Poached eggs are at all events within the grasp of the meanest culinary capacity. They are called _Huevos estrellados_, starred eggs. When fat bacon is wedded to them, the dish is called _Huevos con magras_; not that _magras_ here means thin as to condition, but rather as to slicing; and these slices, again, are positively thick ones when compared to those triumphs of close shaving which are carved at Vauxhall. To make this dish, with or without the bacon, take eggs; the contents of the shell are to be emptied into a pan filled with hot oil or lard, _manteca de puerco_, pig’s butter: it must be remembered, although Strabo mentions as a singular fact that the Iberians made use of butter instead of oil, that now it is just the reverse; a century ago butter was only sold by the apothecaries, as a sort of ointment, and it used to be iniquitous. Spaniards generally used either Irish or Flemish salted butter, and from long habit thought fresh butter quite insipid; indeed, they have no objection to its being a trifle or so rancid, just as some aldermen like high venison. In the present age of progress the Queen Christina has a fancy dairy at Madrid, where she makes a few pounds of fresh butter, of which a small portion is or was sold, at five shillings the pound, to foreign ambassadors for their breakfast. Recently more attention has been paid to the dairy in the Swiss-like provinces of the north-west. The Spaniards, like the heroes in the Iliad, seldom boil their food (eggs excepted), at least not in water; for frying, after all, is but boiling in oil. Travellers should be cautioned against the captivating name of _manteca Valenciana_. This Valencian butter is composed (for the cow has nothing to do with it) of equal portions of garlic and hogs’ lard pounded together in a mortar; it is then spread on bread, just as we do arsenic to destroy vermin. It, however, agrees well with the peasants, as does the soup of their neighbours the Catalans, which is made of bread and garlic in equal portions fried in oil and diluted with hot water. This mess is called _sopa de gato_, probably from making cats, not Catalans, sick. [Sidenote: GAZPACHO.]