IT would exhaust a couple of Colonial numbers at least to discuss properly the merits and digest Spanish cookery. All that can be now done is to skim the subject, which is indeed fat and unctuous. Those meats and drinks will be briefly noticed which are daily occurrence, and those dishes described which we have often helped to make, and oftener helped to eat, in the most larderless ventas and hungriest districts of the Peninsula, and which provident wayfarers may make and eat again, and, as we pray, with no worse appetite.

To be a good cook, which few Spaniards are, a man must not only understand his master’s taste, but be able to make something out of nothing; just as a clever French artiste converts an old shoe into an Épigramme d’agneau, or a Parisian milliner dresses up two deal boards into a fine live Madame, whose only fault is the appearance of too much embonpoint. Genuine and legitimate Spanish dishes are excellent in their way, for no man nor man-cook ever is ridiculous when he does not attempt to be what he is not. The au naturel may occasionally be somewhat plain, but seldom makes one sick; at all events it would be as hopeless to make a Spaniard understand real French cookery as to endeavour to explain to a dÉputÉ the meaning of our constitution or parliament. The ruin of Spanish cooks is their futile attempts to imitate foreign ones: just as their silly grandees murder the glorious Castilian tongue, by substituting what they fancy is pure Parisian, which they speak comme des vaches Espagnoles. Dis moi ce que tu manges et je te dirai ce que tu es is “un mot profond” of the great equity judge, Brillat Savarin, who also discovered that “Les destinÉes des nations dÉpendent de la maniÈre dont elles se nourrissent;” since which General Foy has attributed all the accidental victories of the British to rum and beef. And this great fact much enhances our serious respect for punch, and our true love for the ros-bif of old England, of which, by the way, very little will be got in the Peninsula, where bulls are bred for baiting, and oxen for the plough, not the spit.

The national cookery of Spain is for the most part Oriental; and the ruling principle of its preparation is stewing; for, from a scarcity of fuel, roasting is almost unknown; their notion of which is putting meat into a pan, setting it in hot ashes, and then covering the lid with burning embers. The pot, or olla, has accordingly become a synonyme for the dinner of Spaniards, just as beefsteaks or frogs are vulgarly supposed to constitute the whole bill of fare of two other mighty nations. Wherever meats are bad and thin, the sauce is very important; it is based in Spain on oil, garlic, saffron, and red peppers. In hot countries, where beasts are lean, oil supplies the place of fat, as garlic does the want of flavour, while a stimulating condiment excites or curries up the coats of a languid stomach. It has been said of our heretical countrymen that we have but one form of sauce—melted butter—and a hundred different forms of religion, whereas in orthodox Spain there is but one of each, and, as with religion, so to change this sauce would be little short of heresy. As to colour, it carries that rich burnt umber, raw sienna tint, which Murillo imitated so well; and no wonder, since he made his particular brown from baked olla bones, whence it was extracted, as is done to this day by those Spanish painters who indulge in meat. This brown negro de hueso colour is the livery of tawny Spain, where all is brown from the Sierra Morena to duskier man. Of such hue is his cloak, his terra-cotta house, his wife, his ox, his ass, and everything that is his. This sauce has not only the same colour, but the same flavour everywhere; hence the difficulty of making out the material of which any dish is composed. Not Mrs. Glass herself could tell, by taste at least, whether the ingredients of the cauldron be hare or cat, cow or calf, the aforesaid ox or ass. It puzzles even the acumen of a Frenchman; for it is still the great boast of the town of Olvera that they served up some donkeys as rations to a Buonapartist detachment. All this is very Oriental. Isaac could not distinguish tame kid from wild venison, so perplexing was the disguise of the savoury sauce; and yet his senses of smell and touch were keen, and his suspicions of unfair cooking were awakened. A prudent diner, therefore, except when forced to become his own cook, will never look too closely into the things of the kitchen if he wishes to live a quiet life; for quien las cosas mucho apura, no vive vida segura.

