Capirotada
Two great blogs just happen to hit independently on the interesting dish, capirotada. First there was Ken Albala with it history in the European Renaissance.
Then jumping down the centuries and across the Atlantic, there was Cristina Potters with one of her lovely photos and a recipe of one of the many contemporary Mexican versions.
Scroll down through the whole post on Mexico’s great Lenten dishes. I wonder how long these will survive now that the fasting rules have been so thoroughly weakened by the Catholic Church.
I wonder if there is any relationship to Medieval tharids http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Cookbooks/Andalusian/andalusian8.htm
Or Tagine Beida (egg) or Bread Tagines (bread puddings)?
http://www.chefzadi.com/egg_dishes/ link to Tagine beida
Re Tharid, it is possible as this was The Arabic dish, but is in essence a pretty simple dish that could have multiple origins. There are also versions that are un-layered of lack bread for instance.
It is a bit of a mystery dish that comes up again and again in historical European cookery texts, but there doesn’t seem to be any clear origin. Much like Salmagundi in this respect.
An even closer match to Capirotada then Tharid is the Apician Roman “sala cattabia”, which is essentially a layered bread, chicken and cheese salad.
Not an original observation, but I don’t remember a definative answer to capirotada = sala cattabia?