Not long ago, during a royal visit to the United Kingdom, blood almost reached the Thames. Buckingham Palace passed the state dinner menu to the Spanish ambassador and our man in London, seeing that no Spanish wine was expected, prepared to call the Navy. Eventually the ambassador managed to ensure that not all the wines were French. But he couldn’t stop the menu from being in French.
It is possible that Elizabeth II herself, then reigning, was a supporter of this custom: hers was one of those upbringings in which horses or French were essential and mathematics was an extracurricular activity. In the culinary field, the dominance of the French became such that they could afford to do something like – in a 19th century cookbook – correct our non-negotiable potato omelette and, with the addition of ham and truffle, incorporate it into their heritage of Spanish omelette. But languages have their changing prestige and, to establish the dominance of French, it was essential that others recognized it, and so we did when, in search of a competitive name for Jerez brandy, we named it, after the cognac and the ArmagnacAS jeriñac: It’s something that still hurts. Today, however, in every tasting you will hear a thousand times before that a wine is a cucumber than words like chambrear: French rule has retreated from that last bastion which was the kitchen. In fact, in England, the clearest sign to avoid a dish is if it contains words like shower.
We’re all particular about food, and so it stands to reason that we’re particular about how we refer to it, too. The downside is that we happen to find what another tribe eats unspeakable: without leaving the Channel, in the UK they call the French “comerranas”, while in France they call the English “roast beef”. In a positive sense, cooking is a territory of attachments, and everyone clings to their own side of the isogloss, be it olive or olive, chanterelles or miscalo, strawberry or strawberry, tripe in Puerto Rico or tripe in Madrid. In any case, and if we are talking about local origin, any translator will know that there are two things for which it is impossible to find equivalences: the names of fish and mushrooms. Even if York ham or cheese Cheddar have long since lost any connection with their origin, it usually reassures us to know where our sausage comes from, or to have our fishing rooted in the exact municipality of Calanda. There are arguments for culinary nationalism as a landscape in a pot, yes, and the word “shrimp” in Arequipa does not mean the same thing – because shrimp is not the same thing – as it does in Cadiz. But there are more reasons to think that this nationalism has always been impossible: even our ham and our clementines draw their etymology from another language, and in Italy there are no peppers that we call Italian.
Moving from origins to uses, Spanish seems particularly inclined to an affective or moral use: we can have a chard-like face or a sour expression; parsley and even be the parsley of all sauces. If we cook ourselves one evening, in the morning we will be breaded until fried in a nice nap. For my part, although I am aware of the risk of finding myself on the plate and on the cutting board, I have a particular devotion to the imagination with which we call, for example, pig’s trotters, the minister’s trotters. The convent kitchen was very attentive – with its patience or with its little help – precisely to the expression of these affections, by virtue of which a dessert like Lima’s sigh will always attract attention among desserts.
Interestingly, cooking is more difficult to communicate than passions. Every year new terms appear in our lives: not so long ago it was difficult to know whether seitan or hit They were names of foods or islands in the Maldives. But there are also traditional terms that suspend faith in the homogeneity of the language, while at the same time being fascinated by its local connection. A Spaniard is not born knowing what a chairo or a guinea pig is, and a Peruvian, faced with revolconas potatoes, must first overcome the trauma of calling the potato a potato and then consider the adjective revolcón. Will we need a Spanish gastronomic dictionary? I would say yes, but it’s better to leave it alone, because – as one Peruvian precisely said – I want to be honored, but I’m in trouble.
Gastro Special from ‘El País Semanal’
This report is part of the Gastro Special prepared by “El País Semanal” and EL PAÍS Gastro, which will be published in its paper edition on Sunday 23 November.
