This famous creole dish with a Quechua name and remote pre-Columbian origin has two names: carapulcra and carapulca. It is one of the oldest mestizo dishes still in existence. The people of that time gave the dish the flavor of Andean cuisine. Manuel Atanasio Fuentes wrote about carapulca in 1860, indicating that it was one of the “dishes in the daily diet of those who were not so well-off.” He later clarified that it was also served at the “big feasts,” which “consisted of the most famous dishes of that time,” one of which was carapulca.
And what is carapulca? Juan de Arona says it is a “creole stew, a bit boring. It is made from dried ground potatoes, cooked meat, the tip of the ají pepper, etc. Like many Quechua words, appears to be Spanish, or even Latin: cara pulchra.” The scholar Alberto Tauro del Pino, in his Illustrated Encyclopedia of Peru, says carapulca is prepared with “dry, toasted and lightly crushed potato. While being cooked, it is seasoned with lard, onion, salt, hot pepper, garlic, black pepper and ground cumin. Then the cooked meat is added with its own juices, and before serving pieces of cooked potatoes and hard-boiled eggs are also added.
Whether called carapulca or carapulcra, and whether served with rice, pork, or ají peppers, it will continue to be one of the oldest and most popular dishes of Peruvian cuisine, which we can enjoy thanks to the blessings of the national cuisine.
