Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-m42fx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T00:18:56.188Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fine Dining: Race in Prerevolution Cuban Cookbooks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Christine Folch
Christine Folch*
Affiliation:
City University of New York Graduate Center
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This article treats pre-1959 Cuban cookbooks as interlocutors to see how the struggle to define Cuba's racial and national body can be found in efforts to characterize what goes into that body by setting a close textual analysis of the books alongside an account of their historical context. In examining recipes, visuals, and nonrecipe prose, this article explores how later authors attempt to represent Cuba as white and European by ignoring and trivializing the culinary contributions of nonwhite Cubans and particularly Afro-Cubans, a move that encounters resistance in the ongoing persistence and popularity of Afro-Cuban cuisine. As an interface between political economic processes and personal choice, the author argues that cookbooks act as a site for assertions of racial and national identity in which some authors embarked on a racial project to civilize the consumer by civilizing cuisine via the cookbook, thus illustrating social fissures, tensions, and contradictions that climaxed in the 1959 revolution.

Resumo

Resumo

Este artículo considera libros de cocina publicados antes de la Revolución Cubana para ver cómo la lucha para definir el cuerpo racial y nacional de Cuba se realiza en el esfuerzo de definir la comida que entra en aquel cuerpo, lo que se intenta mediante un estricto análisis textual sobre dichos libros y su contextualización histórica. Al analizar recetas, imágenes y texto, vemos que algunos autores señalan a Cuba como blanca y europea, ignorando y trivializando las contribuciones culinarias de afrocubanos, algo que resulta desmentido por la evidente popularidad y persistencia de la comida afrocubana. En la intersección de procesos político-económicos y elecciones personales, la autora propone que los libros de cocina funcionan como el espacio donde se instalan afirmaciones de identidades raciales y nacionales, con el objeto de occidentalizar al consumidor a través de civilizar la cocina por medio de el libro de cocina. Todo ello ilustra las trizaduras, tensiones y contradicciones sociales que condujeron a la revolución de 1959.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , 2008 , pp. 205 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by the University of Texas Press

References

Actividades Latino Americanas 1964 Recetas de antaño. Miami: Duplex Paper Products of Miami.Google Scholar
Alfonso y Rodríguez, Dolores 1943 La cocina y el hogar, 4th ed. Havana: Cultural S.A.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict 1991 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Anglo-American Havana Directory of Cuba 1960 “Cuban Information Archives, Document 0216” (accessed May 2005 at http://cuban-exile.com/doc_201-225/doc0216.html).Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun 1988 “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 (1): 3–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baralt, Blanche Zacharie 1931 Gastronomic Secrets of the Tropics, with an Appendix on Cuban Drinks. Havana: Editorial Hermes.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cabrisas, Juan 1995 [1858] Nuevo manual de la cocinera catalana y cubana (facsimile). Barcelona: Editorial Planeta, S.A.Google Scholar
Cárdenas Alpízar, Bartolo 1994 Repostería cubana. Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente.Google Scholar
Choo, Simon 2004 “Eating Satay Babi: Sensory Perception of Transnational Movement.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 25 (3): 203–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corrigan, Philip, and Sayer, Derek 1985 The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution. New York: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Crespo y Setien, Berta 1926 El arte de bien guisar; o, La cocina practica en Cuba. Manual practico de cocina y resposteria con 1,024 recetas de facil ejecución en Cuba. Havana: Librería Cervantes. Dawdy, Shannon LeeGoogle Scholar
Crespo y Setien, Berta 2002 “La Comida Mambisa: Food, Farming, and Cuban Identity, 1839–1999.” New West Indian Guide 76 (1–2): 47–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De la Fuente, Alejandro 2001 A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in 20th Century Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Derby, Lauren 1998 “Gringo Chickens with Worms: Food and Nationalism in the Dominican Republic.” In Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations, edited by Joseph, Gilbert M., LeGrand, Catherine C., and Salvatore, Ricardo D., 451–493. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
González del Valle, Ambrosio 1933 La comida diaria. Havana: Cultural S.A.Google Scholar
Guthman, Julie, and DuPuis, Melanie 2006 “Embodying Neoliberalism: Economy, Culture, and the Politics of Fat.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24:427–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Marvin 1985 Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Helg, Aline 1995 Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886–1912. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Higman, Barry W. 1998 “Cookbooks and Caribbean Cultural Identity: An English-Language Hors D'oeuvre.” New West Indian Guide 72 (1–2): 77–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaFray, Joyce 1994 ¡Cuba Cocina! The Tantalizing World of Cuban Cooking—Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. New York: Hearst Books.Google Scholar
Langarika, Enrique 1996 [1862] El cocinero de los enfermos, convalecientes y desganados; Manual de cocina cubana (facsimile). Madrid: Editorial Betania.Google Scholar
Las Madrinas de las Salas (Costales) y (San Martín) del Hospital Universitario (General Calixto García) 1999 [1956] ¿Gusta, usted? ¿Cómo cocinan los cubanos? Lo mejor y lo clásico de la cocina cubana (facsimile). Miami: Ediciones Universal.Google Scholar
Legran, José P. 2004 [1857] Nuevo manual del cocinero cubano y español con un tratado de dulcería, pastelería y botillería al estilo de Cuba (facsimile). Madrid: Agualarga Editores.Google Scholar
Lindgren, Glenn M., Musibay, Raul, and Castillo, Jorge 2004 Three Guys from Miami Cook Cuban. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith Publisher.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney W. 1961 “Review of Stanley M. Elkin's Slavery.” American Anthropologist 63 (3): 579–587.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mintz, Sidney W. 1996 Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
O' Higgins, Maria Josefa Lluria de 1994 A Taste of Old Cuba. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Pérez, Lisandro 1984 “The Political Contexts of Cuban Population Censuses, 1899–1981.” Latin American Research Review 19 (2): 143–161.Google Scholar
Pérez, Louis A. 1995 Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Raichlen, Steven 1998 Steven Raichlen's Healthy Latin Cooking: 200 Sizzling Recipes from Mexico, Cuba, Caribbean, Brazil, and Beyond. Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books.Google Scholar
Reyes, Gavilán y Moenck, Maria A. 1949 Delicias de la mesa; manual de cocina y resposteria, 11th ed. Havana: Cultural S.A.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall 1994 “Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacific Sector of ‘the World System.‘” In Culture, Power, History, edited by Dirks, Nicholas B., Eley, Geoff, and Ortner, Sherry B., 412–457. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sevigne, Marquesa de 1946 El arte de la buena mesa. Contiene las reglas modernas para el servicio de la mesa, su presentación... Havana: La Habana.Google Scholar
Triay, José E. 1903 Nuevo manual del cocinero criollo. Havana: La moderna poesía.Google Scholar
Wilk, Richard 2006 Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists. New York: Berg Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Women of Minas de Matahambre, Cuba 1931 Matahambre Dishes as Used in 1930. Springfield, MA: F.A. Bassette Co. Printers.Google Scholar