Documenting and analyzing the history of Filipino food and the way we eat are a doctoral dissertation waiting to be written. While there are many Filipino cookbooks on the market, the earliest printed cookbook dates back to the last century, a researcher must go through the archives in Spain and Mexico to find older manuscript cookbooks or compilations of recipes to trace the foreign influences in our food.
Three decades ago, I photocopied a handwritten recipe book in the Agustinian Archives in Valladolid, Spain, but I have not found the time to write about it. Although the recipe book is unsigned and undated, the late historian Isacio R. Rodriguez says this was probably used in the Philippines around the 17th, or perhaps the late 16th, century. I remember seeing a recipe for longanisa in it and wondering how different this was from those we buy from groceries today. While longanisa or chorizo are generic terms we use for sausages, everyone knows that no two are alike. Varieties from Lucban, Cebu, Guagua and Ilocos differ in form, taste and meat-to-fat ratio.
If you comb through Tagalog dictionaries and grammars compiled by Spanish friars in the 17th and 18th centuries and pick out all the food and food-related terms, you will see that most consist of words for fish and rice. When food terms are extracted from the early dictionaries in other Philippine languages will we see the same pattern? Does this suggest that the pre-Spanish diet was heavy on fish and rice?
Nick Joaquin wrote many articles to prove that there is a Hispanic under the Filipino skin that we don’t want to admit. He argued that the modern Filipino was formed by great events overlooked in Philippine history because they were so common that they have become invisible. Two of these life and culture changing events were the introduction of new crops from Mexico and the introduction of the guisado in our cooking.
Maybe it is true, that we are more Hispanic than we care to admit because our words for dining room (comedor), spoon (cuchara), fork (tenedor), knife (cuchillo), table (la mesa), chair (silya), plate (plato), saucer or small plate (platito), cup (tasa), glass (baso) and many more are Spanish words that have become part of our own everyday vocabulary. A food historian or an anthropologist can work backwards and, in tracing the origins of our food, perhaps find that elusive thing we call national identity. Breakfast, for example, is another of those everyday things that deserve a second look. We know that Jose Rizal ate rice and sardinas secas for breakfast, these dried sardines are better known to us today as tuyo (dry).
On the flight up to Northern Luzon with the enemy in hot pursuit, Emilio Aguinaldo had a camote and butter breakfast in the Cordilleras, which they called “Banaue breakast.” What about the other heroes? What about non-heroes? What did they have for breakfast?
Many foreigners visiting the Philippines today are surprised that we have fried rice for breakfast when they have simpler and lighter fare of coffee and bread. They have three main meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner – while Filipinos have merienda in between meals. If only there were more readily available sources for Filipino meals, then a history of Filipino food can be written up. Fortunately, much of the stray bits of information have been compiled by Gilda Cordero Fernando, Felice Sta. Maria, and the late Doreen Fernandez. I guess it will now take a man to write it all up.
Former Manila Mayor Felix Roxas wrote a column on his memories of life in the late 19th century Philippines. One of these described breakfast in the Arnedo household of Sulipan, whose hospitality was fabled, where he was a guest in the late 1870s. He followed the servant assigned to him and:
“. . . discovered a scene belonging to the ‘Thousand and One Nights.’ The many tables of the previous night with their complicated silverware had been reset for breakfast: rearranged on elegant trays was an assortment of exquisite biscuits with which Sulipeño hospitality regaled its admirers. Tea, chocolate, or coffee was each served in appropriate cups; the napkins were hand embroidered. The ensemble was remarkable for its elegance; the service, for its flawlessness.”
In those days a visit to Pampanga from Manila was a major undertaking. One had to stay overnight or perhaps three nights to make it worthwhile. Today with fast cars and the NLEx, you can make a day trip: depart in the morning, have lunch and return to Manila to catch your favorite telenovela. Since people in the past stayed more than a day, they had to be served not just breakfast, lunch and dinner but the in-between meals as well like the segundo before lunch and merienda before dinner. I asked old people for the meaning of “segundo” (second), and some replied that it was a contraction of segundo almuerzo’ (second breakfast) because the word almusal was supposed to have come from almuerzo or almorzar. However, this is what we call a “false friend” because the Spanish almuerzo means lunch rather than desayuno, which is literally to break a fast, hence breakfast.
All these are random thoughts, delicious memories, all pointing to a need to explore other areas in a history that is not always about battles and heroes.
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