All who ride or run through the Peninsula, will read thirst in the arid plains, and hunger in the soil-denuded hills, where those who ask for bread will receive stones. The knife and fork question has troubled every warrior in Spain, from Henri IV. down to Wellington; “subsistence is the great difficulty always found” is the text of a third of the Duke’s wonderful despatches. This scarcity of food is implied in the very name of Spain, Spa??a, which means poverty and destitution, as well as in the term BisoÑos, wanters, which long has been a synonyme for Spanish soldiers, who are always, as the Duke described them, “hors de combat,” “always wanting in every thing at the critical moment.” Hunger and thirst have ever been, and are, the best defenders of the Peninsula against the invader. On sierra and steppe these gaunt sentinels keep watch and ward, and, on the scarecrow principle, protect this paradise, as they do the infernal regions of Virgil—

A riding tour through Spain has already been likened to serving a campaign; and it was a saying of the Grand CondÉ, “If you want to know what want is, carry on a war in Spain.” Yet, notwithstanding the thousands of miles which we have ridden, never have we yet felt that dire necessity, which has been kept at a respectable distance by a constant unremitting attention to the proverb, A man forewarned is forearmed. Hombre prevenido nunca fu vencido, there is nothing like precaution and provision. “If you mean to dine,” writes the all-providing Duke to Lord Hill from Moraleja, “you had better bring your things, as I shall have nothing with me;”—the ancient Bursal fashion holds good on Spanish roads:—

A man who is prepared, is never beaten or starved; therefore, as the valorous Dalgetty has it, a prudent man will always victual himself in Spain with vivers for three days at least, and his cook, like Sancho Panza, should have nothing else in his head, but thoughts how to convey the most eatables into his ambulant larder.

He must set forth from every tolerable-sized town with an ample supply of tea, sugar, coffee, brandy, good oil, wine, salt, to say nothing of solids. The having something ready gives him leisure to forage and make ulterior preparations. Those who have a corps de rÉserve to fall back upon—say a cold turkey and a ham—can always convert any spot in the desert into an oasis; at the same time the connection between body and soul may be kept up by trusting to venta luck, of which more anon; it offers, however, but a miserable existence to persons of judgment. And even when this precaution of provision be not required, there are never wanting in Spain the poor and hungry, to whom the taste of meat is almost unknown, and to whom these crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table are indeed a feast; the relish and gratitude with which these fragments are devoured do as much good to the heart of the donor as to the stomach of the donees, for the best medicines of the poor are to be found in the cellars, kitchens, and hampers of the rich. All servants should be careful of their traps and stores, which are liable to be pilfered and plundered in ventas, where the Élite of society is not always assembled: the luggage should be well corded, for the devil is always a gleaning, ata al saco, ya espiga el diablo.

Formerly all travellers of rank carried a silver olla with a key, the guardacena, the save supper. This ingenious contrivance has furnished matter for many a pleasantry in picaresque tales and farces. Madame Daunoy gives us the history of what befel the good Archbishop of Burgos and his orthodox olla.

There is nothing in life like making a good start; thus the party arrives safely at the first resting-place. The cook must never appear to have anything when he arrives at an inn; he must get from others all he can, and much is to be had for asking and crying, as even a Spanish Infante knows—the child that does not cry is not suckled, quien no llora, no mama; the artiste must never fall back on his own reservoirs except in cases of absolute need; during the day he must open his eyes and ears and must pick up everything eatable, and where he can and when he can. By keeping a sharp look-out and going quietly to work the cook may catch the hen and her chickens too. All is fish that comes into the net, and, like Buonaparte and his marshals, nothing should be too great for his ambition, nothing too small for his rapacity. Of course he will pay for his collections, which the aforesaid gentry did not: thus fruit, onions, salads, which, as they must be bought somewhere, had better be secured whenever they turn up. The peasants, who are sad poachers, will constantly hail travellers from the fields with offers of partridges, rabbits, melons, hares, which always jump up in this pays de l’imprÉvu when you least expect it: Salta la liebre cuando menos uno piensa.

