Nineteenth-century Puerto Rican cuisine in the Spanish world
I’d wanted to meet Cruz Ortíz for several years after reading his excellent book Puerto Rico en la olla:¿somos aún lo que comimos? (Madrid: Doce Calles, 2006). In that, he takes six typical foods of the island–rice, habichuelas (beans or frijoles in Mexican Spanish), harina de maíz (cornmeal used to make funche or mush), bacalao (salt cod), viandas (in the Spanish of the island all roots and tubers), and meat (pork and beef) and uses them to explore the history of the country. Fascinating and in line for a blog one of these days.
In Guadalajara, though, Cruz turned to cookbooks to resurrect the high cuisine of nineteenth-century Puerto Rico. This is a report and reflections on the first part of his talk.
The first Puero Rican cookbook (El cocinero puertoriqueño) was published in 1859, part of a surge of regional cookbooks spearheaded by the half dozen that were published in Havanna in the 1850s and 60s, beginning with (you guessed it) El cocinero cubano in 1856. (Remember the Cocinero Mexicano appeared in 1831 shortly after Mexican independence was established). It was a time when Spain was hanging on to Cuba and Puerto Rico in the wake of independence movements elsewhere and in the face of independence movements in the islands.
The cuisine was not just limited to the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean though. There was a lot of movement back and forth with Catalonia where many puertoriqueños went to study, as well as with the Basque country, Galicia, and with neighboring Latin American countries especially Venezuela. For example in 1858, the Cocinera Catalana Cubana appeared.
Bingo. Catalonia was then just beginning on its renaissance, reasserting its language, inventing an architecture, booming economically, and asserting its own culinary tradition, beginning with La cuynera catalana (1835).
It’s hard, though, to start a culinary tradition from scratch. La cuynera catalana drew heavily on friar Francesc del Santíssim Sagrament’s eighteenth-century Instrucció breu i útil per los cuiners principiants. And this in turn drew on earlier Spanish works such as Diego Granada’s Libro del arte de cozina (1599) and the all-important Arte de Cocina (1611) by Martinez Motiño which is reprinted and reprinted across the Spanish world.
So both within and without Spain itself, authors are drawing on the Spanish tradition to assert national cuisines. I’ll come back later to talk about where French cuisine (and here) is placed in all this.
Back to Cruz’s talk. The result, he claimed, in Puerto Rico was a high cuisine that made extensive use of rural products both local to the islands and brought by immigrants and often associated with humble cuisines. It was, as high cuisines are, heavily meaty. And it was distinctively of the place although with clear extra-island influences.
Thanks for the linkage, Rachel. I spent three months in Puerto Rico during Peace Corps training; I mostly recall pasteles and sofrito, habichuelas and rice.
It is interesting that it often seems the case that the colonies/ex-colonies define a national cuisine before the parent nation.
Even within the parent nation (what is the best term for this BTW), you often get ‘regional cuisines’ being defined before a national cuisine.
I think that ‘regional cusines’ more likely develop from the contraction of a wider cuisine/food item, then de novo process. Largely I suspect because there are very few truely endemic ingredients, and and it is easier to hang onto a pre-existing dish, then introduce a new one. When you look at individual dishes, what stops being made, what continues, the driving process appears stochastic.
In the UK the ‘Scottishfication’ of various dishes got underway in the late 18th century, but there is very little mention of “English Cuisine” (except by the French; “Thick stupifying beer, meat almost raw and horribly spiced; strong libations of port wine, followed by plum-pudding—such is the meat of these islanders.”) during this period.
It seems that some national cuisines develop via the recognistion of a regional cuisine, which in tern can develop from the contraction of a wider cusine, but I’m not sure that the same process are involved in defining all types of national cuisines? What is “Spanish Cuisine”, is it a collection of recognised regional dishes, or is there unifying principle, in ingredients or technique or service?
What about the French? Apparently “The gastronomic meal of the French” is a UNESCO world treasure as it is:
” is a customary social practice for celebrating important moments in the lives of individuals and groups, such as births, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, achievements and reunions. It is a festive meal bringing people together for an occasion to enjoy the art of good eating and drinking.”
While it seems that no other nation celebrates with food, apart from France’s “gastronomic meal”, what is the unifying principle of French Cuisine? Or English Cuisine? Or Icelandic Cuisine?
How artificial are these “unifying principles”? Dried durum wheat pasta is now one of Europes most common foods. Vast amounts of it are consumed in the UK. Is it likely ever to be defined as part of “British Cuisine”? My boys demand “Macaroni Cheese” on a daily basis (they don’t get it on a daily basis), I can trace it in English texts until at least the mid-18th century. However, I have never seen it mentioned as being part of “British Cuisine”. Are national cuisines just self delusion? Maybe it isn’t important, but I have seen “National Cuisines” being used as a political tool enough times to consider that being able to rationally define “why we eat the food that we do” to be one of the most important things that food historians can do.
Adam, lots to think about here. I tend to agree about regional (or in the case of Latin America) post colonial cuisines coming first. In the nineteenth century, as central national governments tried to impose new notions of unifying nationhood, with uniform languages, sometimes religions, and other cultural manifestations, it was only natural that areas that did not share these visions would resist, perhaps by claiming their own cuisines, or perhaps by other means, often including violence. There are few nations that don’t have a civil war somewhere in their past.
National cuisines are frequently arbitrary. They are shaped by all kinds of forces many of them external to the nation, such as tourism. I don’t think there is one mechanism but lots depending on the needs/economic status/history of the nation. The French gastronomic meal is a joke. And they are certainly not what the people of the nation eat as your macaroni and cheese example shows.