Pavia Soldiers

Impeccably crisp fried salt cod in a light batter is a fixture at tapas bars in Andalusia and Madrid, the sort of dish on which an establishment’s reputation rests. I’ve been enjoying it for years, but the name had always puzzled me. What could be the connection between bacalao and the 1525 battle of Pavia (a Lombardian town) in which the soldiers of the Spanish king Carlos V defeated the French? When I asked food historian and critic José Carlos Capel about this, first he explained that th