Horchata, the Sweet Latin Drink That Gets Around

In making Mexican horchata, rice is soaked, strained and ground into a powder. The powder is then dissolved in condensed milk and water is added. Cinnamon and vanilla enhance the flavor.

Why rice and not morro? Maybe, Marroquin says matter-of-factly, it is because the morro tree doesn't grow in Mexico. It also may be because the country's Spanish colonists, who introduced rice there, concocted the drink to go with it. In 12th-century Spain, a popular treat was rice boiled in almond milk scented with cinnamon.

Spanish horchata, made with neither morro nor rice, is all but invisible in the Washington area. A search for the drink turned up only one outlet: ironically, a Mexican taqueria. Its owner, veteran local restaurateur Ann Cashion, has traveled widely in Spain, and manager Wayne Combs has lived there. At their Taqueria Nacionale near Union Station, the nutty horchata is neither as thick nor as creamy as its Mexican and Salvadoran counterparts. Cashion and Combs prefer it that way. Spanish horchata is "lighter," Combs says.

The Iberian drink is made from chufas, or earth almonds, a sack of which, imported from Spain, is displayed near the taqueria's entrance. The restaurant soaks them for 24 hours, grinds them and blends them with water. The resulting whitish liquid is sweetened with sugar and spiced with cinnamon sticks.

Chufas technically are not nuts but underground tubers from a grassy plant of ancient lineage. One of the earliest domesticated plants, this cousin of the papyrus was grown in the Nile Valley. Roasted, ground and mixed with honey, chufas were a popular Egyptian sweet. The Moors, Muslim warriors who invaded Spain and occupied it from the 8th to the 13th centuries, carried chufa plants with them. They introduced them to the area around Valencia, on Spain's eastern Mediterranean coast. Its warm climate and sandy soil were ideal for the crop.

Fond of barley- and almond-infused drinks, the Moors found chufa a tasty substitute. Their milky refreshment, sweet and nutty and rich in minerals, is the ancestor of the Spanish horchata.

Although popular throughout Spain, horchata de chufa has its most ardent fans in Valencia. Sold in small cafes and shops, which reminded taqueria manager Combs of old-fashioned soda bars, it is often taken with long buns called fartons.

A council in Valencia polices the market; to be called horchata, the drink must be made from chufa.

One mystery remained: the name.

According to writers Anne Chotzinoff Grossman and Lisa Grossman Thomas in "Lobscouse & Spotted Dog," the name is associated with a long line of medieval European grain and nut drinks. A barley water infused with ground almonds was known in France as orgeat and in Italy as orzata, names that derive from the Latin word "hordeata," meaning "made with barley."

Gradually, Grossman and Thomas explain, those names were transferred to almond milk, a cloudy blend of ground almonds and water introduced to Europeans by the Arabs, and in Spain, it was a short step from orgeat and orzata to horchata, another milky, nutty delight.

As the drink was reinvented across Spanish-speaking countries, the name remained unchanged. There are no impostors among horchatas, just close relations on a tall family tree.

Joel Denker is the author of "The World on a Plate: A Tour Through the History of America's Ethnic Cuisine."