Tag Archives: Sara de Blas Hernández

Chocolate, Poems, and Virtual Kitchens: Reconstructing the Early Modern Experience

By Sara de Blas Hernández

Since starting my Ph.D. journey at UC Davis, I have collaborated with Prof. Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores to enhance medieval and early modern Spanish literature classes using multisensory pedagogical approaches. The goal is to help students connect with the literary production of the time, one that often feels culturally distant, through tangible activities and familiar settings. For example, we organised a workshop where students nixtamalized corn to make their own tortillas after reading excerpts from the Popol Vuh and Chronicles of the Indies, we explored Fray Luis de León’s “Oda a la vida retirada” (Ode to a Quiet Life) in the Arboretum, and performed skits in the style of Calderón de la Barca’s small dramatic piece Mojiganga de los guisados.

The Reconstruction Project

In Fall 2024, Prof. Gutiérrez-Flores taught Survey of Spanish Literature to 1700, a course that explores the multicultural formation of Spanish culture through early literary texts. In this course, I wanted to explore the contrast between a traditional classroom model (reading, lecture, discussion, worksheet) with a hands-on experiential approach. This time, that meant asking students to turn their kitchens into classroom spaces.

In the first of two linked lessons, students read and analyzed Décima y coplas al chocolate  by Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. This playful poem compares the seductive power of women with that of chocolate, which the lyrical voice describes as a “dulce brebaje” or sweet potion (Hurtado de Mendoza, line 54),  and which is described as being intoxicating and overwhelming. This poem opened the door to explore chocolate’s journey from a suspect substance—viewed by early European colonizers as mysterious and dangerously invigorating—to a fashionable obsession, particularly among elite Spanish women, some of whom refused to stop drinking it even during mass, despite threats of receiving excommunication!

For the second lesson, we moved to the kitchen. We decided to have students cook from home, either solo or in small teams. I selected Juan de la Mata’s “Vizcochos de chocolate – Otra manera” from his 1747 Arte de repostería. At the beginning of the session, students were provided with the recipe —they had already been informed of the tools and ingredients they would need— and divided into Zoom breakout rooms to modernize the recipe by restructuring steps and estimating quantities and times needed. We all reconvened to discuss the surprises and challenges, and to evaluate potential solutions.

Then, we rolled up our sleeves and started baking. I hosted the session like a DIY cooking show: “Baking Early Modern with Sara.” I remember that we were collectively stumped by one detail: the recipe called for twice as much sugar as flour. When students asked why, I wasn’t sure. The mystery lingered until the next day, when I brought the cake to a screening of Like Water for Chocolate. There, a former student of mine majoring in Food Science offered a possible explanation: sugar was likely used as a preservative, especially in the absence of refrigeration. It was a lightbulb moment—and a great reminder of how learning often continues beyond the classroom.

Resulting chocolate cake. Image Credit: The Author

Once the cake was in the oven and with just a couple of minutes of class remaining,  I invited students to share their initial thoughts. To build community, I created a Canvas forum where students could share photos of their cakes and reflections on the experience. 

Screenshot of the students during the virtual workshop. Image Credit: The Author

Student’s Perceptions

To better assess the impact of the lesson, I asked students to complete a short survey. While some noted logistical challenges —like commuting home to use a kitchen—, most found the activity fun and unique. Others reported appreciating learning culinary skills and engaging with recipes in Spanish firsthand.  Several students noted how the physicality of “making” deepened their connection to the material: “I liked it and I think that it helped me think about these recipes in a more real way” and “It was very fun, especially because I could do something physical while still reflecting on the Spanish ways of the past.” One student shared being surprised at how much one could learn about a “mundane” activity such as cooking:  “I particularly enjoyed that, even though it is a cooking activity, there is a lot of history embedded in it, and we learned a lot.” 

Some reflected on the literary text itself: “While baking, I thought a lot about the verses of the poem, and I was able to imagine the lyrical voice when I was adding the cocoa powder to the mix.” Others offered powerful insights on food and colonialism: “It was a unique lesson like I had never experienced before. I realised that the foods that I have at home reflect a history of colonialism and peoples that I have inherited. Now I can see a more clear connection to the topics we covered in class than before. It is humbling… and delicious.” Finally,  several students highlighted the sense of community the lesson fostered. Whether cooking together in person or connecting via Zoom, they valued seeing their classmates in a new light and learning together in a shared, informal setting.

Implications of the Approach

Designing non-traditional lessons requires careful planning and flexibility, especially when logistical hurdles arise. But the results—deeper engagement, critical thinking, and stronger student bonds—make it worth the effort. This project reinforced what I have come to believe: hands-on, sensory-based learning, a form of “making”, can help students connect emotionally and intellectually with distant literary worlds. When students become “makers” through cooking, smelling, tasting, and collaborating, they not only grasp content more vividly, they also experience history and literature as something alive, embodied, and relevant to their lives. That is why these approaches deserve a place in the classroom, especially in academic settings where learning is still too often confined to the visual and textual materials alone.


Sara de Blas Hernández is a Ph.D. candidate in Spanish Linguistics at UC Davis. Her research explores the intersection of language, food, and pedagogy. One strand of her dissertation focuses on how food and food-related practices can enrich second and foreign language learning. The other examines experiential approaches to teaching early modern Spanish literature, working closely with faculty in literary studies, to help students engage more deeply with historical texts and overcome linguistic barriers.


