Pudding and Informal Empire

I thought it might be fun to follow up the fortunes of pudding elsewhere than in Greece about which you can read here and here and here (comments). Here’s the title page of my facsimile of the great nineteenth-century Mexican cookbook, El cocinero mexicano (the Mexican cook in the form of a dictionary).  It was first published anonymously in 1831 but was reprinted and updated throughout the nineteenth century. This 1888 edition was printed in Paris, you will note, but it was in Spanish and sold in Mexico. It’s 993 large pages long and coming out after Independence has a strong national (which does not mean indigenous) flavor.

The entry on Pudin occupies four of those pages.

“This word, whose real spelling is pudding, is English, and the French accomodating to their own lanuage write poudding. Among us commonly it is turns out as budin . . . (there’s a separate entry for budín that explains it is the same as the Spanish embutido, pork products); but they are distinct and mean different things. In this Dictionary we have used the proper spelling for dishes à la inglesa; but the word pudin in the dishes in our style.”

This I take it to mean that by this stage some dishes are still thought of as English “pudding”, others have been assimilated to the Mexican table “pudín”.  English, it turns out, includes American as the following list shows.  I’m just giving the titles, not the descriptions (and sometimes recipes).

Indian-Pudding

Rici-Pudding

Apples-Pudding

Bread-Puddind (sic)

Meal-Pudding

Plumbs-Pudding ó all others kinds of puddings

Spoon milk ó East-Pudding

Eggs Pudding

Pudín de mamon al estilo mexicano (sort of like a trifle)

Pudin de jericalla (rather the same with a custard)

Pudín de almendra

Pudín de tuétanos de vaca (a baroque concoction custard with beaten egg white and beef marrow and lots of flavorings as below)

Pudín de Naranja (a very elaborate orange custard with almonds, raisins and pine nuts)

Pudín de pan y bizcocho (a bread and biscuit pudding with requeson which is like ricotta)

Pudín de arroz con leche (both of these fancy versions)

Pudín (otro) de arroz con leche

Pudín de leche y almendra en moldes

Pudín de biscocho en molde

Pudín de almendra y mantequilla

Pudín de requeson

Pudín de natillas y requeson

Pudín de frutas a la inglesa (plum pudding)

Now Mexico was never a British colony.  But here I think it is worth wheeling in an idea that John Gallager and Ronald Robinson suggested about half a century ago in a classic paper, “The Imperialism of Free Trade” in the Economic History Review.  They start:

“It ought to be a commonplace that Great Britain during the nineteenth century expanded overseas by means of “informal empire” as much as by acquiring dominion in the strict constitutional sense.  . . .The conventional interpretation of the nineteenth-century empire continues to rest upon study of the formal empire alone, which is rather like judging the size and character of icebergs solely from the parts above the water-line.”

Just two points.  I think this applies to most empires.  Their control of military, economic and often ideological power means that they have effects beyond their boundaries. And thus their cuisines or bits of them penetrate beyond their boundaries.

And the British informal empire certainly had its effects over much of Latin America, Mexico included.  The politics of Mexico was tangled with British investment from Independence until the Revolution.  A number of prominent families in Guanajuato (my neighbors across the street for one) came in the nineteenth century because of investments in mines, because they financed the railroads or the electricity, or at more humble levels, worked in these enterprises.

• ← Replying to comments
• Savory puddings (or the lack thereof) in 19th century Mexico →