Spanish Bean Soup

Spanish cooks make an amazing variety of hearty bean and sausage soups. The first recipe I read for one of these elaborate Spanish soups was in a French cookbook from the 17th century that described dishes served at the court of Louis XIV. The dish, an oille, was an elaborate mixture of simmered meats and vegetables. According to Alexandre Dumas’s Encyclopedia of Cuisine, written in 1873, the now forgotten oille was a close relative to the Spanish ol