Notwithstanding Don Quixote thought that it augured bad luck to meet with a hare on entering a village, let not a bold traveller be scared, but forthwith stew the omen; a hare, as in the time of Martial, is considered by Spaniards to be the glory of edible quadrupeds, and to this day no old stager ever takes a rabbit when he can get a hare, Á perro viejo echale liebre y no conejo. In default however of catching one, rabbits may always be bagged. Spain abounds with them to such a degree, that ancient naturalists thought the animal indigenous, and went so far as to derive the name Spain from Sephan, the rabbit, which the Phoenicians found here for the first time. Be that as it may, the long-eared timid creature appears on the early Iberian coins, as it will long do on her wide wastes and tables. By the bye, a ready-stewed rabbit or hare is to be eschewed as suspicious in a venta: at the same time, if the consumer does not find out that it is a cat, there is no great harm done—ignorance is bliss; let him not know it, he is not robbed at all. It is a pity to dispel his gastronomic delusion, as it is the knowledge of the cheat that kills, and not the cat. Pol! me occidistis, amici. The cook therefore should ascertain beforehand what are the bon fide ingredients of every dish that he sets before his lord.

In going into the kitchens of the Peninsula, precedence must on every account be given to the olla: this word means at once a species of prepared food, and the earthenware utensil in which it is dressed, just as our term dish is applicable to the platter and to what is served on it. Into this olla it may be affirmed that the whole culinary genius of Spain is condensed, as the mighty Jinn was into a gallipot, according to the Arabian Night tales. The lively and gastronomic French, who are decidedly the leaders of European civilization in the kitchen, deride the barbarous practices of the Gotho-Iberians, as being darker than Erebus and more ascetic than Æsthetic; to credit their authors, a Peninsular breakfast consists of a teaspoonful of chocolate, a dinner, of a knob of garlic soaked in water, and a supper, of a paper cigarette; and according to their parfait cuisinier, the olla is made of two cigars boiled in three gallons of water—but this is a calumny, a mere invention devised by the enemy.

The olla is only well made in Andalucia, and there alone in careful, well-appointed houses; it is called a puchero in the rest of Spain, where it is but a poor affair, made of dry beef, or rather cow, boiled with garbanzos or chick peas, and a few sausages. These garbanzos are the vegetable, the potato of the land; and their use argues a low state of horticultural knowledge. The taste for them was introduced by the Carthaginians—the puls punica, which (like the fides punica, an especial ingredient in all Spanish governments and finance) afforded such merriment to Plautus, that he introduced the chick-pea eating Poenus, pultiphagonides, speaking Punic, just as Shakspere did the toasted-cheese eating Welshman talking Welsh. These garbanzos require much soaking, being otherwise hard as bullets; indeed, a lively Frenchman, after what he calls an apology for a dinner, compared them, in his empty stomach, as he was jumbled away in the dilly, to peas rattling in a child’s drum.

The veritable olla—the ancient time-honoured olla podrida, or pot pourri—the epithet is now obsolete—is difficult to be made: a tolerable one is never to be eaten out of Spain, since it requires many Spanish things to concoct it, and much care; the cook must throw his whole soul into the pan, or rather pot; it may be made in one, but two are better. They must be of earthenware; for, like the French pot au feu, the dish is good for nothing when made in an iron or copper vessel; take therefore two, and put them on their separate stoves with water.

Place into No. 1, Garbanzos, which have been placed to soak over-night. Add a good piece of beef, a chicken, a large piece of bacon; let it boil once and quickly; then let it simmer: it requires four or five hours to be well done. Meanwhile place into No. 2, with water, whatever vegetables are to be had: lettuces, cabbage, a slice of gourd, of beef, carrots, beans, celery, endive, onions and garlic, long peppers. These must be previously well washed and cut, as if they were destined to make a salad; then add red sausages, or “chorizos;” half a salted pig’s face, which should have been soaked over-night. When all is sufficiently boiled, strain off the water, and throw it away. Remember constantly to skim the scum of both saucepans. When all this is sufficiently dressed, take a large dish, lay in the bottom the vegetables, the beef in the centre, flanked by the bacon, chicken, and pig’s face. The sausages should be arranged around, en couronne; pour over some of the soup of No. 1, and serve hot, as Horace did: “Uncta satis—ponuntur oluscula lardo.” No violets come up to the perfume which a coming olla casts before it; the mouth-watering bystanders sigh, as they see and smell the rich freight steaming away from them.

