When I get bored I scroll through old cookbooks online. Today I stumbled across this book called “Los Angeles Cookery,” published by the Ladies Aid Society in 1881. It consists of recipes submitted by well-to-do society ladies who might never have actually cooked them on their own, but whose families enjoyed them. Knowing that many wealthy American men in that era married women from rich or politically influential families who remained from when California belonged to Mexico, I was curious to see if some of the recipes would reflect the tastes of Californios or other, more recent Mexicans. I’ve lived my whole life in California but know relatively little of its actual history, but when I saw the name “Mrs J. G. Downey” in a chapter euphemistically titled, “Spanish Department,” I connected it with the name of a city near Los Angeles and figured he must’ve been someone very important. Google revealed that John Gately Downey, an Irish immigrant, was the seventh governor of California from 1860-62. His politics seem to have been pretty repulsive. But his wife was Maria de Jesus Jacinta Guirado, born on 10 September 1836 in Los Angeles wealthy to parents who had moved from Guaymas, Mexico to California. Her recipes undoubtedly reflect her own upper-class Mexican tastes combined with what her Irish husband and their rich white dinner guests enjoyed, which I think is interesting.
Just two years after publication of “Los Angeles Cookery,” the Downeys were in a horrific train accident near Tehachapi Pass. John Downey was pulled from the burning wreckage but Maria’s body was never found. Downey suffered from what we would nowadays call PTSD forever after.
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