Many glossy cookbooks nowadays describe gazpacho as a “liquid salad” made from ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers and lemon juice. There are so many contemporary versions of the soup – often including quite exotic ingredients – that many chefs now use the word to describe any uncooked, chilled soup. Contemporary versions have been known to include everything from clam juice, lobster, and shrimp and to raisins, walnuts, mangos, and melon.

In common with very many other recipes, especially those from the Mediterranean, however, the evolution of gazpacho came from much more basic, rustic ingredients. Originally, gazpacho was nothing but stale bread, water and olive oil, prepared in a large wooden bowl called a dornillo and eaten by workers in the fields. It was very much a peasant dish.

The dish is thought to have originated in the Middle Ages when Spain was part of the Islamic Empire. The word gazpacho itself is believed to be derived from the Arabic caspa, meaning “residue” or “fragments” and referring to the small pieces of bread and vegetables in the soup. In its genesis, variations of gazpacho soup may have included almonds and vinegar, but for those essential ingredients of the gazpacho that we know today – tomatoes and peppers – the dish had to await Colombus’ bringing them back from South America.

Gazpacho remained a basically peasant dish until the nineteenth century when it began to be popularised by Eugenia de Montijo, the wife of the French Emperor Napoleon III. (Little known fact: the couple were eventually exiled from France and the final resting place and elaborate tomb of Empress Eugenia is to be found, of all places, in Farnborough in Hampshire).

During the nineteenth century, therefore, various recipes for the preparation of gazpacho slowly spread from the south of Spain to the rest of the country, although it was not until about 1930 that its popularity reached the north of the country. Nonetheless, gazpacho was by then already well on its way to achieving not only a national, but also an international reputation. An American cookery book published in 1963 by Betty Watson said that “gazpacho, the soup-salad of Spain, has become an American food fashion”, but also referred to a book called The Virginia Housewife written by Mary Randolph as early as 1824, in which there was a recipe for gazpacho.

According to native sources, the most common gazpacho in Spain at the beginning of the nineteenth century was capon de galera, made from a pound of bread crust soaked in water and put in a sauce of anchovy bones, garlic, and vinegar, sugar, salt and olive oil until it has softened. To this, ingredients and vegetables of the Royal Salad (a salad composed of various fruits and vegetables) were added. Interestingly, capon de galera is thought to be an historical predecessor to the Sicilian caponata.

The point, of course, is that many variations of the original gazpacho came to be made. In gazpacho de antequera, for example, the soup was made with homemade mayonnaise blended with lemon juice and egg whites and pounded garlic and almonds. Gazpacho de la serrania de Huelva comes from the mountainous country around Huelva and is a puree of garlic, paprika, onions, tomatoes, and bell peppers with sherry vinegar and olive oil stirred in until creamy and served with cucumber and croutons. Salmorejo Córdobés (which is also frequently translated as rabbit sauce) is made with garlic, bell peppers, tomatoes, and moistened bread pounded into a paste, with olive oil stirred in until it has the consistency of a puree. It is served with eggs, oranges, and toasted bread. Gazpacho caliente uses hot peppers and there are also gazpachos with green beans or pine nuts.

The recipe for the“original” gazpacho of Andalusia and the one to which most present-day variants owe greatest debt, however, probably remains the gazpacho de Granada. This is made with pounded garlic, cumin, salt, bell peppers, and tomatoes, with olive oil added until creamy, then water and bread go on top.

This is also the modern version of the soup, made in the summer time when all of the vegetables are at their finest. It is simple and, when served chilled, full of refreshing good flavour. It remains true to its spiritual, if not culinary roots in that it is one of the most flavoursome uses for too many ripe vegetables that might otherwise go to waste. And the original ingredients, especially vinegar, olive oil and garlic remain essential to a successful gazpacho.

And the gazpacho really has become world-renowned. For the reference sleuths amongst you, here are a couple of instances from fiction where a knowledge of the soup is taken for granted. Did you know, for example, that in the science fiction series Red Dwarf the character Arnold Rimmer recounts a story in which he embarrasses himself in front of senior officers by complaining to the waiter that his gazpacho soup is cold? Rimmer ends up being served a “bowl of piping hot gazpacho soup”. Still more prophetically, “gazpacho soup” are also Rimmer’s dying words, before he is killed by a radiation leak.

But it’s not just in Anglo Saxon art that the soup makes its appearance. In Pedro Almodovar’s 1987 movie Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, different characters help themselves to the soup made by Pepa (Carmen Maura) and instantly fall into a deep and long sleep.