This is the olla en grande, such as Don Quixote says was eaten only by canons and presidents of colleges; like turtle-soup, it is so rich and satisfactory that it is a dinner of itself. A worthy dignitary of Seville, in the good old times, before reform and appropriation had put out the churches’ kitchen fire, and whose daily pot-luck was transcendental, told us, as a wrinkle, that he on feast-days used turkeys instead of chickens, and added two sharp Ronda apples, and three sweet potatoes of Malaga. His advice is worth attention: he was a good Roman Catholic canon, who believed everything, absolved everything, drank everything, ate everything, and digested everything. In fact, as a general rule, anything that is good in itself is good for an olla, provided, as old Spanish books always conclude, that it contains nothing contrary to the holy mother church, to orthodoxy, and to good manners—“que no contiene cosa que se oponga Á nuestra madre Iglesia, y santa fÉ catolica, y buenas costumbres.” Such an olla as this is not to be got on the road, but may be made to restore exhausted nature when halting in the cities. Of course, every olla, must everywhere be made according to what can be got. In private families the contents of No. 1, the soup, is served up with bread, in a tureen, and the frugal table decked with the separate contents of the olla in separate platters; the remains coldly serve, or are warmed up, for supper.

The vegetables and bacon are absolute necessaries; without the former an olla has neither grace nor sustenance; la olla sin verdura, ni tiene gracia ni hartura, while the latter is as essential in this stew as a text from Saint Augustine is in a sermon:

Bacon throughout the length and breadth of the Peninsula is more honoured than this, or than any one or all the fathers of the church of Rome; the hunger after the flesh of the pig is equalled only by the thirst for the contents of what is put afterwards into his skin; and with reason, for the pork of Spain has always been, and is, unequalled in flavour; the bacon is fat and flavoured, the sausages delicious, and the hams transcendantly superlative, to use the very expression of Diodorus Siculus, a man of great taste, learning, and judgment. Of all the things of Spain, no one need feeling ashamed to plead guilty to a predilection and preference to the pig. A few particulars may be therefore pardoned.

In Spain pigs are more numerous even than asses, since they pervade the provinces. As those of Estremadura, the Hampshire of the Peninsula, are the most esteemed, they alone will be now noticed. That province, although so little visited by Spaniards or strangers, is full of interest to the antiquarian and naturalist; and many are the rides at different periods which we have made through its tangled ilex groves, and over its depopulated and aromatic wastes. A granary under Roman and Moor, its very existence seems to be all but forgotten by the Madrid government, who have abandoned it ferÆ naturÆ, to wandering sheep, locusts, and swine. The entomology of Estremadura is endless, and perfectly uninvestigated—de minimis non curat Hispanus; but the heavens and earth teem with the minute creation; there nature is most busy and prolific, where man is most idle and unproductive; and in these lonely wastes, where no human voice disturbs the silence, the balmy air resounds with the buzzing hum of multitudinous insects, which career about on their business of love or food without settlements or kitchens, rejoicing in the fine weather which is the joy of their tiny souls, and short-lived pleasant existence. Sheep, pigs, locusts, and doves are the only living things which the traveller will see for hours and hours. Now and then a man occurs, just to prove how rare his species is here.

Vast districts of this unreclaimed province are covered with woods of oak, beech, and chesnut; but these park-like scenes have no charms for native eyes; blind to the picturesque, they only are thinking of the number of pigs which can be fattened on the mast and acorns, which are sweeter and larger than those of our oaks. The acorns are still called bellota, the Arabic bollot—belot being the Scriptural term for the tree and the gland, which, with water, formed the original diet of the aboriginal Iberian, as well as of his pig; when dry, the acorns were ground, say the classical authors, into bread, and, when fresh, they were served up as the second course. And in our time ladies of high rank at Madrid constantly ate them at the opera and elsewhere; they were the presents sent by Sancho Panza’s wife to the Duchess, and formed the text on which Don Quixote preached so eloquently to the goatherds, on the joys and innocence of the golden age and pastoral happiness, in which they constituted the foundation of the kitchen.

