1931 Cuban Cookery by Blanche Z de Baralt

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Just as cooking in the United States has evolved from the original simplicity of the English puritan's bill of fare gradually influenced by the diverse foreign elements that integrate its population, the cuisine of Cuba, though directly derived from Spain, it's mother country, has been modified and refined by the products of a different soil and the requirements of a different climate, with possibly a French touch imported from Santo Domingo. (1) Thus the national Olla of Spain is converted here into the Cuban Ajiaco ~ a thick soup, of course, but composed of entirely different ingredients. Instead of beef and ham, we find pork. Instead of potatoes, carrots, turnips, cabbage, garbanzos (chick peas) etc. we have sweet potatoes, yams, malangas, bananas, corn &. Much less oil is used in Cuban cookery than in Spanish and we are more critical here than they are over seas about its quality-at l~ast about its rankness. ( 1) After the negro upheaval in the beginning of the .XJXth Century, thousands of French des-' cended whites emigrated from Sto. Domingo and Haiti to our island. ·