In Madrid we find restaurants serving traditional, fusion, international, haute cuisine, avant-garde cuisine, with a Michelin star, a gastronomic offer so wide that it perfectly suits our tastes and our pocket. But today we are talking about the gastronomy of Madrid, not its restaurant offer, but its culture. We are talking about the dishes that are part of the life of the people of Madrid, those that with their aroma alone take us back to other times. We talk about the gastronomy of Madrid.
Salads, soups and stews
Soups also play a leading role in Madrid’s gastronomy. The one with the stew, of course, where they cooked noodles, or rice, or bread, but also vegetables, vegetables, carrots, leeks or a bit of everything, vegetables cut into julienne strips. And also fish soups such as grouper, monkfish, chirlas or with various ingredients. And those of meat, where the chicken stood out, which has been replaced by chicken, and the giblets.
In relation to salads and stews, it is that Madrid was surrounded by orchards, although today the cultivation is residual in favor of the industry. Salads have always been an almost mandatory dish in summer (in fact, salads are still on restaurant menus along with other summer dishes). These salads could only have lettuce and tomato, or add marinades, olives (Campo Real Olives are protected by a Quality Denomination) and boiled egg.
Dishes made with meats
Madrid has also been a meat-producing city and generous with game animals. The Meat of the Sierra de Guadarrama, which comes from specially cared for animals, which have developed most of their breeding in extensive regime and which have been finished with very natural feed, enjoys Protected Geographical Indication.
In relation to meat, Madrid also divided its consumption into two large groups: beef, sheep, pork and poultry, on the one hand; and other lower grade meats and offal, on the other. Curiously, it is the offal that has consecrated the gastronomy of Madrid. Popular dishes from yesterday that reach our days in their popular and illustrated versions make up restaurant menus throughout the city: roast suckling pig, suckling lamb and kid; beef shank, from the Sierra de Guadarrama; chicken in pepitoria, which today we usually do with chicken or other birds. And the veal nugget, which was liked by the humblest classes, and which today has almost disappeared.
The desserts that the capital has given
The pastries of the palaces, castles and convents have played a very important role in the gastronomy of Madrid. It was at its birth during the 13th and 14th centuries and has survived to this day, being protagonists of gastronomic fairs throughout the country.
Likewise, Madrid pastry shops have always had great prestige and we still have centuries-old establishments, such as the Antigua Pastelería del Pozo, with almost 200 years behind it, or La Mallorquina, which appeared in 1894.
The sweets of Madrid are closely linked to the traditional festivities with sweets as representative as the buñuelos, the donuts from Alcalá, the garrapiñadas, the violet candies, the wafers, the donuts from San Isidro, the lists and the silly ones, fried milk , the cream of San José, the bones of a saint, the rolls of San Antón, or the crown of the Almudena (which is the roscón de Madrid), among others.