The pigs during the greater part of the year are left to support nature as they can, and in gauntness resemble those greyhound-looking animals which pass for porkers in France. When the acorns are ripe and fall from the trees, the greedy animals are turned out in legions from the villages, which more correctly may be termed coalitions of pigsties. They return from the woods at night, of their own accord, and without a swine’s general. On entering the hamlet, all set off at a full gallop, like a legion possessed with devils, in a handicap for home, into which each single pig turns, never making a mistake. We have more than once been caught in one of these pig-deluges, and nearly carried away horse and all, as befell Don Quixote, when really swept away by the “far-spread and grunting drove.” In his own home each truant is welcomed like a prodigal son or a domestic father. These pigs are the pets of the peasants; they are brought up with their children, and partake, as in Ireland, in the domestic discomforts of their cabins; they are universally respected, and justly, for it is this animal who pays the “rint;” in fact, are the citizens, as at Sorrento, and Estremenian man is quite a secondary formation, and created to tend herds of these swine, who lead the happy life of former Toledan dignitaries, with the additional advantage of becoming more valuable when dead.

It is astonishing how rapidly they thrive on their sweet food; indeed it is the whole duty of a good pig—animal propter convivia natum—to get as fat and as soon as he can, and then die for the good of his country. It may be observed for the information of our farmers, that those pigs which are dedicated to St. Anthony, on whom a sow is in constant attendance, as a dove was on Venus, get the soonest fat; therefore in Spain young porkers are sprinkled with holy water on his day, but those of other saints are less propitious, for the killing takes place about the 10th and 11th of November, or, as Spaniards date it, por el St. Andres, on the day of St. Andrew, or on that of St. Martin; hence the proverb “every man and pig has his St. Martin or his fatal hour, Á cada puerco su San Martin.”

The death of a fat pig is as great an event in Spanish families, who generally fatten up one, as the birth of a baby; nor can the fact be kept secret, so audible is his announcement. It is considered a delicate attention on the part of the proprietor to celebrate the auspicious event by sending a portion of the chitterlings to intimate friends. The Spaniard’s proudest boast is that his blood is pure, that he is not descended from pork-eschewing Jew or Moor—a fact which the pig genus, could it reason, would deeply deplore. The Spaniard doubtless has been so great a consumer of pig, from grounds religious, as well as gastronomic. The eating or not eating the flesh of an animal deemed unclean by the impure infidel, became a test of orthodoxy, and at once of correct faith as well as of good taste; and good bacon, as has been just observed, is wedded to sound doctrine and St. Augustine. The Spanish name Tocino is derived from the Arabic Tachim, which signifies fat.

The Spaniards however, although tremendous consumers of the pig, whether in the salted form or in the skin, have to the full the Oriental abhorrence to the unclean animal in the abstract. Muy puerco is their last expression for all that is most dirty, nasty, or disgusting. Muy cochina never is forgiven, if applied to woman, as it is equivalent to the Italian Vacca, and to the canine feminine compliment bandied among our fair sex at Billingsgate; nor does the epithet imply moral purity or chastity; indeed in Castilian euphuism the unclean animal was never to be named except in a periphrasis, or with an apology, which is a singular remnant of the Moorish influence on Spanish manners. Haluf or swine is still the Moslem’s most obnoxious term for the Christians, and is applied to this day by the ungrateful Algerines to their French bakers and benefactors, nay even to the “illustre Bugeaud.”

