Chapter One
A Curse of Tea and Potatoes
The Life and Recipes of Encarnación Pinedo
There is nothing new in saying that cookbooks are read in bed or the
garden as often as they are read inside the kitchen, for motives that have
nothing to do with cooking. List all the cookbooks that have made the link
between childhood memories and unsatisfied adult hunger, and you have
filled a library with culinary nostalgia. But what about a recipe book
that is intended to settle old scores, or one that is intended to protect
its user from disappearing and doubles as a disguise from mortal enemies?
That, among other things, is what Encarnación Pinedo serves forth in El
cocinero espanol (The Spanish Cook), a work of obvious importance for
culinary historians. Published in 1898 in San Francisco, it is
California's first, and clearly most extensive, Spanish-language cookbook.
Anyone who reads Spanish and is lucky enough to get a copy of the
thousand-recipe collection-you can find a copy in the Los Angeles Central
Public Library-will discover a seminal text of So ... read full excerpt from Encarnacion's Kitchen: Mexican Recipes from Nineteenth-Century California ebook
