Salmorejo

Salmorejo is ripe tomato blended with stale bread, garlic, olive oil and sherry vinegar until it turns thick and pale orange, served ice-cold with a scatter of jamón and hard-boiled egg. It's Córdoba's own cold soup, older than gazpacho by most accounts, and the two are genuinely different dishes rather than regional variants of one recipe — salmorejo skips the cucumber and green pepper entirely and leans on blended bread for its thickness instead of serving as a thinner, chunkier vegetable soup.

What it really is

Ripe tomatoes blend smooth with stale bread soaked soft first, along with garlic, a steady stream of olive oil and a splash of sherry vinegar, until the mixture turns thick enough to coat a spoon and a distinctive pale orange rather than gazpacho's brighter red. No cucumber, no green pepper, no onion — the ingredient list is deliberately shorter, and the bread is doing real structural work rather than being a garnish, which is what gives salmorejo its noticeably thicker, almost velvety body. It chills for hours before serving and goes to the table topped with diced jamón and crumbled or diced hard-boiled egg.

Skipping the cucumber and pepper isn't a simplified gazpacho — it's the defining choice that makes salmorejo its own dish. Adding those vegetables back in, or thinning it with more water, turns it into something closer to gazpacho and loses the thick, tomato-and-bread character that Córdoba's version is specifically built around.

How it's served

• Ice-cold, in a bowl or glass, thick enough to coat a spoon.
• Topped with diced jamón and crumbled or diced hard-boiled egg.
• As a starter, especially in the height of summer.

How to write it on the menu

• Flag the wheat from the bread.
• Say that jamón is a standard topping, not an optional extra, since a vegetarian guest will need to ask for it left off.
• Note that it's thicker than gazpacho, since a guest expecting the thinner, chunkier soup may otherwise be surprised.