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Fundamentals · Spanish cookbooks

Carmen de Burgos, La cocina moderna (ca. 1918)

One of Spain's leading feminist writers presented cooking as a learned, professional skill for modern women, in a popular series of household manuals.

Carmen de Burgos Seguí, "Colombine" (1867–1932), is considered Spain's first professional woman journalist. The title page credits her with the prólogo y arreglo (prologue and arrangement) and presents her as the cookery teacher at Madrid's Escuela de Artes e Industrias. The BNE catalogues it as Valencia: Prometeo, [ca. 1918], 245 pages; one scholarly source gives 1906, so the date is uncertain. Maxtor published a facsimile in 2010.

The facts come from the cited sources and from the book's own text, read from the BNE scan. Page numbers are the printed pages (PDF page = printed page + 6); the carta-prólogo is paged in roman numerals, and unnumbered pages are given by their PDF page. The six themes, the three concepts under each, and their order are the agent's own placement. "Own wording" marks a definition that no page of the book supports.

Key ideas

  • What the book is. An arrangement with a prologue, not a book she is credited with writing alone. Which earlier text she adapted, and whether it was a translation, is not established.
  • Structure. The introduction traces the history of feasting and banqueting in the West. The índice, "ordenado por materias", runs from cocidos, caldos, sopas, purés and salsas through arroz, carne, aves, pescados and huevos to pastelería, repostería, confitería, helados and licores, ending with tisanas and remedies for burns. Foreign dishes such as kouscoussou, risotto, ravioli, plum-cake and rosbif sit among the Spanish ones.
  • Audience. Middle-class women, including newly literate readers, and the cocineras they employed; one of her title pages speaks to señoras who want to take part in the kitchen.
  • Philosophy (her general outlook across her cookbooks). The kitchen is a "laboratorio doméstico" aimed at comfort, health and economy, and cooking, like writing, is learned rather than innate to one sex. Scholars tie this to her Krausist-influenced feminist reform.
  • Foreign influence. Her cookbooks place recipes from more than 20 countries, including French soups, beside Spanish dishes without comment, unlike Pardo Bazán's cuisine-as-nation approach. She also wrote a magazine history of French cooks from Vatel to Brillat-Savarin (1925).
  • Sister manuals. La cocina práctica (Sempere, [1920?], 392 p.), ¿Quiere usted comer bien? (Sopena, 412 p., 12 colour plates) and Nueva cocina práctica (1925), alongside the household guide La mujer en el hogar ([1909?]).
  • Legacy. Grouped in the press with Pardo Bazán and Dionisio Pérez as champions of national cuisine and cookery education; criticised by contemporaries, then largely overlooked under Franco.

Body of knowledge

Book

La cocina moderna

Burgos (prólogo y arreglo) · Valencia: Prometeo, ca. 1918

A one-volume household cookbook in Prometeo's cheap series, arranged and prefaced by Carmen de Burgos. It opens with a carta-prólogo and four short essays (Importancia del arte culinario, La cocina, El comedor, De los alimentos) and then gives recipes ordered by kind of dish, from cocidos to tisanas.

Illustrative example The title page promises "más de 800 recetas de guisos", the main regional dishes, "los clásicos del extranjero", pastry, preserves, notions of hygiene, and how to carve, set the table and clean the kitchen (title page, PDF 9).

Theme1

1 Book and editions

BNE catalogue · BNE bibliography · title page and índice

The book is an arrangement with a prologue, not a book she is credited with writing alone. Which earlier text she adapted, and whether it was a translation, is not established. The BNE catalogues it as Valencia: Prometeo, [ca. 1918], 245 pages; one scholarly source gives 1906, so the date is uncertain. Maxtor published a facsimile in 2010.

The introduction traces the history of feasting and banqueting in the West. The índice, "ordenado por materias", runs from cocidos, caldos, sopas, purés and salsas through arroz, carne, aves, pescados and huevos to pastelería, repostería, confitería, helados and licores, ending with tisanas and remedies for burns.

Illustrative example The índice opens with the front matter: carta-prólogo p. V, Importancia del arte culinario p. 7, La cocina p. 13, El comedor p. 17, De los alimentos p. 20, and then Cocidos from p. 26 (índice, PDF 253).

Concept1.1

1.1 Prólogo y arreglo

title page (PDF 9) · carta-prólogo, pp. V–VI

Prólogo y arreglo means "prologue and arrangement": Burgos writes the preface and puts the recipe text in order, but the title page does not call her its author. The carta-prólogo presents the book as a commission from the publisher.

Illustrative example The carta-prólogo is addressed to "Sr. D. Francisco Sempere" and ends with her accepting "el encargo de arreglar el libro de cocina" he asked for (pp. V–VI).

