The culinary memory of Mexico

The writing of recipe books is a literary genre whose significance for the study of thought and its contexts has not been fully valued.

As historical sources, cookbooks were long cataloged as curiosities or sources of second or third importance, perhaps by the fact that, at first glance, their contents respond only to some part of everyday life and are not related to heroes, or notable battles or eras.

This has been a mistake, because a more pressing observation of these documents shows that their pages reveal, in one way or another, the uses, customs and tasks of several actors and moments of history.

In the recipes of a cookbook there are technical details such as the production methods of a kitchen, as well as knowledge related to seasoning, intangible heritage that, impossible to transcribe textually, is recognized as a product of knowledge, sensitivity and tradition.

The recipe books perpetuate the food memory on witnessing the inclusion or abandonment of practices and ingredients and on accounting for changes in fashion and the taste perception of a human group.

In cookbooks, endearing emotional windows to the past, the life and culture of former Mexicans are naturally trapped in their quest to establish their class consciousness and national identity.

Some handwritten and others printed, a number of Mexican recipe books from the past are still with us now.

They originated in households privileged by abundance and in convent kitchens inhabited by women and men.

Some were brought to the press by anonymous compilers, more than others we know more their author and their intentions.

The State of Mexico and likewise the capital of the country passed on to us early testimonies of food as a living component of the national.

Oaxaca, in a tradition shared by several federal entities of the central region of the Republic, did not lag behind.

However, in general it can be said that the country's history, represented in surviving recipe books and cookbooks, is rich in two senses: by possessing the value of the distinctively old and by honoring the richness—translated as pleasure—of its flavors and meanings.

We also find in them the origin of iconic dishes such as manchamanteles (black mole) stew.

These are documents that are useful in bringing us closer to proud identity processes of a micro-nationalist nature, such as the case of Puebla, a state that became the main supplier of printed culinary materials throughout the 19th century and thanks to this gave visibility to its regional cuisine, elevating it in no small number of cases to the altars of national gastronomy, as was the case with the mole poblano (Puebla mole) and chiles in nogada (chilis in walnut salsa).

Although still under study, several manuscripts survived from near-independence times that gave away a powerful pride in local ingredients and procedures.