(Mexican) Pardo, Alejandro. El Verdadero Practico: Manual para las Familias.

 [2], 250 pp. (missing last page of index). Illus. from photographs, drawings, and ads for Mexican food companies. 16.5x11.5 cm (6½x4½"), cloth-backed red boards lettered in gilt. México: C. 1910.

Rare early 20th century illustrated Mexican cookbook. The author mixes recipes of the European haute cuisine with the more traditional Mexican dishes; some recipes include: sopa de totopos o tortillas delgadas, huevos en molito, pollo risueño, flan, yemitas acarameladas, tocinitos del clielo, mazapán, salsa española, etc. Alejandro Pardo was born in Spain and studied culinary arts in Europe at the Cordon Bleu in Paris and the Escuela de Artes y Oficios in Madrid.  Upon immigrating to Mexico City around 1912, he founded one of the first cooking academies in Mexico City, where he instructed the wives and daughters of the upper and middle classes in fine European cuisine. Owner's signature with date of 1912 to front free endpaper. An important early 20th c. Mexican cookbook, with emphasis on salsas and techniques. Recipes include asado de cabrito, pollitos mascota, gallina con arroz. sopa de pescado familiar, pastelitos de jeringa de chocolate, etc. About half the recipes are for pastries and sweets.

According to Juli McLoone at U.T. San Antonio, "Alejandro Pardo was born in Spain and studied culinary arts in Europe at the Cordon Bleu in Paris and the Esquela de Artes y Oficios in Madrid.  Upon immigrating to Mexico City around 1912, he founded one of the first cooking academies in Mexico City, where he instructed the wives and daughters of the upper and middle classes in fine European cuisine...Pardo keeps his title’s implicit promise to provide el verdadero práctico or “practical truth.”  Rather than providing hundred of recipes and variants, El Verdadero Práctico is organized into short chapters, with titles like “Mis 12 mejores sopas,” “Mis 12 salsas mejores,” “Mis 6 mejores sopas secas,” and so on.  The cookbook includes recipes suitable for everyday cooking and for more elaborate meals.  In the second part of the cookbook, Pardo includes a lists of courses suitable for dinner and supper, the order of service for each; instructions for properly setting a table, serving wine; and several suitable menus to serve a party of eight." Fair condition with rubbing to extremities, fraying to cloth at spine ends, contents shaken, some internal stains and occasional pencil marks.

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