Blog Post 3

In the Encarnacion’s reading she talks about how the cookbook is much more than just a book full of recipes, but a book full of culture and cuisine. The book is not limited to one cuisine but multiple including: Hispanic, French and Italian. She added recipes from all these cuisines and sometimes added her own interpretations. The cookbook was not traditional, she did not use measurements or give much indication of the type of ingredients, she left the instructions vague. She wrote this cookbook as a testimony to the lost culture of Hispanic cuisine. During the time that she wrote the book when other women her age were getting married, but she went a different route. “So that you may always remember the value of a woman’s work, study this volume’s contents.” She began her cookbook dedicated to her nieces so they would know some of the traditional recipes from Mexico, the book was designed to save her culture for her nieces. Since many of the women in that time were getting married, making most of the book authors men. There were very few Spanish cookbooks, when she printed hers in the US, there were only two other Spanish cookbooks. Her education exposed her to a significant amount of cooking literature which helped her shape the cookbook. She was comfortable cooking in many styles, and never confined herself to one cuisine. She created traditional dishes but had unexpected interpretations because her cuisine was more Mexican, she had to make do with the local ingredients in California since they were different than what she was used to.