The Cookbook: a descriptive-theoretical study of El libro de Doña Petrona

Abstract

When concerning cookbooks, it is to note that genre studies have often considered the material for folklore studies, anthropology and history, and not as objects themselves. The best known example is The Raw and the Cooked, Levi-Strauss. It is yet necessary a linguistic approach to give account of the nature of the various genres used in the transmission and teaching of culinary practices in different societies and cultures. In this work we will take some contributions made by the textual linguistics studies to explore the nature of the ‘cookbook’ as distinct from the ‘recipe’. To do so, we have chosen a paradigmatic work in the Argentine cookery as it is El libro de Doña Petrona.