Concept1.2

1.2 Prometeo, ca. 1918, 245 p.

BNE catalogue · cover and title page (PDF 5, 9)

The edition read here: Valencia, Prometeo, Sociedad Editorial, undated and catalogued by the BNE as ca. 1918, 245 pages. It is a cheap volume in the publisher's series of household books.

Illustrative example The printed cover gives the publisher's address, Germanías 33, Valencia, and the price, "1'25 pesetas" (cover, PDF 5).

Concept1.3

1.3 Maxtor facsimile, 2010

Lecturalia · own wording

A 2010 facsimile reprint by Maxtor, a publisher of reprints of old books, which makes the book available again without the original scan.

Illustrative example A facsimile reproduces pages like the original title page, with its decorative border, the Prometeo imprint and the promise of more than 800 recipes (title page, PDF 9).

Theme2

2 Author authority

Wikipedia (es) · Fernández Poyatos and Aguirregoitia 2017 · title page

Carmen de Burgos Seguí, "Colombine" (1867–1932), is considered Spain's first professional woman journalist. The title page presents her as the cookery teacher at Madrid's Escuela de Artes e Industrias. In the press she was grouped with Pardo Bazán and Dionisio Pérez as a champion of national cuisine and cookery education; she was criticised by contemporaries, then largely overlooked under Franco.

Illustrative example The title page reads "Profesora de esta asignatura en la Escuela de Artes é Industrias de Madrid": her authority is that of a teacher of the subject (title page, PDF 9).

Concept2.1

2.1 Colombine, journalist

Wikipedia (es) · carta-prólogo, p. V

"Colombine" is the pen name under which Burgos wrote for the press; the cover prints it under her name. Her standing as a professional writer is the first credential the book offers.

Illustrative example In the carta-prólogo she writes that she believes and practises that a woman "puede ser periodista, autor y hasta artista" without neglecting the small details of the home (p. V).

Concept2.2

2.2 Escuela de Artes e Industrias

title page (PDF 9) · Importancia del arte culinario, p. 13

The Madrid school where Burgos taught the cookery class. The book presents the class as the Spanish state's first step towards cookery teaching, after the cooking schools of other countries.

Illustrative example The opening essay says the state founded "la clase de Economía y Arte culinario" at the Escuela de Artes é Industrias de Madrid, on the initiative of the minister Amalio Jimeno (p. 13).

Concept2.3

2.3 Feminist reformer

Fernández Poyatos and Aguirregoitia 2017 · carta-prólogo, p. VI

Burgos argued for women's education and public work, and scholars tie her cookery writing to a Krausist-influenced feminist reform. In this book the reform is cautious: public life for women, with the household still in their charge.

Illustrative example "¡Yo no me opongo á que vayan al foro y al Parlamento... después de haber dispuesto la cocina en su casa!" (carta-prólogo, p. VI).

Theme3

3 Audience

Sharp · Neo2 · carta-prólogo and title page

Middle-class women, including newly literate readers, and the cocineras they employed; one of her title pages speaks to señoras who want to take part in the kitchen.

Illustrative example The title page offers "cuanto pueda interesar á una buena dueña de casa para su dirección": the reader runs the house and directs its kitchen (title page, PDF 9).

Concept3.1

3.1 Middle-class señoras

Sharp · carta-prólogo, p. VI

The señora or dueña de casa who may not cook every day but must know enough to direct the kitchen and the table. The book teaches her what to order and how to judge it.

Illustrative example Ladies of good position who do not handle "el soplillo y el mortero" still know how to set up a kitchen and have the finest dishes made; "Nunca una señora que no sepa dirigir podrá estar bien servida" (p. VI).

Concept3.2

3.2 Hired cocineras

Sharp · El comedor, p. 18

The paid cooks and servants of a middle-class house. They are a second readership: the recipes and the rules of service are instructions the señora passes on, or that a cook reads herself.

Illustrative example The essay on the dining room recommends "la destreza de los servidores": warm plates and cutlery in winter, plates removed in time, nothing handed over except on a plate (pp. 18–19).

Concept3.3

3.3 Newly literate women

Neo2 · El comedor, p. 20

Women who had recently learned to read, for whom a cheap manual in plain prose was a first practical book. The book writes for lectoras, women readers, and gives each recipe as a short paragraph with no separate ingredient list.

Illustrative example For how to serve each special dish, "las lectoras las encontrarán al final de las fórmulas que lo reclamen" (p. 20).

