National Gazpacho Day

What the day is

National Gazpacho Day is observed on December 6, which is an odd date for a cold soup built for the Andalusian summer. The dish repays the attention anyway.

Origin and background

The most useful fact about gazpacho is that the original had no tomatoes in it. Tomatoes and peppers are American plants that reached Europe after the Columbian exchange and were not folded into the dish until the nineteenth century. The red gazpacho that now defines the name is the most recent version of it.

What came before was simpler and much older: stale bread, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, salt and water, pounded together in a wooden mortar into a cold emulsion. It was field food, assembled from what a household already had, and the bread was there to be used up rather than to thicken anything.

The older form survives in the dish's relatives. Ajoblanco, made with almonds and garlic and no tomato whatsoever, is the closest thing to the ancestral version still commonly eaten. Salmorejo, from Córdoba, uses far more bread and no water, which leaves it thick enough to serve as a dip and is usually finished with chopped egg and jamón.

The etymology is genuinely uncertain, with proposals from Mozarabic Arabic and from a Latin root meaning fragments or scraps, which would suit a dish built on leftover bread.

The technique point is the emulsion. Oil added slowly while the blender runs produces the pale, thick, almost creamy texture of a good gazpacho. Tipped in all at once it stays thin and separates.

How to take part

• Use genuinely ripe tomatoes or skip the red version entirely. Winter tomatoes will not carry it.
• Make ajoblanco instead in December, which needs only almonds, garlic, bread and oil.
• Add the oil in a thin stream with the blender already running.
• Season it cold and taste it cold. Chilling flattens both salt and acid.
• Let it sit for several hours. It is noticeably better the following day.