The history of sauce, settled again, by a man nobody asked.
For decades, the question of who invented the enchilada has been settled repeatedly, and always differently. This book settles it again.
In thirteen essays, Aldous Pimentel-Rourke assembles the founding record of sauce: the enchilada’s origin, dated by one water-damaged ledger to March of 1791 and by the Committee to nothing at all, and the minority report that followed; the Great Cumin Shortage of 1962 and the shipment that never came; the Color Tribunal’s findings on red versus green, delivered under oath by men who had not spoken to each other since the war.
He travels to Oaxaca and does not look for mole. He conducts a feud with a neighbor over the word authentic.
The research is exhaustive. The sourcing is confident. Somewhere underneath the citations is an argument the book never quite makes out loud: that the hours a sauce does not strictly require are the hours someone spent on you.
Findings are reproduced in full, including the ones that were rescinded.
A deadpan comic essay collection that treats sauce the way a scholar treats a war. Thirteen essays assemble the founding record: a disputed origin, a cumin shortage, a tribunal convened to rule on red versus green, a feud over the word “authentic,” a trip to Oaxaca that never gets to the mole.
