Mondo Knows Facts
Paella takes its name from the pan
The Valencian word refers to the wide shallow vessel, not the dish itself Paella comes from the Latin word for a shallow pan, and the dish took the vessel's name. Valencian cooks spread rice in a thin layer in a wide steel pan over an open fire so the liquid evaporates evenly. The prized crust at the bottom, called socarrat, forms when the rice browns slightly at the end. It sits in Mondo's food collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: paella, rice, spain
Paella takes its name from the pan: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The Valencian word refers to the wide shallow vessel, not the dish itself. The figure is taken from The Food Timeline, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a food fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.