La Capital´s Female Cooks. Readers, Housewives, Ecónomas, Consumers and Feminine Knowledges: an Experience in Rosario (1930-1945)

Abstract

This article introduces, from a historical perspective, the steps of a research project onthe feminization process of the transmission in writing of culinary domestic knowledgeand the popularization of all of the derived production during the 1930-1945 period, focusingon a documentary corpus from the city of Rosario –at the time a thriving exampleof modernization and progress in a society that was recovering from the 1929 crisis. Sucha process involved editing and publishing cooking recipes, which became prescriptiveand performative discourse for housewives. We present an interpretative reading of thestrategies displayed on the subject by the newspaper La Capital, both in women’s sectionsand in advertising.