The oldest gastronomic contest in Spain, 1961
Paella Valenciana, goes from being a classic dish of the province of Valencia, perhaps the most internationally known dish, with its star ingredient; the rice.
It is a dish that ancient peasants ate, with vegetables giving the land, and snails found between rosemary and thyme,adding rabbit or duck on holidays with which they could cook and eat it at the same time and all together. Later they incorporated the chicken carefully raised for months.
Books of French cuisine (12xx AD) mentions a Rice with almond milk and cinnamon, served in a meal offered by Saint Luis (king of France) attended St. Thomas Aquinas. In the “Llibre de Sent Sovi” an spanish medieval recipe book written in valencian language (between the year 1024 or 1324) there is a similar recipe.
The definition of Paella, it is the tool where rice is cooked, large metal pot, round and shallow.
The word Patella in latin, refers to a container of this nature, Paila in spanish, Paele in french and Paella in valencian
Somehow France and french language have collaborated in this dish so exquisite and popular at the same time contradictory and complicated when it’s cooked