Theme4

4 Philosophy

Fernández Poyatos and Aguirregoitia 2017 · La cocina, p. 13

Her general outlook across her cookbooks: the kitchen is a "laboratorio doméstico" aimed at comfort, health and economy, and cooking, like writing, is learned rather than innate to one sex. Scholars tie this to her Krausist-influenced feminist reform.

Illustrative example The carta-prólogo says she wants to show "que el arte de la cocina es tan noble como necesario" (p. VI).

Concept4.1

4.1 Kitchen as laboratory

La cocina, pp. 13–17

The laboratorio doméstico: the kitchen as a workroom run with order, light, air and the right equipment, like a laboratory. The essay La cocina lists the tools a well set-up kitchen needs and warns which metals are unsafe.

Illustrative example "La cocina es el laboratorio doméstico donde se preparan los alimentos" (p. 13); the essay goes on to warn against copper and zinc and against glazed earthenware, whose glaze is made with lead oxide (pp. 15–16).

Concept4.2

4.2 Comfort, health, economy

La cocina, p. 13 · De los alimentos, pp. 20–25

The three aims the book sets for the kitchen: comodidad, salubridad and economía. Health gets its own essay, De los alimentos, on what foods contain and how long they take to digest.

Illustrative example De los alimentos gives digestion times, from rice in one hour to salted meat in five and a half, and ends: "El gran secreto para preparar los alimentos consiste en hacerlos digestibles sin privarlos de sus jugos" (pp. 22, 25).

Concept4.3

4.3 Cooking is a learned skill

Fernández Poyatos and Aguirregoitia 2017 · Importancia del arte culinario, pp. 12–13

Cooking is a skill taught and learned, like writing, not a gift of one sex. The opening essay backs this with cookery schools abroad and with royal women who cook.

Illustrative example In England, Switzerland, Belgium and Scandinavia girls in public schools take cookery courses, and a London school on Buckingham Palace Road gives teaching diplomas whose holders start on 1,800 pesetas (p. 12).

Theme5

5 Foreign influence

Sharp · Neo2 · índice

Her cookbooks place recipes from more than 20 countries, including French soups, beside Spanish dishes without comment, unlike Pardo Bazán's cuisine-as-nation approach. Foreign dishes such as kouscoussou, risotto, ravioli, plum-cake and rosbif sit among the Spanish ones. She also wrote a magazine history of French cooks from Vatel to Brillat-Savarin (1925).

Illustrative example In the rice chapter, Risotto á la milanesa (p. 66) comes two pages before Arroz de paella á la valenciana (pp. 68–69).

Concept5.1

5.1 Recipes from 20+ countries

Sharp · índice, PDF 253–263

Dishes from many countries, named in their own languages and filed by kind of dish with the Spanish ones, not in a separate foreign chapter.

Illustrative example The índice lists Cocido ruso (Tchi) p. 28, Puré austriaco (borchok) p. 46, Kouscoussou (alcuzcuz turco) p. 61, Bocadillos de carne á la polaca (kluskis) p. 85, Puchwheat-cakes (dulce á la americana) p. 203 and Plum-cake p. 204.

Concept5.2

5.2 French soups, unmarked

Sharp · índice and recipe, p. 38

French dishes enter the book under Spanish names, mostly with no note of origin, so that French cooking reads as part of ordinary good cooking.

Illustrative example Sopa á la Regencia, a steamed custard of pounded chicken breast and twelve egg yolks served in broth, appears among the soups with no word on where it comes from (p. 38). Only Caldo Bouillon is flagged "(francés)" (p. 31).

Concept5.3

5.3 History of French cooks

Importancia del arte culinario, pp. 9–11 · Neo2

The story of French cooking told through its famous cooks and patrons, which Burgos uses to show that cooking is a noble art. She told it again in a 1925 magazine history, from Vatel to Brillat-Savarin.

Illustrative example The opening essay credits Richelieu with mayonnaise, recalls Mme de Sévigné on Vatel, "el antecesor de Careme", and concludes "La cocina francesa fué un Napoleón que conquistó el mundo" (p. 11).

Theme6

6 Sister manuals

BNE bibliography · Obras de la misma autora (PDF 8)

Her other cookbooks: La cocina práctica (Sempere, [1920?], 392 p.), ¿Quiere usted comer bien? (Sopena, 412 p., 12 colour plates) and Nueva cocina práctica (1925), alongside the household guide La mujer en el hogar ([1909?]).

Illustrative example The book sends readers to a sister manual for table manners: "Para arreglo del comedor y reglas de urbanidad y elegancia, véase el Arte de saber vivir, publicado por esta Casa Editorial" (p. 17, note).

Concept6.1

6.1 La cocina práctica, 1920?

BNE bibliography · own wording

A longer cookbook by Burgos, published by Sempere and dated [1920?] by the BNE, at 392 pages. Nueva cocina práctica followed in 1925.

