Cooking Up Heritage: Culinary Adventures of Peru’s Past

Abstract

This article examines one recent example of nation-making around food to investigate the ways in which eating and heritage are connected to national imaginaries of fusion and mestizaje in Peru. In 2012, the world-renowned chef Gastón Acurio relied on a copy of the 1947 cookbook Cocina y reposteria: viandas tipicamente limeñas y de origen europeo, peruanizadas by ‘la negra Francisca Baylón’ to develop a thematic series in his popular cooking show Aventura Culinaria. In the series’ episodes, he showcased the long-standing importance of Peruvian cooking as emblematic of Peru’s cultural mestizaje or mixing, while simultaneously considering the recipes a foundation through which to invent new and more cosmopolitan dishes, fusing them with international flavours and spices. As it turned out, however, Baylón was not the famed African-Peruvian Acurio thought but rather a character invented by a middle-class limeña housewife whose grandparents had emigrated from Italy. This paper demonstrates that an elite desire for an authentic food heritage depends on a globalized future while simultaneously ignoring the racial and gendered stratifications of Peru’s food history. In prospecting the past for potential riches, racial and gender inequalities are sublimated in an aesthetic of taste grounded in the desire for a modern nation.

Key words:

• Peru
• Nation
• Food
• African-Peruvian
• Nostalgia
• Gender
• Race
• mestizaje

Notes

1 Adán Felipe Mejía, ‘El Puchero’, in De cocina peruana: exhortaciones (Lima: P. L. Villanueva 1969), 54–59.

2 Joan Roca, ‘Una puerta que se abre’, in Gaston Acurio & Javier Masías, Bitute: el sabor de Lima, prefacio de Raúl Vargas (Lima: Latino Publicaciones, 2016) 9–10 (p. 9).

3 Raúl Matta, ‘República gastronomica y país de cocineros: comida, politica, medios y una nueva idea de nación para el Perú’, Revista Colombiana de Antropología, 50:2 (2014), 15–40; available at <http://www.scielo.org.co/pdf/rcan/v50n2/v50n2a02.pdf> (accessed 25 June 2019).

4 See Mary Weismantel, Food, Gender and Poverty in the Ecuadorian Andes (Philadephia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1988); Mary Weismantel, Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes (Chicago/London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001); John Reader, Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent (New Haven: Yale U. P., 2011); Benjamin S. Orlove, Michael W. Foley & Thomas F. Love, State, Capital and Rural Society: Anthropological Perspectives on Political Economy in Mexico and the Andes (Boulder/San Francisco: Westview Press, 1989); Paulo Drinot, The Allure of Labor: Workers, Race and the Making of the Peruvian State (Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 2011); Judith Fan, ‘Can Ideas about Food Inspire Real Social Change? The Case of Peruvian Gastronomy’, Gastronomica. The Journal of Critical Food Studies, 13:2 (2013), 29–40; and Florence Babb, Between Field and Cooking Pot: The Political Economy of Marketwomen in Peru (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1998).

5 See Xavier Domingo, ‘La cocina española ante del Descubrimiento’, in Cultura, identidad y cocina en el Perú, ed. Rosario Olivas Weston (Lima: Univ. de San Martín de Porres, 1993), 135–56; Humberto Rodriguez Pastor, ‘Del Kon Hei Fat Choy al Chifa Peruana’, in Cultura, identidad y cocina en el Perú, ed. Olivas Weston, 189–238; and Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492–1700 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge U. P., 2012).

6 See the following studies by Rosario Olivas Weston: La cocina de los Incas: costumbres gastronómicas y técnicas culinarias (Lima: Univ. de San Martín de Porres, 2001); Cusco, el imperio de la cocina (Lima: Univ. de San Martin de Porres, 2008); and La cocina en el Virreinato del Perú (Lima: Univ. de San Martín de Porres, 2016 [1ª ed. 1996]).

7 Diego Luza Fernández, ‘La historia después del boom de la gastronomía peruana’, Summa Humanitatis, 7:2 (2014), 39–64.

8 Francisca Baylón, Cocina y repostería: viandas típicamente limeñas y de origen europeo, peruanizadas (Lima: Editorial P.T.C.M., 1947). Further references are to this edition and are given within the body of the article.

