SOURCE: “Hispanic American Women Writers' Novel Recipes and Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate),” in Women's Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2, March, 1993, pp. 217-30.

In the following essay, Jaffe studies the symbol of the kitchen in Esquivel's novel, contending that it serves as a mode for women's creativity as well as a means to promote female solidarity.

During the same era that inspired the suspicion of women's activities in the kitchen cited in my epigraph,¹ the Mexican nun Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz boldly celebrates the phenomena of the kitchen as worthy of philosophical observation:

And what shall I tell you, lady, of the natural secrets I have discovered while cooking? I see that an egg holds together and fries in butter or in oil, but, on the contrary, in syrup shrivels into shreds; observe that to keep sugar in a liquid state one need...