The capital of the Estremenian pig-districts is Montanches—mons anguis—and doubtless the hilly spot where the Duke of Arcos fed and cured “ces petits jambons vermeils,” which the Duc de St. Simon ate and admired so much; “ces jambons ont un parfum si admirable, un goÛt si relevÉ et si vivifiant, qu’on en est surpris: il est impossible de rien manger si exquis.” His Grace of Arcos used to shut up the pigs in places abounding in vipers, on which they fattened. Neither the pigs, dukes, nor their toadeaters seem to have been poisoned by these exquisite vipers. According to Jonas Barrington, the finest Irish pigs were those that fed on dead rebels: one Papist porker, the Enniscorthy boar, was sent as a show, for having eaten a Protestant parson: he was put to death and dishonoured by not being made bacon of.

Naturalists have remarked that the rattlesnakes in America retire before their consuming enemy, the pig, who is thus the gastador or pioneer of the new world’s civilization, just as Pizarro, who was suckled by a sow, and tended swine in his youth, was its conqueror. Be that as it may, Montanches is illustrious in pork, in which the burgesses go the whole hog, whether in the rich red sausage, the chorizo, or in the savoury piquant embuchados, which are akin to the mortadelle of Bologna, only less hard, and usually boiled before eating, though good also raw; they consist of the choice bits of the pig seasoned with condiments, with which, as if by retribution, the paunch of the voracious animal is filled; the ruling passion strong in death. We strongly recommend Juan Valiente, who recently was the alcalde of the town, to the lover of delicious hams; each jamon averages about 12 lb.; they are sold at the rate of 7½ reales, about 18d.; for the libra carnicera, which weighs 32 of our ounces. The duties in England are now very trifling; we have for many years had an annual supply of these delicacies, through the favour of a kind friend at the Puerto. The fat of these jamones, whence our word ham and gammon, when they are boiled, looks like melted topazes, and the flavour defies language, although we have dined on one this very day, in order to secure accuracy and undeniable prose, like Lope de Vega, who, according to his biographer, Dr. Montalvan, never could write poetry unless inspired by a rasher; “Toda es cosa vil,” said he, “Á donde falta un pernil” (in which word we recognize the precise perna, whereby Horace was restored):—

Those of Gallicia and Catalonia are also celebrated, but are not to be compared for a moment with those of Montanches, which are fit to set before an emperor. Their only rivals are the sweet hams of the Alpujarras, which are made at Trevelez, a pig-hamlet situated under the snowy mountains on the opposite side of Granada, to which also we have made a pilgrimage. They are called dulces or sweet, because scarcely any salt is used in the curing; the ham is placed in a weak pickle for eight days, and is then hung up in the snow; it can only be done at this place, where the exact temperature necessary is certain. Those of our readers who are curious in Spanish eatables will find excellent garbanzos, chorizos, red pepper, chocolate and Valencian sweetmeats, &c. at Figul’s, a most worthy Catalan, whose shop is at No. 10, Woburn Buildings, St. Paneras, London; the locality is scarcely less visited than Montanches, but the penny-post penetrates into this terra incognita.

So much space has been filled with these meritorious bacons and hams, that we must be brief with our remaining bill of fare. For a pisto or meat omelette take eggs, which are to be got almost everywhere; see that they are fresh by being pellucid; beat these huevos trasparentes well up; chop up onions and whatever savoury herbs you have with you; add small slices of any meat out of your hamper, cold turkey, ham, &c.; beat it all up together and fry it quickly. Most Spaniards have a peculiar knack in making these tortillas, revueltas de huevos, which to fastidious stomachs are, as in most parts of the Continent, a sure resource to fall back upon.

