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Spanish Olla
The Spanish Olla, as communicated by Don Felix Antonio de Alvarado, a native of the city of Seville, in Spain, is made as follows. "The true olla which they make in Spain is composed of several sorts of meat, as beef, mutton, veal, and bacon; then put in also the ears and feet of a hog, a pullet, with some sausages; moreover, they put in coleworts, turnips, and Spanish peas, which they call garvancos. It must all be boiled together for four hours to be a true olla."
This is a description rather than a worked recipe: no quantities, no pot size, no seasoning. Treat it as a plan for a large boiled dinner and supply the proportions yourself.
- GarvancosGarvancos is garbanzos — chickpeas. Dried ones need soaking overnight and go in early; canned chickpeas should be added only in the last 20 minutes or they collapse.
- ColewortsColeworts are loose-leaved cabbages of the collard and kale type. Savoy cabbage or collard greens both work, and either wants adding in the final half hour, not at the start.
- PulletA pullet is a young hen, roughly 2-3 lb. A modern small chicken stands in, but it will be tender in about an hour, so it cannot sit in the pot for the full four hours with the beef.
- Bacon means salt porkBacon here probably stands for Spanish tocino, cured pork belly, which need not be smoked. Streaky salt pork or pancetta is closer than modern sliced breakfast bacon, which is too thin and too smoky for a boiled pot.
- Stage the pot, don't dump itFour hours suits beef shin, hog's ears and trotters. Mutton and veal need two to three; chicken one; sausages the last 30 minutes. Everything in at once gives you a shredded bird and undercooked collagen.
- Salt and skimmingNo salt is specified, as no quantities or seasonings are given anywhere in the passage. The bacon, sausage and cured pork will carry salt of their own, so salt only after the meats have given it up, and skim the grey scum in the first twenty minutes or the broth stays cloudy.
- How it is eatenA pot of this kind is traditionally served in stages: the strained broth first, often with rice or noodles, then the chickpeas and vegetables, then the meats sliced on a platter.
- YieldThe passage gives no quantities, so any yield is guesswork: this range of cuts implies a large pot and a large table. Scaling to four people is awkward — the point of an olla is a wide range of cuts in one liquid.
An olla is simply the earthenware pot, and by extension what is cooked in it — the ancestor of today's cocido madrileño and the more extravagant olla podrida, literally "rotten pot," a name usually explained as a corruption of olla poderida, the powerful or mighty pot. Don Felix Antonio de Alvarado, cited here as the authority, is generally identified as a Sevillian Protestant convert who settled in London in the early eighteenth century and published Spanish-English dialogues for English learners; recipes and descriptions of national dishes were standard filler in such language books, and English cookery writers quoted them for decades afterwards. The passage works as a definition: a single pot of mixed meats, cured pork and pulses, cooked slowly and served in courses. The chickpea is the marker of Spanish practice: French and English boiled dinners of the same period lean on root vegetables and dried peas or beans instead.