California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book

Note: This edition of The California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book has been updated to include Metric equivalents.

Long before today's top chefs, there was a cookbook writer who brought genuine Mexican cooking to American readers. At the turn of the twentieth century a woman named Bertha Haffner-Ginger not only learned how to cook Mexican favorites but also packed lecture halls nationwide and published a cookbook sharing her knowledge, whetting the country's appetite.

In 1912 Haffner-Ginger was hired by the Los Angeles Times to head the newly-formed Times School of Domestic Science. She lectured regularly on various cookery subjects, in The Times' new office building. Afterwards, she toured the country teaching. Among her most popular topics: Mexican cooking. "An announcement that my lesson for the day would be Spanish dishes invariably brought record-breaking crowds in any city in the United States," she claimed in the introduction to California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book, published in 1914.

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