Guacamole Reaches Beverly Hills 1931
A friend just sent me a wonderful package of 1930s American cookbooks. Fashions in Foods in Beverly Hills published in 1931 by the Beverly Hills Womans Club is redolent of my mother’s books about movie stars with their photos of platinum blonds in satin dresses and exotic bedrooms with round beds.
I knew nothing of about calavo but a quick google taught me that, started in 1924, they are largest company in the avocado business in the world. They have a 90,000 square foot facility in Uruapan, Michoacan for turning avocados into every packaged and frozen form you can imagine. But that’s now.
Clearly in 1931 they had pretty much succeeded in establishing calavos (get it?), “the aristocrat of salad fruit” as the culinary equivalent of satin dresses and round beds. According to the ad by the growers at the head of the salad section (too faded to photograph) “your guests have seen Calavos on the menus of crack railway dining cars in the East . . . at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco and the El Cortez in San Diego. ” Hostesses should offer the calavos on the half shell (note language) on “those smart occasions when everything must be just right.”
Helen Twelvetrees, aPathé star in the early talkies later displaced by Katherine Hepburn, offered a new use taught her by a Mexico City friend. Here it is:
Wakimoli Salad
The calavos are halved, the stones removed and the meat scraped from the half shells. Thoroughly mash the meat and stir finely chopped onions into it. Beat in mayonnaise dressing until the mixture attains the consistency of thick paste. Season with salt pepper and paprika. This may be served in the half shells, on letture, or is delicious on toasted crackers.
Roman Novarro, a Mexican from Durango who earned his living as a singing waiter until he achieved fame for a skimpily dressed role in Ben Hur offered his version.
Guacamole
Peel 2 calavos and mash, next wash well 1/2 can of Ortega’s green chili and after mashing it, add it to the calavo mixture. Season like a salad, with salt, vinegar, and olive oil. After this wash grapes and add them to the mixture. Instead of grapes, the original fruit to add is pomegranate seeds as this gives a very colorful, as well as an appetizing appearance.
This has the food historian in me hopping with curiosity. Hadn’t the Mexicans had avocados in California for ages? Were the Calavo growers just trying to find a market among Americans?
Did a Mexican hostess really mix in mayonnaise? Perhaps quite likely as a way of Frenchifying avocado. Mayonnaise was in high style in Mexico at the time. Perhaps well to do Mexicans did not eat guacamole much. A quick glance at Mexican cookbooks of the period suggests more were stuffed than used as a sauce or dip or spread.
Something to mull over.
I look quickly at the Mexican-Californian “Ecarnacion’s Kitchen” (first published as “El Cocinero Espanol”, 1898) and can’t see any mention of the avacado. How interesting.
I did the same. Of course it’s difficult to tell because the editors did not reprint the whole cookbook. What one has to remember is that from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s (and probably longer than that) the Mexican elite saw the way forward as eating French Cuisine.
Very true, although I would be surprised if any existing avocado recipes would be excluded from the selection. and there is a largish selction of “Mexican” dishes and ingredients.
I found online annual reports of the “California Avocado Association” which date back to 1915 and there is certainly plenty of references to avacados in California at the end of the late 19th century. Getting back to the CAA annuals, there are a number of recipes given, mayonnaise is a relatively common additive.
Haven’t found a recipe for Guacamole in these notes yet, but haven’t looked very carefully. Have seen a 1922 Los Ang. recipe from “CASTELAR CRECHE COOK BOOK Edited and Compiled by Board of Directors for the benefit of the Castelar Creche, A Home for Homeless Babies” .
These are interesting links:
http://www.avocadosource.com/CAS_Yearbooks/CAS_02_1916/CAS_1916_PG_067-071.pdf
http://www.avocadosource.com/CAS_Yearbooks/CAS_01_1915/CAS_1915_PG_75-77.pdf
http://www.avocadosource.com/CAS_Yearbooks/CAS_01_1915/CAS_1915_PG_77-81.pdf
http://www.avocadosource.com/CAS_Yearbooks/CAS_02_1916/CAS_1916_PG_105-144.pdf
English, French, Italian, Spanish, Port —– the word is similar enough to recognize. When traveling in Chile one needs ask for palta. Curiosity sparked, I asked, “Why?” and found this:
Francisco Gardiazabal Irazabal
Dept. of Agronomy Catholic University of Valparaiso Quillota, Chile
The Inca Indians of Peru spread the avocado, a fruit they called “palta,” throughout the Pacific coast of South America. This fruit was given this name, according to Garcilazo de la Vega (1605), because they came from the province of Palta in Equator. It was from this place that the Indians took the “palta” to Cuzco. This is the name given to avocados in Colombia, Peru, Argentina, and Chile.
http://www.avocadosource.com/cas_yearbooks/cas_85_2001/cas_2001_pg_113-128.pdf
I had no idea that the Pacific coast used the term palta for avocado. Do they also use it for guacamole?
I don’t know. I never saw it mashed, only sliced and chopped on any salad and many other dishes — especially soup as in MX.
I’m not sure just how culinarily relevant this is but I just saw in the NYT that more than 100 million avocados are consumed in the USA on Super Bowl Sunday.
Well, I guess it shows just how successful the California Avocado Association has been!