9 In a Facebook post in 2012 Gastón Acurio wrote: ‘Peru is the only country in the whole world where food is the most important thing … You go to Brazil, it’s soccer. If you go to Colombia, it’s music. But in Peru, the most important source of pride is food … food’s been able to unite us’; cited in María Elena García, ‘The Taste of Conquest: Colonialism, Cosmopolitics and the Dark Side of Peru’s Gastronomic Boom’, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 18:3 (2013), 505–24 (p. 511).

10 In 2007 the Peruvian government deemed their cuisine to be ‘Cultural Heritage of the Nation’ and efforts at achieving UNESCO status are ongoing. See Raúl Matta, ‘Food Incursions into Global Heritage: Peruvian Cuisine’s Slippery Road to UNESCO’, Social Anthropology, 24:3 (2016), 338–52.

11 Malnutrition for children under the age of five has decreased from 28% in 2007 to 13.1% in 2016. See Anon., ‘Fighting Malnutrition in Peru: Enhancing the Demand for and Supply and Governance of Health and Nutrition Services in Three Regions’, The World Bank, 18 April 2018; available at <https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2018/04/18/fighting-malnutrition-in-peru> (accessed 14 August 2018). Poverty still afflicts 21.7% of Peru’s population, rising one percentage point in 2017. See Anon., ‘Peru Poverty Rate Rises for First Time in 16 Years: Government’, Reuters, 24 April 2018; available at <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-peru-poverty/peru-poverty-rate-rises-for-first-time-in-16-years-government-idUSKBN1HV2L2> (accessed 14 August 2018).

12 PromPerú, ‘Evaluación del Turismo Gastronómico en el Perú’ (2016); available at <https://www.promperu.gob.pe/TurismoIN//sitio/VisorDocumentos?titulo=Turismo%20Gastronómico%20en%20el%20Perú&url=/Uploads/infografias/1048/TurismoGastronomicoPeru2016.pdf&nombObjeto=Infograf%C3%ADas&back=/TurismoIN/sitio/Infografias&issuuid=0> (accessed 19 January 2019).

13 María Elena García, ‘Super Guinea Pigs?’, Anthropology Now, 2:2 (2010), 22–32; Raúl Matta, ‘Valuing Native Eating: The Modern Roots of Peruvian Food Heritage’, Anthropology of Food, (2013); available at <https://journals.openedition.org/aof/7361> (accessed 2 July 2019).

14 María Elena García, ‘Culinary Fusion and Colonialism: A Critical Look at the Peruvian Food Boom’, in Peru, ReVista. Harvard Review of Latin America (2014), n.p.; available at <https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/book/culinary-fusion-and-colonialism> (accessed 2 July 2019).

15 See Matta, ‘Valuing Native Eating’. Clare Sammels refers to this process as ‘haute-traditional’ (Clare A. Sammels, ‘Haute Traditional Cusines: How UNESCO's List of Intangible Heritage Links the Cosmopolitan to the Local’, in Edible Identities: Food As Cultural Heritage, ed. Ronda L. Brulotte & Michael A. Di Giovine [Burlington: Ashgate Press, 2014], 141–58).

16 Matta, ‘Valuing Native Eating’, 9.

17 Arjun Appadurai, ‘Gastro-Politics in Hindu South Asia’, American Ethnologist, 8:3 (1981), 494–511.

18 Gaston Acurio, Perú, una aventura culinaria (Lima: Bonus, 2002).

19 See Carlos Carlín, ‘La aventura de Gastón y la papa famosa’, Perú 21, 17 November 2008; available at <http://blogs.peru21.pe/apagalatele/2008/11/la-aventura-de-gaston-y-la-pap.html> (accessed 19 January 2019), for how the show motivates people to eat out instead of at home, thus bringing economic growth to both the farmer and the restaurateur.

20 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London/New York: Routledge, 1992).

21 Grau and Alcántara have long worked alongside Acurio, first as assistants and then in helping to open new restaurants. See Karen Espejo, ‘Los hombres de Gastón’, El Correo, 22 October 2014, n.p.; available at <https://diariocorreo.pe/gastronomia/los-hombres-de-gaston-72687/> (accessed 2 July 2019). 