References

Hurtado de Mendoza, Diego. “Décima y coplas al chocolate”. Obras poéticas, edited by Rafael Benítez Claros, Gráficas Ultra, 1947.

Mata, Juan de la. Arte de repostería: en que se contiene todo género de hacer dulces secos, y en líquido … con una breve instrucción para conocer las frutas, y servirlas crudas, y diez mesas, con su explicación. Biblioteca Digital Hispánica, 1747.

Building Community Through Recipe Sharing

By Sara de Blas Hernández

All of the famous cookbooks emerging in early modern Spain were written by men who worked for the royal court: Libro de guisados (1529) was written by Roberto de Nola, Arte de cocina, pasteleria, vizcocheria, y conserveria (1611) by Francisco Martínez Montiño, and Arte de repostería (1747) by Juan de la Mata. Outside of the palace walls, however, it was generally women —and not men—who were in charge of feeding the family. Even though there is no record of edited cookbooks by female authors during the period, there are some manuscripts authored by nuns and by literate noblewomen that made possible the preservation of knowledge shared through oral traditions. One of these recipe books is Libro de apuntaciones de guisos y dulces written by María Rosa Calvillo de Teruel around 1740.

Original Libro de Apuntaciones de guisos y dulces at the Real Academia Española in Madrid. Image Credit: The author

At first sight, one might consider recipe books to be straightforward texts with instructions, but they can provide the attentive reader with more information than what initially meets the eye. This is the case with Libro de apuntaciones de guisos y dulces. The only biographical information contained in the book is the name of the author, which, interestingly enough, is written by a different hand than the one that writes the recipes in the book. Is María Rosa the author? Was the book passed down to a relative who signed her name to claim it as hers? Even though these questions remain unanswered, a careful reading of this recipe book has allowed me to reconstruct, to a certain extent, the details of María Rosa’s life, the social context in which she lived, and the cooking practices used at the time.

In Libro de apuntaciones, the titles of some recipes —“How to prepare quails as it is done in Seville” or “How to make Utreras’ pastries”[i]— locate the author in Andalusia, the southernmost region of mainland Spain. The ingredients, meanwhile, disclose María Rosa’s social class, or at least the one she interacted with, which was the lower nobility. The book calls for spices such as clove, paprika, cinnamon, and saffron. These are a constant in most of the recipes and were very expensive but essential ingredients in the preparation of most dishes at the time. There is a recipe that even calls for Flemish butter, a special kind of butter mixed with potassium nitrate that kept the product fresh. This butter was imported from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Ireland and was a luxurious and expensive ingredient not available to all.

Map of Spain with the Andalusia region highlighted. Image Credit: Wikicommons

An exploration of the handwritten recipes in Libro de apuntaciones reveals yet another key detail. Out of the 100 recipes contained in the book, six of them are attributed to other women: Antonia, Mari-quita, tía Felipa, doña Joaquina, María Teresa, and María Manuela. These recipes are considerably longer and more accurate than María Rosa’s recipes. By including these recipes in the book, the author recognizes other members of the food-making community and also acknowledges their skills, abilities, and knowledge. This resonates with Janet Theopano’s concept of “cookbook as community,” which understands recipe books as spaces where women created networks of support and spaces that promoted social interaction and exchange of ideas.

In these six recipes, María Rosa’s own voice gets intertwined with the voices of the six other women. She suggests improvements and variations to the original recipes proposed by her peers and evaluates the quality of the food being prepared. This is proof of experimentation. María Rosa tests and tastes the recipes herself, which is the kind of experimental knowledge and sensorial methodology necessary in the kitchen.

Food making relies on what Sutton defines as the “lower senses.” Take as an example the recipe for “Huevos moles” in which the sense of sight — “both things are whisked until they are very white and they make little bubbles”— and the sense of smell— “ cook until it smells done”— are the ones that determine when the eggs and the sugar are done. In “How to make pork blood sausage,” the sense of touch, and more specifically the hand and its parts, become the unit of measurement: “[add] a handful [of aniseed] with the whole hand,” “as much [cumin as] can be fitted in three fingers,” or “as much [ginger as] can be fitted in four fingers”.

The examples above position María Rosa and her peers as a community of practice that boasts a unique set of knowledge and skills rooted in experimental methodologies and the senses. In turn, this is conducive to the validity and recognition of a field —food-making— and a group of people—women— undervalued and undermined by society. My work helps unveil the potential of a text which, although not very promising at first sight, proves to be a rich source of avenues of inquiry and a way to rescue women’s voices and their knowledge from an unrecognizing past.

[i] Utrera is a town south-east of Seville

 

References

Calvillo de Teruel, María Rosa. Libro de apuntaciones de guisos y dulces, 1740.

Sutton, Davis. “Cooking Skill, the Senses, and Memory: The Fate of Practical Knowledge.”  Sensible Objects ed. Elizabeth Edwards, Chris Gosden, and Ruth Phillips, Taylor & Francis Group, 2006.

Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote. Palgrave, 2002.


Sara de Blas Hernández is a Ph.D. student specializing in Spanish Linguistics at UC Davis. Even though her main field of research is Second Language Acquisition, she has a keen interest in Food Studies. She is currently working on creating and testing pedagogical materials that develop students’ communicative competence and critical thinking skills while boosting motivation and engagement through multisensory and experiential learning methodologies.