Latina Lista: News from the Latinx perspective > Culture > Books > University librarians dust off Mexican cookbook collection to make and share dishes celebrating Latino cuisine

University librarians dust off Mexican cookbook collection to make and share dishes celebrating Latino cuisine

LatinaLista.net —  When it comes to family recipes, most cooks can pull out a recipe handed down from their grandmothers. But it’s not often that someone can claim a recipe made by great or great-great grandmothers.

Screen shot 2011-01-04 at 2.31.33 PM.pngUnfortunately, most of the recipes from bygone generations have been lost, unless they were written, bound and published in cook books of the time. Even those books are rare finds.

Well, they were until the librarians of the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) Special Collections Department got the great idea of creating the site La Cocina Historica.

Published in 1971, this cookbook is but one of the many titles in the Mexican cookbook collection of the University of Texas at San Antonio.

La Cocina Historica features recipes taken from the UTSA Mexican Cookbook Collection which features “more than 900 Mexican, Texan, and Southwestern cookbooks in Spanish and English, ranging in date from 1789 to 2010, with the bulk of materials dating from 1940-2000.”

Every week, a different librarian tries out one of the many recipes found in the collection, takes photos of the finished dish and posts it and the recipe on the site. Since none of the books are available for check-out, these select postings are a good way to keep the recipes of bygone eras alive while encouraging a new appreciation for old favorites.

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