22 Sherrie A. Inness, Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture (Iowa City: Iowa U. P., 2001) and, by the same author, Cooking Lessons: The Politics of Gender and Food (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

23 Jeffrey Pilcher, Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2012), 224.

24 Giovanni Bonfliglio Volpe, ‘La influencia italiana en la cultura culinaria peruana’, in Cultura, identidad y cocina en el Perú, ed. Olivas Weston, 239–56.

25 On Italy’s regional cuisines and immigration to Peru, see Bonfliglio Volpe, ‘La influencia italiana en la cultura culinaria peruana’, 242. 

26 Of English origin, the Field family business sold food products in the 1800s, including Field crackers. Field left the family business for publishing.

27 Acurio & Masías, Bitute: el sabor de Lima, 128.

28 See Jeffrey M. Pilcher, ¡Que Vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1998), 70. See also Rebecca E. Pite, Creating a Common Table in Twentieth-Century Argentina: Doña Petrona, Women, and Food (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2013).

29 Gary Alan Fine, Kitchens: The Culture of Restaurant Work (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1996); Jack Goody, Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1995); and Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 1984).

30 Her daughters do not know exactly where the name came from. They know that when Patroni was a young girl their family had an African-Peruvian cook with the last name Baylón. Later, when Patroni had her own family, she, like most limeña housewifes of a certain social class, did not cook alone; she had help. An African-Peruvian named Bernadina initially cooked with Patroni. After Bernadina left, her sister, Martina, came to help in the kitchen. All three of the daughters say that Martina did not know the first thing about cooking and that Zoila taught her everything.

31 The character is uncannily similar to the ‘Aunt Jemima’ character found throughout the United States in the early twentieth century. See Toni Tipton-Martin, The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2015).

32 See Goody, Cooking, Cuisine and Class, especially the chapter on industrial food.

33 See for example, Rebecca Sharpless, Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865–1960 (Chapel Hill: Univ of North Carolina Press, 2013); Elizabeth Pérez, Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions (New York: New York U. P., 2016); and Emily Yates-Doerr, The Weight of Obesity: Hunger and Global Health in Postwar Guatemala (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2015).

34 Arjun Appadurai, ‘How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 30:1 (1988), 3–24.

35 See also Carol Gold, Danish Cookbooks: Domesticity and National Identity, 1616–1901 (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 2007); Carol Helsotsky, ‘The Tradition of Invention: Reading History through La cucina casareccia napoletana’, in American Woman, Italian Style: Italian Americana’s Best Writings on Women, ed. Carol Albright & Christine Moore (New York: Fordham U. P., 2011), 123–32; Donna Gabaccia, ‘Italian-American Cookbooks: From Oral to Print Culture’, in American Woman, Italian Style, ed. Albright & Moore, 133–41.

36 See Pilcher, ¡Que Vivan los tamales!. See also, Christine Folch, ‘Fine Dining: Race in Prerevolution Cuban Cookbooks’, Latin American Research Review, 43:2 (2008), 205–23; and Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz, Foodscapes, Foodfields and Identities in Yucatán (London/New York: Berghahn Books, 2012).

37 The programme began in 1959 and was sponsored by the commercial pasta maker Nicolini. It later resulted in a cookbook that would become Peru’s equivalent of the Joy of Cooking. Although Carmela del Rey did the cooking, she continued to have an African-Peruvian woman as her assistant.

38 In contrast, Mexico’s first significant national volume of recipes was published in 1946. See Pilcher, ¡Que Vivan los Tamales!, 123.

39 Omar H. Ali, ‘Afro-Peru’, in Peru, ReVista. Harvard Review of Latin America (2014), n.p.; available at <https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/book/afro-peru> (accessed 2 July 2019). See also Henry Louis Gates Jr, Black in Latin America (New York: New York U. P., 2011).

40 Carlos Aguirre, Breve historia de la esclavitud en el Perú: una herida que no deja de sangrar (Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2005).

41 Frederick Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1524–1650 (Stanford: Stanford U. P., 1974), 103.

42 In 1791, slaves comprised the second largest group after Spaniards. See Rosario Rivoldi Nicolini, ‘El uso de la vía judicial por escalavas domésticas en Lima a fines del siglo XVIII y principios del siglo XIX’, in Ana Cecilia Carillo Saravia et al, Etnicidad y discriminación racial en la historia del Perú (Lima: Instituto Riva Agüero, 2002), 147–71 (p. 152).

