3 - Ángel Muro Goiri's Bestseller: Culinary Nationalization and Commercial Success

Summary

Ángel Muro Goiri (1839–97) is one of the lesser-known culinary writers considered in this monograph, yet he is the author of one of the most popular cookery books ever published in Spain. Muro's El practicón: tratado completo de cocina al alcance de todos y aprovechamiento de sobras, published in 1894, was enormously popular with Spanish readers at the end of the nineteenth century, and within a year of its publication it had been reprinted five times. As one critic notes, ‘El libro fue un bestseller de su tiempo’ (Almódovar 131). This popularity did not wane and by 1928 El practicón had been published a staggering thirty-four times. In spite of its immediate success, however, after the publication of the thirty-fourth edition at the end of the 1920s, this bestseller was not published again until 1982, ‘cuando Tusquets Editores lo publicó por primera vez en la serie de Libros perdidos, de esta misma colección’ (blurb, 1997 edition). The short-lived yet unprecedented popularity of Muro's El practicón introduces interesting questions about how the particular culinary discourse and gastronomic paradigms at the heart of Muro's bestseller contributed to its unique reception history.

Although Muro is not unanimously remembered for his contributions to Spanish culinary nationalism, he makes various attempts in El practicón to create a sense of continuity between his own culinary discourse and the vision for Spain's culinary nationalization articulated by Dr Thebussem and the King's Chef.