By Yanet Acosta
A cookbook is much more than a simple collection of recipes.[i] In the case of Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida) by Ignacio Doménech, the cookbook is not only a tool of critique but also a form of resistance. It pushes back against the devastation of war, a devastation that leaves its mark not only on bodies, through the absence of food, but also on minds, through the torment of craving what can no longer be eaten.
Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida) was published in Spain in 1940, just after the end of the Spanish Civil War. Its author, Ignacio Doménech, had been one of the country’s most renowned chefs before the war. He trained under the legendary Auguste Escoffier at London’s iconic Savoy Hotel and became a major figure in popularizing haute cuisine in Spain, thanks to the publishing house he founded upon returning home.[ii]

.
To fully grasp its significance—and, as we will see, the deep sorrow expressed by Doménech—one must consider the context. Throughout the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Franco’s propaganda repeatedly promised that their victory would put an end to scarcity. Yet the war’s end brought no such relief. Instead, food shortages worsened due to Spain’s international isolation and the abandonment of farmland. Agricultural production didn’t return to pre-war levels until 1950. As a result, the rationing system implemented by Franco’s regime in 1939 became increasingly severe. By 1941, rations were allocated based on social class and profession. In 1943, the system further tightened with the introduction of individual ration cards for every citizen.
Doménech’s critical stance on these developments is immediately evident in the book’s title, which includes the parenthetical phrase “Deseo mi comida” (“I crave my food”). This isn’t a simple grammatical clarification. It reads more like a desperate cry. This plea is not only a response to wartime scarcity but also the profound deprivation of the postwar years.

The ensuing book is divided into two parts. The first offers a collection of recipes accompanied by the author’s own commentary. What’s striking is Doménech’s shifts between past and present verb tenses. While this might seem like a grammatical inconsistency, it’s actually a meaningful choice. Having authored more than thirty cookbooks—including Marichu, la mejor cocinera española (1919) and La guía del gastrónomo y del maître de hotel (1919)—as well as thousands of articles, Doménech had total command of the Spanish language. His use of tenses appears deliberate; the present refers to postwar Spain, while the past evokes the wartime experience. He also speaks directly of the postwar context. At one point he writes: “In these postwar times, any cook with good taste and imagination is forced to create a thousand little surprises in the kitchen.”
Many of the words in the first part of Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida) reflect the author’s profound pain. Doménech makes this clear in his own description of the book:
“Los imposibles anhelos de un cocinero que, en tiempos de guerra, ante las realidades del hambre que ya mascábamos y, sin poderlo remediar, soñaba a todas horas con los más suculentos manjares”
“The impossible longings of a cook who, during times of war, facing the reality of the hunger between our teeth, could not help but dream constantly of the most succulent dishes.”
His words carry a quiet defiance—a resistance not only to the hunger itself but also to the circumstances that produced it, the war, and his life in the postwar period. Remarkably, however, the cookbook made it past Franco’s censorship without obstruction. This was largely due to the subtlety of Doménech’s approach. Censorship at the time focused on direct attacks against the regime’s dogma, moral standards, the Church, or the state. His resistance, by contrast, was indirect, anticipating the tone and strategy that many later writers and journalists would adopt in their own quiet opposition.
In Cocina de recursos, both subtext and shifts in verb tense become tools of critique. Doménech also makes use of irony—especially when discussing the absurdities of rationing. For example, he writes:
“Todo es cuestión de tíquets, carnets, cartas de trabajo, cartas de racionamiento para asegurar algo de víveres en crudo o en guisados. De modo que por esto digo que debían racionarse también las ganas de comer, ya que unos individuos, por su sobriedad de toda su vida o por su constitución física, comen mucho menos que otros individuos que tienen mucho más apetito, con justicia la ración no puede ser igual”.
“Everything depends on tickets, cards, work papers, and ration cards to get some food, either raw or cooked. That’s why I say even hunger should be rationed — some people, because of their habits or their body type, eat much less than others who are much hungrier. So it wouldn’t be fair to give everyone the same amount.”
In the second part of Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida), Doménech shifts his focus from recipes to food criticism, presenting a series of restaurant reviews written in the form of narrative chronicles. These accounts, dating from 1937 and 1938, are filled with anecdotes, encounters, conversations, and commentary—and unlike in the first part, here Doménech exclusively uses the past tense.
Yet one anecdote stands out as oddly contemporary, more reflective of the author’s present reality than of the period he’s supposedly describing. He recounts a conversation with a wealthy, titled gentleman who proposes a business venture: opening a restaurant that would traffic in black-market goods. During the postwar years, black market trading—or estraperlo—was rampant in Spain, making this episode feel particularly timely.[iii]
These and other insights show that Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida) is far more than a simple cookbook. It is a testament of suffering and an act of resistance. In a postwar Spain plagued by food shortages even harsher than those of the Civil War, Doménech’s work was a quiet but powerful protest, expressed through the language of cuisine.
.
[i] Scholars like Susan Leonardi, Janet Floyd, Laurel Forster, Janet Theophano, Cara de Silva, Anne L. Bower, María Paz Moreno, Rebecca Ingram, and Lara Anderson have convincingly shown this. See Acosta, 2024.
[ii] Simón Palmer, 2012.
[iii] This observation is echoed by Miguel I. Arrieta Gallastegui, editor of the most recent edition of Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida), published by Editorial Trea.
.
References
Acosta, Yanet. “Cocina y crítica gastronómica de guerra y posguerra por Ignacio Doménech.” The Foodie Studies Magazine, nº 1 (2016): 4-19.
Acosta, Yanet. “Investigación contemporánea de las recetas manuscritas. El repositorio on- line de los recetarios domésticos históricos de Canarias.” Acosta &Ingram, Food Studies en español. Fragua, 2024.
Domenech, Ignacio. Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida). Gijón: Ediciones Trea, 2011.
Moreno, María Paz, De la página al plato. El libro de cocina en España. Gijón: Ediciones Trea, 2012.
Simón Palmer, María del Carmen, “Ignacio Doménech, autor y editor culinario,” Cincinnati Romance Review, volumen 33 (2012), University of Cincinnati, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.
Yanet Acosta, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain and research affiliate with the Cátedra UNESCO for Communication, is also Director of the Masters in Communication and Food Journalism, The Foodie Studies. Awarded the Spanish Royal Academy’s Álvaro Cunqueiro Prize for Journalism in 2021, she is co-editor of Periodismo Gastronómico, Investigación y Comunicación Intercultural (2021) and Food Studies en español: Investigación actual en gastronomía y comunicación, with Rebecca Ingram (2024, Fragua). Current projects include the Digital Humanities recipe website and database, Recetarios domésticos históricos de Canarias (2021-present) and “#TetuánFoodie,” a collaboration with Laboratorios Ciudadanos, Madrid. A gastronomical journalist for more than two decades, she is also the author of the novels El chef ha muerto (2011) and Matar al padre (2017).