Flora Tristan at the table

Flora Tristan's life is split between two meal structures. In Paris, it's the frugal fare of the laboring middle classes: a potage-soup that serves as the main dish, bread at all hours, and very little meat—all eaten quickly, often in a boarding house or cheap inn. At the other end of the world, during her Peregrinations in Peru, she discovers the Creole table of Arequipa, centered around a large chupe (thick soup-stew served as a festive one-dish meal) spiced with ají and Andean herbs. In between, the food of the long voyage: dry galettes that keep for months in a travel trunk. Three worlds for one woman on the move.

The great gustatory divide of her life: on one side, the grey frugality of the Parisian working woman (stale bread, clear broth); on the other, the colorful ardor of the Arequipa kitchens where ají chili and Peruvian cacao—the legacy of her father Mariano de Tristán—warm and perfume everything. Cacao, which she discovers in her paternal family, becomes the red thread of her mixed-race identity.