43 Rivoldi Nicolini, ‘El uso de la vía judicial’, 150. See also John R. Fisher, Gobierno y sociedad en el Perú colonia. El régimen de las intendencias: 1784–1814 (Lima: PUCP, 1981).

44 See the interview with Aguirre in the 2011 PBS episode Mexico & Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet.

45 Aguirre, quoted in Gates Jr, Black in Latin America, 96.

46 See Christine Hunefeldt, Paying the Price of Freedom: Family and Labor Among Lima’s Slaves, 1800–1854 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1995).

47 African slaves contributed yams, plantains, greens and earthenware cooking vessels to Peru’s cooking. Today what counts as typical Lima cuisine is referred to as comida criolla, a combination of New World staples and Old World animal proteins. See Pilcher, Planet Taco, 123.

48 Alberto Flores Galindo, In Search of an Inca: Identity and Utopia in the Andes, trans. Willie Hiatt, with an intro. by Charles F. Walker & Carlos Aguirre (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2010).

49 Cecilia Méndez Gastelmundi, Incas Sí, Indios No. Apuntes para el estudio del nacionalismo criollo en el Perú (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1995); Natalia Majluf, ‘De la rebelión al museo: genealogías y retratos de los incas, 1781–1900’, in Los Incas, reyes del Perú, ed. Thomas Cummins et al. (Lima: Banco del Credito, 2005), 254–320.

50 Jorge Flores Ochoa, ‘Buscando los espíritus del Ande: turismo místico en el Qosqo’, in La tradición andina en tiempos modernos, ed. Hiroyasu Tomoeda & Luis Millones (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 1996), 9–29; Víctor Vich, ‘Magical, Mystical: “The Royal Tour” of Alejandro Toledo’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 16:1 (2007), 1–10; and Pierre Van den Berghe & Jorge Flores Ochoa, ‘Tourism and Nativistic Ideology in Cuzco, Peru’, Annals of Tourism Research, 27:1 (2000), 7–26.

51 The exception to this is Theresa Izquierdo who has been called the ‘mother of Peruvian cooking’ and whose restaurant El Rincón Que No Conoces was deemed national heritage. Izquierdo died in 2011 but the restaurant is still open.

52 Pilcher, Planet Taco, 132.

53 Donna R. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 2000), 200.

54 Gastón Acurio, ‘Apertura del año académico 2006.’ Sazón en acción: algunas recetas para el Perú que queremos (Lima: Mitin Press, 2016), 15–26 (p. 17).

55 Néstor García-Canclini, Transforming Modernity, Popular Culture in Mexico, trans. Lidia Lozano (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1993).

56 For those with nothing to sell, people wonder if this means that they have no culture. See John L. Comaroff & Jean Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2009), 8.

57 Acurio, ‘Apertura del año académico 2006’, 25.

58 Comaroff & Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc., 139.

59 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London/New York: Verso, 1991).

60 Barbara Wheaton argues that cookbooks are not composed by an individual so much as they involve a variety of actors and often involve recipes and techniques from others. See Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789 (New York: Touchstone Press, 1996), 282.

61 See Amy B. Trubek, Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

62 For a discussion on culture being used as resource, see George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (London/Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 2003).

63 This is also evident in the transformation of the hacienda Casa Moyeyra as the new outpost of Astrid & Gastón and in the making of Panchita, a Peruvian steakhouse whose interior decoration is modelled on hacienda life.

64 Scholars have demonstrated that ethnic food relies on the cleansing of history. See Pilcher, Planet Taco and Gabaccia We Are What We Eat.

65 Brooke Larson, Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810–1910 (New York/Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2004).

66 Mary Weismantel & Steven Eisenman, ‘Race in the Andes: Global Movements and Popular Ontologies’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 17:2 (1998), 121–42; and Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963).

67 Edward Telles, Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race and Color in Latin America, (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2014).

68 Barbara Fuchs, ‘The Spanish Race’, in Rereading the Black Legend, ed. Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo & Maureen Quilligan (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007), 88–98 (p. 91).

69 Acurio does not mention the episdodes from his cooking show that featured Baylón’s recipes. 

70 Raúl Vargas, ‘El Bitute da la Hora’, in Acurio & Masías, Bitute, 13–14 (p. 14).

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.