Cooking up the Nation: Spanish Culinary Texts and Culinary Nationalization in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century by Lara Anderson (review)

As Food Studies continues to grow, focus on Spain has not grown accordingly. Lara Anderson’s monograph proves to be an exemplary addition to English language production and offers unique insight into a new facet of nationalism studies within Spain. Analyzing the nationalist discourses found in cookbooks and other gastronomic treatises, Anderson paints a chronological evolution of culinary nationalism in Spain, tracing the top-hits of the Spanish culinary world.

Referencing how each author defines Spanish cuisine and their desire to create a consolidated national cuisine, Anderson begins by writing a history of culinary landscapes existing in Spain during the late nineteenth century. Her first chapter’s focus on Spanish-French culinary relations and the multi-regional nature of the Spanish foodscape emphasize the difficulty that each author faced. Separated linguistically and gastronomically, Anderson describes the effort to create a Spanish national cuisine by incorporating regional differences with clarity, raising arguments form current nationalism studies as well as using Frances as a frame of reference in the development of a European national cuisine. Although she notes many theorists do not accept the concept of a national cuisine, Anderson’s thesis examines the ways in which each culinary author desired to create national sentiment within Spanish gastronomy.

Engaging the epistolary debate between Dr. Thebussem and the King’s Chef, Anderson introduces and explains the two central arguments that preoccupy Spanish gastronomic nationalists: the regional/national dichotomy and the problem of French hegemony. Anderson proposes these two gastronomes and their work, La mesa moderna, as the first great gastronomic text in Spain. Their “unity in diversity” and emphasis on using Spanish products provide the “blueprint for future generations of Spanish culinary writers” (68).

Considering the bestseller status of El practicón, the author correctly questions the motives of Ángel Muro’s entrance into culinary nationalism debate. Muro’s insistence on French superiority, however, created a project that was neither Spanish nor French. Nonetheless, Anderson praises his work in rejecting class boundaries and furthering the dialogue of what it meant to cook Spanish.

Treating Emilia Pardo Bazán as both a cookbook author and a novelist, Anderson links the author’s genre tendencies to her culinary outlook. Strictly nationalist, Pardo Bazán incorporates regional fare into her gastronomic endeavors much in the same way as she portrays daily life in her novel Los pazos de Ulloa, critiquing Spanish society and French hegemony while offering her view of what a unified and civilized Spanish cuisine and culture should be. Anderson breaks down the dichotomy between French civilized cooking and Spanish carnality reminding the reader that even the Countess preferred certain French dishes and habits to her native Spanish customs.

Dionisio Pérez, as his Post-Thebussem nom de plume suggests, forwards the previous Thebussem’s ideas further. Interestingly, Anderson points out that Pérez’s project was patronized by the state and part of a much larger tourism campaign. Nonetheless, he fervently believed in a national cuisine accepting regional influences as creating a larger national foodscape. Within the context of Primo de Rivera’s modernization plans, Anderson analyzes how Post-Thebussem created a nationalist discourse extolling the modern and historical wonders of Spanish agriculture while also combating and correcting erroneous superstitions and preconceptions resulting from the Black Legend.

In the end, Anderson’s book is a well-conceived exploration into how each author dealt with the national/regional tension while also promoting Spanish cuisine in the face of French hegemony. Her work is a major contribution for Spanish Food Studies and an interesting new perspective into Spanish nationalism studies.