Creating a Common Table in Twentieth-Century Argentina: Doña Petrona, Women, and Food

1 The Elevation of Cooking in Turn-of-the-Century Argentina

23 chapter one the elevation of cooking in turn-of-the-century argentina Pastelitos de Dulce (Quince-Filled Pastries) Place on the table,in the form of a crown,500 grams of flour;in the middle put 100 grams of butter,one cup of water,a pinch of salt and form a dough that is neither too hard nor too soft; smooth it out and allow it to rest for a moment. Then stretch it, leaving it at the thickness of one finger, spread it with 50 grams of soft butter, sprinkle flour on it and fold it in half; spread it with butter again and fold it so that it is folded in four; stretch it with the rolling pin and cut it into very thin strips that are six centimeters wide; cut this, forming squares, put a little bit of melted quince paste, wet the borders with water, cover it with another square and form the pasteles . Fry them in warm lard at first and hot lard after, submerging them frequently with a spoon. Prepare a syrup: Put in a pan 400 grams of refined sugar, cover it with water, add a small bar of vanilla and let it boil for a few minutes; dip the pastelitos in the syrup and dust them with sprinkles. It is necessary to allow them to come to a boil in the syrup. The quince paste has to be melted over heat.1 As a child, Petrona Carrizo prepared pastelitos de dulce. As this 1934 recipe in the first edition of her cookbook attests, there were many steps. First the cook mixed, kneaded, and smoothed the dough. Then she covered it with butter. After that she folded the dough a couple of times to give the pastry layers. Then she cut the dough into squares, at which point she dabbed some melted quince paste in between two squares and sealed the edges. The next step was to fry the pastelitos in a pot of increasingly hot lard. And the final steps called for making a simple syrup and then dunking the fried pastry into it and covering the pastelitos with sprinkles. Despite her childhood expertise at preparing this tasty and complicated treat, Petrona did not publicly describe it as the start of her cooking career. In numerous interviews with the media, she proudly mentioned that she 24 Cooking in Turn-of-the-Century Argentina began her culinary career in the late 1920s as an ecónoma (corporate home economist) for the English gas company La Compañía Primitiva de Gas and trained as a student at the French culinary institute Le Cordon Bleu around the same time. In turn, she seemed to revel in declaring that she never learned to cook as a child or young woman. Describing her reluctance to enter the kitchen, she remarked, “My mother owned the best boardinghouse [pensión] in Santiago del Estero and she called me [into the kitchen] many times to watch how she cooked, but I didn’t pay attention; it was not interesting to me.”2 She repeatedly told reporters, “Not even a lasso could get me into the kitchen.”3 Notwithstanding her public disavowal, Petrona did enter the kitchen, according to her niece, Olga, and her unpublished memoirs. Apparently Petrona’s mother cajoled her daughter into making pastelitos. Petrona’s quince-filled pastries “opened up like a flower,” Olga recalled, “even though she did not like to make them and cried when forced to do so.”4 Her expertise at making these complicated and tasty criollo treats replicated the experience of many generations of women across Argentina, especially in the northwestern provinces, where they were (and still are) a popular treat.5 This familiarity is evident in Petrona C. de Gandulfo’s recipe—the cook must know how to make pastry dough that is “neither too hard nor too soft.” At the same time, she suggested that even experienced cooks would benefit from more precise, modern measurements in specifying, for example, the exact number of centimeters for each strip of dough. What can we learn from this story about a girl who did not like to cook and ended up pursuing a cooking career? And why was she so eager to avoid the kitchen in the first place? As we shall see, Petrona’s journey from despairingly making pastelitos in Santiago del Estero to proudly leading cooking classes for Primitiva in Buenos Aires is a story that speaks to more...