Linda Hall – Gold, Sweetheart!

POPE BENEDICT XVI visited Valencia in July 2006 although his Oliver Twist moment was reported only by the regional media.

Apparently Benedict was given horchata at the Archbishop’s palace where he stayed overnight.  He liked it so much that before saying Mass to the usual multitude next day he asked for more horchata.

Not water, your Holiness?  No, it had to be horchata and as this is principally a summer drink served ice-cold or as a shaved-ice granita, the pope’s request for more made sense.

You’ll find horchata wherever you go in Spain, although it originated in Valencia, where it is traditionally accompanied by sausage-shaped buns going by the unfortunate name of fartons.

Horchata is made from chufas, the little brown nutty things we called tiger nuts when I was little. Depending on which Google explanation you like best, something like horchata appears to have arrived with the Moors in the ninth century although the drink originated in the Sudan.

According to archaeologists, it was habitually left amongst the afterlife provisions in Egyptian tombs while Persian and Arab writers praised its digestive and antiseptic qualities.  Even now, drinking horchata is still a popular household remedy for an upset stomach.

Nevertheless its name comes from the Italian orzata, which in turn derives from the Latin ordeata – made from hordeum or barley – meaning that horchata wasn’t always made from tiger nuts.

In Valencia, they tell you another different story, maintaining that in the 13th century the king of Aragon, Jaime I El Conquistador who retook Valencia from the Moors, was given a sweet, white, milky concoction to drink.

He asked what it was and the girl who was serving him explained that it was chufa milk.

“¡Aixo no es llet! ¡Aixo es or, xata!” he exclaimed (“This isn’t milk – this is gold, sweetheart!”).  Fortunately for posterity, they were both speaking Valenciano and Jaime was able to combine or and xata to create a name for the drink we know today.