Merengues de Canjáyar

Three things and an oven: egg white, sugar and "plenty of lemon" — Alpujarra lemon — baked in a Moorish oven with vine-shoot embers inside. That gentle heat dries the meringue without toasting it, and out comes the white, feather-light piece that identifies Canjáyar today.

The recipe arrived from Ohanes more than a century ago with Tomás Pastor; Francisco Pastor and Joaquina Cazorla followed, and today Mari Ángeles Pastor and Cristóbal Sánchez keep it going at the Pastelería Delicias de la Alpujarra. They work only to order — weddings, birthdays — and their meringues travel to Catalonia, France, Germany, England and Athens. They have reached haute cuisine: Quique Dacosta, three Michelin stars, serves them at Llisa Negra in Valencia, with orders of around 300 pieces, and shipments leave for Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Cádiz.

To try them without ordering ahead, La Tahá Restaurante serves them in Canjáyar itself. Nor are they alone in the sierra: in Dalías the Pastelería Escobar (1952) makes them to a recipe unchanged in more than sixty years, and in Laujar de Andarax meringues are part of the local baking.