Ranchos - El Cocinero Español, "The Spanish Cook"

The Berryessa family was a prominent Californio family during the Spanish and Mexican periods of California history.  They held extensive rancho grants.  Sadly, the family lost much of what they had once the Gold Rush started due to the murder of family members, and crooked lawyers, squatters, and other unscrupulous characters.  (See Wikipedia:  "Berryessa family of California")

Encarnación Pinedo was born on May 21, 1848, the daughter of a Berryessa, in the Santa Clara Valley of Northern California.  Note that she was born at the beginning of the Gold Rush, which was the end of the Mexican or Rancho period.  However, she was raised in the Rancho culture.  Ms. Pinedo became an accomplished cook and decided, at the age of 50, to publish the recipes she had learned and developed over her lifetime.

That book, El Cocinero Español, "The Spanish Cook," written in Spanish and published in 1898, contained over 800 recipes that she dedicated to her nieces:  "Para que siempre tengan presente el mérito que tiene el trabajo de una mujer y estudien el contenido de este volumen", "So that you may always remember the value of a woman's work, study this volume's contents."  You can find a copy of her book in Spanish here.

I have a copy of Encarnación's Kitchen, translated and edited by Dan Strehl, which contains about 300 of Ms. Pinedo's recipes.  (Pinedo, Encarnación.  Encarnación's Kitchen: Mexican Recipes from Nineteenth-Century California.  Dan Strehl, editor and translator.  University of California Press.  Berkeley, CA.  2003)  

ISBN 0-520-23651-3

Pages 1 through 15 contain an essay by Victor Valle that puts Ms. Pinedo's work into historical context:

Pinedo's Cocinero documents the start of California's love affair with fruits and vegetables, fresh edible flowers and herbs, aggressive spicing, and grilling over native wood fires.  Her book also gives us California's first major collection of Mexican recipes... (page 1)

Pinedo and her book stand out in a time and place where men dominated the world of letters, and those letters were published in English.  She was among that handful of nineteenth-century Latinas who published their works in the period following the conquest of Alta California.  (page 2)

Mr. Strehl emphasizes this in his introduction:

The first cookbook written by a Hispanic in the United States, it was also the first recipe-specific recording of Californio food, Mexican cuisine as prepared by Spanish-speaking peoples born in California. ... Her book gives us the first and only contemporary account of how Mexican food was prepared in California during the nineteenth century.  (page 19) 

Pinedo's book was one of the largest and most comprehensive works printed in nineteenth-century California.  Her liberal use of spices, chiles, vinegars, and wines provided a striking flavor contrast to the bland recipes offered by other texts [of recipes published in California in that century]. (page 27)

Pinedo filled her book with a remarkable variety of recipes from the Hispanic, French, and Italian traditions, as well as recipes of her own invention.  From the recipes in her book, it is clear that Pinedo was a sophisticated and knowledgeable cook, comfortable in many styles.  ... It is clear that Pinedo saw her book as an explicit document of cultural transmission, designed to save her culture for her nieces, who were growing up in an Anglo household.  (page 31)

Encarnación's food was the food of Mexico, brought to California by early settlers and maintained by subsequent contact with central Mexico, through either personal connections or literary transmission. ... While her cuisine is more directly Mexican, it adapted well to local ingredients.  As California became "American" in the period from the 1850s to the 1890s, additional ingredients from the Anglo kitchen became available.  The sophisticated food markets of San Francisco were also within easy reach ... She also calls for a number of ingredients not commonly available today. (page 35)

This recipe collection is considered by culinary historians as representative of rancho or Californio cooking.  Yes, she was born at the beginning of the Gold Rush period, but she "lived close enough to her past to invoke its presence, and long enough to see its decline."  (Valle's essay, page 7)  She pointedly rejected Yankee recipes and claimed, "there is not a single Englishman who can cook, as their foods and style of seasoning are the most insipid and tasteless that one can imagine."  (page 9)

It is my intent to explore the recipes of Ms. Pinedo's work and document them on this blog to show what rancho cooking could have been like.