling how residents struggled to clear their roofs and streets of snow they had never seen before.