Who has not heard of the olla podrida--to what corner of the earth has its fame not reached? The honour belongs, nevertheless, to the Jews: the Spaniard has only copied and disfigured. The original is a remarkable specimen of human ingenuity, which has constructed a culinary go-cart for the Hebrew conscience, and reconciled the Israelite’s predilections with his scruples. He is forbidden to make or touch fire on the sabbath; he desires to have a hot breakfast, dinner, and supper on that day; and he obtains these meals without infringing that law. He has invented a fire, which, without mending or touching, will last over the twenty-four hours, and a pot which will furnish out of its single belly, a whole meal, and three meals in the day perfectly cooked in the morning, and not overdone at night. This is the _Dafina_,[225] and the day on which all cooking was forbidden, has, _in consequence_ of the prohibition, become the feast-day of the Jews. In these countries, kitchen-ranges and hot tables are unknown. It is the practice to make as many fires as there are dishes to be simultaneously cooked. Those who have served in India understand how soon a few holes are made in the ground, and how speedily a multiplicity of pans are simmering over them. This tent practice is here preserved in doors, and little earthen pots, called _nafi_, constructed so as to allow draught, contain the charcoal, and on these the pots are set to boil. In preparing the Dafina, the first thing is the build of the charcoal in this small fire-pan, to make it burn slow and last long. This is managed by four layers of charcoal in lumps, and charcoal pounded. It is lighted on the Friday about four hours before sunset. The ingredients are successively put in: the last just before the Sabbath commences. The whole is first made to boil, then the fire is reduced by the stratification I have mentioned. _Ingredients._--Grabangos, potatoes, (English and African), eggs, beef, rice, marrow, rasped biscuit, parsley, marjoram, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and sometimes neat’s feet and sweetbreads. _Produce._--First course.--_Top._ Eggs in the shell. _Bottom_, stewed potatoes, sweet and common. Second course.--_Top._ Rice and marrow sausages. _Middle._ Boulli. _Bottom._ Meat sausages. Third course.--One large dish of stewed Grabangos. _Recipe._--The grabangos are an excellent vegetable when well cooked, but require great care. They must be first steeped several hours with wood ashes. They are put in the pot first, as soon as the water has boiled; next the eggs in the shell; next the meat sausages; then the meat; after that the rice sausages, and last of all the potatoes: water equal to one-third of the rest. _Meat Sausage._--Beef chopped very fine, fat (not of the entrails, but pared from the muscle), marrow, rasped biscuit, the seasonings above enumerated, and eggs to bind.