Reading and Writing Juana Manuela Gorriti's Cocina ecléctica: Modeling Multiplicity in Nineteenth-Century Domestic Narrative

Pues que las letras se permiten el solaz de bajar a la cocina, ¿por qué no el magisterio, cuya misión es, también, enseñar lo bueno?

ENRIQUETA LUND, "Helado de canela" Cocina ecléctica

In 1890, two years before her death, the celebrated Argentine writer Juana Manuela Gorriti (1818-1892) hastened to publish her most recent project, a recipe book compiled from contributors across Latin America and overseas. The hurry was due to whispers that the Spanish Countess Emilia Pardo Bazán had heard of Gorriti's project and was well on her way to publishing a collection of regional Spanish recipes; Gorriti's publisher, Félix Lajoune (Buenos Aires), was adamant about establishing the precedence of Gorriti's volume (Cartas 84).¹

Thus Cocina ecléctica was published as a collection of Hispanic recipes gleaned from communities across several continents. All of the contributors are women—with one exception—and the recipes vary widely in style.² Like most recipes books, Cocina is arranged by type, with all soups together in one section, all meats in another, and so on. And although cooking figures prominently in some of Gorriti's fiction (Iriarte and Torre, "La mesa" 46), she does not contribute any recipes to Cocina, nor does she intrude as a narrative voice despite the fact that her letters from the period document extensive work on the project (Cartas 84, 94).³ In her role as editor Gorriti exhibits a light hand in her presentation of the recipes: she does not attempt to create a coherent narrative thread throughout the collection, nor does she comment upon or correct the texts in any perceptible way.⁴ Her influence is most directly felt as an inspiration and catalyst for narrative, and her non-intervention allows the reader to leaf, unguided, through Cocina's offerings, choosing her own path. Gorriti's authority as an implicit interlocutor is omnipresent throughout the collection, however, and her contributors often reference their friendship and pass on messages to her; as such, the collection represents an archeology of the exiled writer's many travels and friendships, literary and otherwise. In stark contrast with her looming, unspoken presence throughout the pages of the Cocina, Gorriti's only textual contributions to the volume are section headings and footnotes (small corrections and emendations) as well as a somewhat enigmatic preface.

Gorriti's short prologue opens the Cocina ecléctica with the declaration, "El hogar es el santuario doméstico; su ara es el fogón; su sacerdotisa y guardián natural, la mujer" (25).⁵ Gorriti announces that the book was inspired by the demise of her own marriage, since she had thrown herself into intellectual endeavors instead of the kitchen (25), and goes on to lament her own lack of culinary interest, recounting ancient advice on retaining a husband: "Asidlo por la boca" (25). Gorriti exclaims, "Yo ¡ay! nunca pensé en tamaña verdad" (25). She writes that throughout her life her attention was engaged by books written by illustrious male authors, almost all of whom were supported by "mujeres hacendosas y abnegadas que los mimaron, y fortificaron su mente con suculentos bocados, fruto de la ciencia más conveniente a la mujer" (25). Now husbandless, Gorriti ends her prologue with a seeming apology and describes how her "lesson learned" has taken the form of this recipe book: "Mis amigas, a quienes, arrepentida, me confesaba, no admitieron mi mea culpa, sino a condición de hacerlo público en un libro" (25).

Whatever the inspiration for this recipe collection—whether it was conceived as a gesture aimed at the benevolent education of her sisters in letters (Lojo 15), as a demonstration of American cultural diversity (Ferreira 159) or even as a fundraising venture by an intellectually resourceful author who found herself in financial straits (Scott 311)—the apparent repentance and warning expressed in this prologue contrast vividly with the person and work of Juana Manuela Gorriti.⁶ Although her domestic abilities and their possible detrimental effects on her tempestuous marriage to Bolivian...