Illustrative example The list of her works printed in this book, "Obras de la misma autora", does not include it among the Prometeo arreglos (PDF 8).

Concept6.2

6.2 ¿Quiere usted comer bien?

BNE bibliography · own wording

Her cookbook for the publisher Sopena: 412 pages with 12 colour plates, a larger and more illustrated book than this one.

Illustrative example Set against it, La cocina moderna is a small volume sold for "1'25 pesetas" (cover, PDF 5).

Concept6.3

6.3 La mujer en el hogar

BNE bibliography · Obras de la misma autora (PDF 8)

Her household guide, dated [1909?] by the BNE, one of a run of arreglos for women that Prometeo sold at the same price as the cookbook.

Illustrative example "Obras de la misma autora" lists under Arreglos: Modelos de cartas, La mujer en el hogar, Salud y Belleza, Arte de saber vivir, Vademécum femenino and others, each at 1'25 pesetas (PDF 8).

Concept map

The book at the centre, its six themes as ring 1 and three concepts under each as ring 2. The themes, the concepts and their order are the agent's own placement; the facts on each come from the sources and pages given in the body of knowledge.

La cocina moderna, themes and concepts Mindmap with the book La cocina moderna at the centre, six themes as ring 1 (book and editions, author authority, audience, philosophy, foreign influence, sister manuals) and three concepts for each theme as ring 2. BOOK La cocina modernaBurgos · ca. 1918 THEME Book and editionsan arrangement, not authorship Prólogo y arreglo Prometeo, ca. 1918, 245 p. Maxtor facsimile, 2010 THEME Author authorityjournalist and teacher Colombine, journalist Escuela de Artes e Industrias Feminist reformer THEME Audiencewomen who run houses Middle-class señoras Hired cocineras Newly literate women THEME Philosophythe laboratorio doméstico Kitchen as laboratory Comfort, health, economy Cooking is a learned skill THEME Foreign influencedishes from abroad Recipes from 20+ countries French soups, unmarked History of French cooks THEME Sister manualsa series of arreglos La cocina práctica, 1920? ¿Quiere usted comer bien? La mujer en el hogar RING 1themes RING 2concepts CENTREthe book LEGEND The book Theme, with its three concepts (ring 2)

Term tree

The same map as a tree. Each node shows its level, its relation to its parent and its source or page.

  • BOOKLa cocina modernaBurgos (prólogo y arreglo) · Prometeo, ca. 1918
    • THEMEpart ofBook and editionsBNE catalogue · title page and índice
      • CONCEPTpart ofPrólogo y arreglotitle page (PDF 9) · pp. V–VI
      • CONCEPTpart ofPrometeo, ca. 1918, 245 p.BNE catalogue · cover (PDF 5)
      • CONCEPTpart ofMaxtor facsimile, 2010Lecturalia · own wording
    • THEMEpart ofAuthor authorityWikipedia (es) · title page (PDF 9)
      • CONCEPTpart ofColombine, journalistcarta-prólogo, p. V
      • CONCEPTpart ofEscuela de Artes e Industriastitle page (PDF 9) · p. 13
      • CONCEPTpart ofFeminist reformerFernández Poyatos and Aguirregoitia 2017 · p. VI
    • THEMEpart ofAudienceSharp · Neo2 · title page (PDF 9)
      • CONCEPTpart ofMiddle-class señorascarta-prólogo, p. VI
      • CONCEPTpart ofHired cocinerasEl comedor, pp. 18–19
      • CONCEPTpart ofNewly literate womenNeo2 · p. 20
    • THEMEpart ofPhilosophyFernández Poyatos and Aguirregoitia 2017 · p. 13
      • CONCEPTpart ofKitchen as laboratoryLa cocina, pp. 13–17
      • CONCEPTpart ofComfort, health, economypp. 13, 20–25
      • CONCEPTpart ofCooking is a learned skillImportancia del arte culinario, pp. 12–13
    • THEMEpart ofForeign influenceSharp · Neo2 · índice
      • CONCEPTpart ofRecipes from 20+ countriesíndice, PDF 253–263
      • CONCEPTpart ofFrench soups, unmarkedpp. 31, 38
      • CONCEPTpart ofHistory of French cookspp. 9–11 · Neo2
    • THEMEpart ofSister manualsBNE bibliography · PDF 8
      • CONCEPTpart ofLa cocina práctica, 1920?BNE bibliography · own wording
      • CONCEPTpart of¿Quiere usted comer bien?BNE bibliography · own wording
      • CONCEPTpart ofLa mujer en el hogarBNE bibliography · PDF 8

Sources

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