The Guisado, or stew, like the olla, can only be really done in a Spanish pipkin, and of those which we import, the Andalucian ones draw flavour out the best. This dish is always well done by every cook in every venta, barring that they are apt to put in bad oil, and too much garlic, pepper, and saffron. Superintend it, therefore, yourself, and take hare, partridge, rabbit, chicken, or whatever you may have foraged on the road; it is capital also with pheasant, as we proved only yesterday; cut it up, save the blood, the liver, and the giblets; do not wash the pieces, but dry them in a cloth; fry them with onions in a teacup of oil till browned; take an olla, put in these bits with the oil, equal portions of wine and water, but stock is better than water; claret answers well, ValdepeÑas better; add a bit of bacon, onions, garlic, salt, pepper, pimientos, a bunch of thyme or herbs; let it simmer, carefully skimming it; half an hour before serving add the giblets; when done, which can be tested by feeling with a fork, serve hot. The stew should be constantly stirred with a wooden spoon, and grease, the ruin of all cookery, carefully skimmed off as it rises to the surface. When made with proper care and with a good salad, it forms a supper for a cardinal, or for Santiago himself.

Another excellent but very difficult dish is the pollo con arroz, or the chicken and rice. It is eaten in perfection in Valencia, and therefore is often called Pollo Valenciano. Cut a good fowl into pieces, wipe it clean, but do not put it into water; take a saucepan, put in a wine-glass of fine oil, heat the oil well, put in a bit of bread; let it fry, stirring it about with a wooden spoon; when the bread is browned take it out and throw it away: put in two cloves of garlic, taking care that it does not burn, as, if it does, it will turn bitter; stir the garlic till it is fried; put in the chicken, keep stirring it about while it fries, then put in a little salt and stir again; whenever a sound of cracking is heard, stir it again; when the chicken is well browned or gilded, dorado, which will take from five to ten minutes, stirring constantly, put in chopped onions, three or four chopped red or green chilis, and stir about; if once the contents catch the pan, the dish is spoiled; then add tomatas, divided into quarters, and parsley; take two teacupsful of rice, mix all well up together; add hot stock enough to cover the whole over; let it boil once, and then set it aside to simmer until the rice becomes tender and done. The great art consists in having the rice turned out granulated and separate, not in a pudding state, which is sure to be the case if a cover be ever put over the dish, which condenses the steam.

It may be objected, that these dishes, if so curious in the cooking, are not likely to be well done in the rude kitchens of a venta; but practice makes perfect, and the whole mind and intellect of the artist is concentrated on one object, and not frittered away by a multiplicity of dishes, the rock on which many cooks founder, where more dinners are sacrificed to the eye and ostentation. One dish and one thing at a time is the golden rule of Bacon; many are the anxious moments that we have spent over the rim of a Spanish pipkin, watching, life set on the cast, the wizen she-mummy, whose mind, body, and spoon were absorbed in a single mess: Well, my mother, que tal? what sort of a stew is it? Let me smell and taste the salsa. Good, good; it promises much. Vamos, SeÑora—go on, my lady, thy spoon once more—how, indeed, can oil, wine, and nutritive juices amalgamate without frequent stirring? Well, very well it is. Now again, daughter of my soul, thy fork. Asi, asi; thus, thus. Per Bacco, by Bacchus, tender it is—may heaven repay thee! Indeed, from this tenderness of the meat arises ease of digestion; here, pot and fire do half the work of the poor stomach, which too often in inns elsewhere is overtaxed, like its owner, and condemned to hard labour and a brickbat beefsteak.

Poached eggs are at all events within the grasp of the meanest culinary capacity. They are called Huevos estrellados, starred eggs. When fat bacon is wedded to them, the dish is called Huevos con magras; not that magras here means thin as to condition, but rather as to slicing; and these slices, again, are positively thick ones when compared to those triumphs of close shaving which are carved at Vauxhall. To make this dish, with or without the bacon, take eggs; the contents of the shell are to be emptied into a pan filled with hot oil or lard, manteca de puerco, pig’s butter: it must be remembered, although Strabo mentions as a singular fact that the Iberians made use of butter instead of oil, that now it is just the reverse; a century ago butter was only sold by the apothecaries, as a sort of ointment, and it used to be iniquitous. Spaniards generally used either Irish or Flemish salted butter, and from long habit thought fresh butter quite insipid; indeed, they have no objection to its being a trifle or so rancid, just as some aldermen like high venison. In the present age of progress the Queen Christina has a fancy dairy at Madrid, where she makes a few pounds of fresh butter, of which a small portion is or was sold, at five shillings the pound, to foreign ambassadors for their breakfast. Recently more attention has been paid to the dairy in the Swiss-like provinces of the north-west. The Spaniards, like the heroes in the Iliad, seldom boil their food (eggs excepted), at least not in water; for frying, after all, is but boiling in oil.

