At the end of the 19th century there apppeared many writers and culinary scientists, whose aim was popularising and regaining the prestige of the Spanish cuisine. One of the them was Mariano Pardo de Figueroa (known as Doctor Thebussem) and his associate Jose Castro y Serrano (alias Cocinero de S.M.). Both of them were defenders of the traditional culinary roots, which is why they started talking about Spanish cuisine as a whole, not as separate elements. As soon as the beginning of the 20th century, other known authors, such as Dioniso Perez Gutierrez (known as Doctor Post- Thebussem) and Teodoro Bardaji Mas defended the Spanish names of dishes to remove the French influences from the previous centuries. Their research saved many Spanish dishes, which were known under French names, from being forgotten. The above mentioned authors influenced the awareness of the new generations of culinary writers who started consulting their recipes with experienced chefs, as it was in case of Angel Muro and his work "Practicon". Some of them, for example Ignacio Domenech, worked at the creation of press articles dedicated to Spanish gastronomy.
Spanish cuisine in the 20th century experienced a crisis related to the civil war. However, in the following years the culinary art started to thrive, which was partly caused by the development of the mass media, the appearance of a new generation of chefs of world renown and popular culinary writers. The contemporary Spanish cuisine encompasses new ideas and is becoming more and more international due to millions of tourists who visit Spain every year and due to restaurants opened all over the world that offer Spanish dishes.
In the traditional Spanish cuisine it is often a case that one, particular ingredient is more famous than the dish itself or the way of cooking. For this reason, it is a custom to praise a fish from a particular coast, ham from a certain city or peas from a particular village. This means that a lot of dishes and cooking methods often include a name of a place they come from in their names. Thanks to the diversity of the Spanish climate it is possible to grow many cereals, vegetables and fruit which are used in the regional cuisines throughout the country.
