horchata

The word horchata likely comes from the Latin hordeata, a drink made from barley (hordeum). Some etymologists point to the Valencian Catalan orxata and a competing folk etymology involving King James I of Aragon, who supposedly tasted the drink in the 1200s and declared it 'or, xata!' — 'this is gold, girl!' The story is almost certainly invented, but it circulates anyway. The Latin barley-water origin is more prosaic and more probable.

Valencian horchata de chufa is made from tiger nuts (chufas), which are not nuts but tubers of the sedge plant Cyperus esculentus. The Moors brought tiger nut cultivation to Valencia during their seven centuries on the Iberian Peninsula, and the drink may have Arabic antecedents. When the Spanish expelled the Moors in 1492, the tiger nuts stayed. The drink became Valencian rather than Moorish, and the Arabic memory was quietly erased.

Spanish colonists carried the name horchata to the Americas, but they did not carry the tiger nuts. In Mexico, rice replaced chufas as the base ingredient. In Central America, jicaro seeds. In Ecuador, ground melon seeds. The word remained the same; the recipe was rebuilt from whatever was locally available. Mexican horchata — rice soaked overnight, blended with cinnamon and sugar — became the version most familiar to Americans, served in every taqueria from San Diego to Chicago.

Horchata is now sold in shelf-stable cartons, as an ice cream flavor, and as a coffee additive. The Valencian Denominación de Origen still protects horchata de chufa, insisting that the real thing is made from tiger nuts and nothing else. Mexico disagrees. So does every other country that makes horchata. The word holds a dozen recipes together by pure stubbornness.