History of Paella

Paella comes from Valencia, Spain and began as a poor man’s food. In other words, Valencians scraped together local ingredients such as rice, tomato, garlic, vegetables, meat and seafood (though it was taboo to mix the proteins of land and sea) to make it. In 1840, the first printed recipe came about which detailed ingredients such as rabbit and snails. By this time, paella had become a Sunday tradition in Valencia wherein the men cooked over an open fire of orange tree branches and dried vines while their ladies were at church.

There are two stories attached to how paella got its name. The first, and more romanticized one, speaks of a young man who cooked it first for his lover. In other words, he made it para ella (for her). The second, more plausible story, is that the name came from the frying pan it’s made in with a name that is derived from the Latin patella.

Some now say that an authentic paella can only be made in Valencia because the local water is highly concentrated with calcium, which impacts how the rice is cooked.

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