Forget what you know: This is gazpacho

Yet somehow, over time, what began as one of Spain's great gifts to the world's culinary repertoire has become a sort of anything-goes, toss-it-all-into-the-blender affair. An authentic gazpacho is as delicious as paella, and far easier to reproduce. Sadly, more often than not in the hands of American cooks, it's a chunky, insipid puree that can only be rescued by the addition of more tomato juice.

Real gazpacho -- that is, tomato gazpacho made from the traditional ingredients used in Seville, capital of the cold soup -- is one of those simple, perfect dishes in which the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. It has deep tomato flavor, sure, but never uses canned juice: Gazpacho demands only the ripest tomatoes. But underneath that, it's got body and bite, which come from the bread and garlic that are its base. It's got a little zing -- that's from Sherry vinegar. And it's got soul, which comes from good, fruity olive oil. Get the balance right, and you've got a dream of a summer soup.

Once you understand what defines gazpacho, then you can play, add garnishes, experiment.

It may come as a surprise that the tomatoey salad-soup that we all know and love has origins that have nothing to do with tomatoes.

In fact, gazpacho predates the 16th century arrival of tomatoes (and peppers) in Europe; most culinary historians say that its roots go back to Islamic Spain, sometime between the 8th and 13th centuries. According to Clara Maria G. de Amezua, an authority on Spanish cuisine and founder of the Alambique cooking school in Madrid, gazpacho dates back to the 7th century.

In those days, garlic, salt and bread were pounded in a mortar-like vessel called a dornillo; vinegar and olive oil were then beaten in. The thick soup that resulted has much in common with sopa de ajo, a traditional hot soup that is still eaten in much of Spain, as well as ajo blanco, the cold soup from Malaga also known as "gazpacho blanco," or white gazpacho.

Once Columbus brought back tomatoes and peppers from the New World, these were added to gazpacho, along with cucumber. The result is the marvelous cold soup that reaches its apogee in the restaurants and homes of Seville, where it's served with a variety of garnishes, including finely chopped green pepper, cucumber, green onions, hard-boiled eggs and toasted (or dried or fried) bread cubes. It's no accident that tomato gazpacho happened in Seville: According to De Amezua, the vegetables that Columbus brought spread through Spain via Seville.