The white ancestor of salmorejo: bread, blanched almonds, garlic, olive oil and vinegar pounded into a cold cream, with no tomato at all. Usually served with apple, raisins or salt cod on top.
Where to eat it: 2 restaurants across 1 city.
Mazamorra is what Córdoba ate before the tomato arrived. Roman in origin and kept alive by olive-grove labourers who needed cold calories in the heat, it is a mortar dish of stale bread, almonds, garlic, oil, vinegar and salt, closely related to the ajoblanco of Málaga. When the tomato finally reached Andalusian kitchens in the eighteenth century it displaced mazamorra almost entirely, and the older soup survived only in a handful of houses. Taberna La Montillana is the reliable place to find it today, and its reappearance on modern Córdoba cartas is a deliberate act of recovery rather than an unbroken tradition.
Common allergens: Gluten, Nuts
Tip from the editors. Blanched almonds only. Skin-on almonds turn the colour grey and put a bitter edge behind the garlic.
Taberna La Montillana has stood beside San Miguel in Córdoba since 1948 and makes almost no concessions to the tourist trade a few streets south.
Why locals love it: It still carries mazamorra, the almond and bread soup that predates the tomato and fathered salmorejo, and almost no Judería kitchen makes it.
Tip: Order the mazamorra rather than the salmorejo; it is the older dish and the harder one to find.
Casa Pepe de la Judería has fed Córdoba since 1928, a taberna downstairs and a roof terrace upstairs that looks straight at the Mezquita tower.
Signature: Mazamorra, Rabo de toro, Berenjenas fritas con miel de caña
Order: Mazamorra, the almond-and-bread ancestor of salmorejo.
Tip: The roof terrace is the reason to come, so ask for it when you book rather than taking a ground-floor table.
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