Inventing Tradition: The Story of Sagargala, Which is NOT a Traditional Basque Dessert

The other day I got a not-unheard-of text out of the blue.

As a cookbook author, I get these kind of queries every now and then. Have you heard of this, what is the story behind this, where can I find this.

The difference in this message was the sender, who is a friend of mine, asking about a Basque dessert, when he himself is a very knowledgeable Basque person. And this piqued my interest, because I do feel I have uncovered almost every stone when it comes to traditional Basque cooking…this so-called traditional dessert should have at least rung a bell.

My friend asked me if I had heard of the sagargala. I responded not at all, although it reminded me of another Basque dessert, goxua.

His curiosity was a direct result of this Twitter thread, from a friend of ours, Marta Miranda, a writer for the popular El Comidista:

The issue here comes in the first paragraph of the article from 2023 in Directo al Paladar:

Sabéis que en DAP nos encanta recuperar recetas de postres clásicos y tradicionales, así que hoy nos vamos hasta el País Vasco para endulzar el paladar. Allí nos encontramos un pastel llamado sagargala, menos conocido que otras elaboraciones vascas, pero eso sí, de un sabor insuperable.

“You know that at Directo al Paladar we love to recover classic, traditional recipes, so today we’re heading to Basque Country to sweeten the palate. There we find a dessert called sagargala, less well known than other Basque dishes, but of an incredible flavor.”

Classic?! Traditional?! Hmph. Naturally, that set me off on a sort of Google-fueled frenzy of investigation.

The first results to appear are from November 2022, when Eva Arguiñano, sister of ultra-famous chef Karlos Arguiñano, published a recipe. The recipe in Directo al Paladar is more or less a direct copy of this one: making an apple compote (with gelatine), then a cheese cream (with gelatin), a wine syrup that is used to soak some butter cakes (sobaos), which are then stuck on top, all in a mold that later sets and forms a cake of sorts. I’m sorry…yuck. But Spain being Spain, this recipe gets coverage on the largest national television channel, Antena3.

That, however, is only the beginning of the story. Where did this “traditional” dessert come from? Shows like Eva’s are content farms, so where did she get it, if we are to assume it didn’t pass down through the mouth of her illustrious chef husband?

We have a post from early 2022, on que.es, that features the recipe, brazenly calling it “a delicate and exquisite dessert that they love in Basque Country.” Oh my…none of us have heard of it! Also…that picture…what?! It looks like a strawberry jell-o cheesecake, yuk.

Here we have a blog post from a year earlier, 2021, that shows us both a more “homemade’ version of sagargala, as well as giving us a clue on where it came from:

Tenía guardada la receta del sagargala, este típico postre vasco, desde que la vi en una revista en la peluquería mientras esperaba turno para el tinte.

“I had this recipe for sagargala, that traditional Basque dessert (! emphasis mine), saved since I saw it in a magazine in the hair salon while I was waiting for my turn to get colored.”

Ha. I love this. But while there is now a more primary source, the mystery still continues.

Going back another year in time, to March 3, 2020 (oh what awaited us a week from then!) I found this outlier of a blog post:

Well. At least we got the Basque words right. You see, though, that this is much more of a homemade cheesecake looking thing, rather than a gelatinized, perfect little pastry.

After much searching, if the internet is to be believed, nothing happened in world sagargala for an entire decade. I was ready to give up when I found two posts: one from January of 2009, and another from December 2008. Bingo.

The post from January 2009 actually does a good job of explaining to us where this dessert came from.

He aquí la guinda de la Gala de Turismo del Gobierno vasco (diciembre 2008). Esta tarta se encargó a Koldo Salinas para resumir la esencia de una tierra bellísima que hay que visitar. A gourmet-image le correspondió retratar el proceso. La receta y las fotos están colgadas en la página oficial del Gobierno vasco y traducida al euskera, francés, inglés y alemán. Queremos, con permiso del maestro, compartirla con vosotros: una receta con los sabores sencillos de la primera memoria y toques de desarrollo y modernidad.

“Here we have the highlight of the Basque Government Tourism Gala (December 2008). This cake was commissioned to Koldo Salinas to summarize the essence of a beautiful land that has to be visited. A gourmet-image (sic) went along to portray the process. The recipe and photos are posted on the official website of the Basque Government and translated into Basque, French, English and German. We would like, with the maestro’s permission, to share it with you: a recipe with the simple flavors of childhood memory and touches of modernity.”

YES! Ok! So this was a dessert invited by Koldo Salinas, a very well-known pastry chef from Irún, for the Basque Government’s tourism event. The link on the government’s website isn’t broken, per se, but it doesn’t work either (typical). His version is outlined in the 2009 post, and truth be told it looks quite elegant and even edible.

Here are some images from the original-ish blog post © Xavier Landa/gourmet-image

The only issue that remains is the December 2008 post, on Gazte Aukera, an internal portal for young people looking for work in Basque Country. A bit random, sagargala’s first appearance in the digital world, but I imagine as it is a government funded platform it was simply some content that they decided to throw up.

Mystery solved!!!

This is the kind of research I had to do for my books, and I am just incredibly shocked every time at the willingness of people to recycle the same old untrue stories without checking on their veracity at all. All it takes is just an inventive writer, journalist, or content creator to add a flourish or two (traditional! classic!) for a whole new urban legend to be launched.

Gora sagargala!!!!