Travellers should be cautioned against the captivating name of manteca Valenciana. This Valencian butter is composed (for the cow has nothing to do with it) of equal portions of garlic and hogs’ lard pounded together in a mortar; it is then spread on bread, just as we do arsenic to destroy vermin. It, however, agrees well with the peasants, as does the soup of their neighbours the Catalans, which is made of bread and garlic in equal portions fried in oil and diluted with hot water. This mess is called sopa de gato, probably from making cats, not Catalans, sick.

One thing, however, is truly delicious in Spain—the salad, to compound which, says the Spanish proverb, four persons are wanted: a spendthrift for oil, a miser for vinegar, a counsellor for salt, and a madman to stir it all up. N.B. Get the biggest bowl you can, in order that this latter operation may be thoroughly performed. The salad is the glory of every French dinner, and the disgrace of most in England, even in good houses, and from two simple causes; first, from the putting in eggs, mustard, and other heretical ingredients, and, secondly, from making it long before it is wanted to be eaten, whereby the green materials, which should be crisp and fresh, become sodden and leathery. Prepare, therefore, your salad in separate vessels, and never mix the sauce with the herbs until the instant that you are ready to transfer the refreshing result to your plate. Take lettuce, or whatever salad is to be got; do not cut it with a steel knife, which turns the edges of the wounds black, and communicates an evil flavour; let the leaf be torn from the stem, which throw away, as it is hard and bitter; wash the mass in many waters, and rinse it in napkins till dry; take a small bowl, put in equal quantities of vinegar and water, a teaspoonful of pepper and salt, and four times as much oil as vinegar and water, mix the same well together; prepare in a plate whatever fine herbs can be got, especially tarragon and chervil, which must be chopped small. Pour the sauce over the salad, powder it with these herbs, and lose no time in eating. For making a much worse salad than this, a foreign artiste in London used some years ago to charge a guinea.

Any remarks on Spanish salads would be incomplete without some account of gazpacho, that vegetable soup, or floating salad, which during the summer forms the food of the bulk of the people in the torrid portions of Spain. This dish is of Arabic origin, as its name, “soaked bread,” implies. This most ancient Oriental Roman and Moorish refection is composed of onions, garlic, cucumbers, chilis, all chopped up very small and mixed with crumbs of bread, and then put into a bowl of oil, vinegar, and fresh water. Reapers and agricultural labourers could never stand the sun’s fire without this cooling acetous diet. This was the ?????at?? of the Greeks, the posca, potable food, meat and drink, potus et esca, which formed part of the rations of the Roman soldiers, and which Adrian (a Spaniard) delighted to share with them, and into which Boaz at meal-time invited Ruth to dip her morsel. Dr. Buchanan found some Syrian Christians who still called it ail, ail, Hil, Hila, for which our Saviour was supposed to have called on the Cross, when those who understood that dialect gave it him from the vessel which was full of it for the guard. In Andalucia, during the summer, a bowl of gazpacho is commonly ready in every house of an evening, and is partaken of by every person who comes in. It is not easily digested by strangers, who do not require it quite so much as the natives, whose souls are more parched and dried up, and who perspire less. The components, oil, vinegar, and bread, are all that is given out to the lower class of labourers by farmers who profess to feed them; two cow’s horns, the most primitive form of bottle and cup, are constantly seen suspended on each side of their carts, and contain this provision, with which they compound their migas: this consists of crumbs of bread fried in oil, with pepper and garlic; nor can a stronger proof be given of the common poverty of their fare than the common expression, “buenas migas hay,” there are good crumbs, being equivalent to capital eating. In very cold weather the mess is warmed, and then is called gazpacho caliente. Oh! dura messorum ilia—oh! the iron mess digesting stomachs of ploughmen.