Cocineras de posguerra Doña Petrona y Josefina Velázquez de León: recetarios para la sociedad de masas en Argentina y México

Abstract

This study closely analyses two cookbooks, El Libro de Doña Petrona (1950, Argentina) and Los 30 Menús (1945, Mexico), by Petrona C. de Gandulfo and Josefina Velázquez de León respectively. The authors were contemporaries and pioneers of culinary literature, radio cookery and television cookery in their respective countries. However, while C. de Gandulfo, better known as Doña Petrona, remains a celebrated figure in Argentina, Velázquez de León has fallen into obscurity in her home country. The study attempts to place the presumed reader of each book in the context of postwar Latin America and of the culinary tradition of each country. The postwar decade was a time of enormous political and social change in the two countries discussed: Peronism changed the way class and national identity interacted in Argentina, and the political generation in Mexico following the post-Revolution decades introduced a new model of industrialisation, urbanization and consumerism. The study finds that factors such as gender, social class, national identity, consumerism and post-war social change are reflected in and shown through each book.