Gazpacho is a cold soup most strongly associated with Spain.
The best-known version is Andalusian gazpacho, a blended mixture of tomatoes, cucumber, pepper, onion, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, water, and bread. It is served chilled and is especially suited to the hot summers of southern Spain. Modern red gazpacho depends heavily on tomatoes, although tomatoes and peppers arrived in Europe from the Americas after the late fifteenth-century Columbian exchange.
Earlier forms of gazpacho were likely based on ingredients such as bread, water, garlic, olive oil, and vinegar, without tomatoes. This explains why the word can refer to several regional soups rather than one completely fixed recipe. Salmorejo, another Andalusian cold soup, is thicker and traditionally contains more bread and is often topped with egg and ham. Gazpacho can also be served as a drink, but its defining identity is a chilled Spanish soup.