María Mestayer

María Mestayer de Echagüe (20 December 1877 – 19 November 1949), commonly known by her pen name, the Marquesa de Parabere, was a basque gastronome, food writer and businesswoman.

Author of several recipe books and culinary studies, she became one of the best-known household names in post-war Spain thanks to the large number of reprints of her book La cocina completa, which is regarded as one of the most influential Spanish recipe books of the 20th century. Her parents were the French businessman and diplomat Eugenio Mestayer Demelier and the Bilbao-born María Jacquet la Salle (or Delasalle), also of French origin, daughter of a famous Bilbao banker, Carlos Jacquet.

A few years after her birth, her father was appointed to the French consulate in Seville, where Maria spent part of her childhood and adolescence. Thanks to her family's good social and economic position, she enjoyed a careful cosmopolitan education. A keen reader and history buff, she travelled with her parents all over Europe, visiting the great capitals and the best restaurants of the time, such as that of Auguste Escoffier. Back in Bilbao, she met the lawyer and member of San Sebastián high society Ramón Echagüe Churruca, whom she married on 12 October 1901 in the Basilica of Begoña. They had eight children together. Spurred on by this and by her own inclination for good food, she began to read voraciously gastronomic publications such as "Le Pot-au-feu" (1893–1956) and to experiment in the kitchen. Gradually she went from being an amateur to an expert in gastronomy thanks to her readings and the correspondence she maintained with some of the most famous chefs of her time: Henri-Paul Pellaprat, José Rondissoni and especially with Teodoro Bardají, head chef of the Duke of Infantado, whom she met through her husband.

She began to give cooking and baking courses in Bilbao to the women of Catholic Action in the neighbouring parish of San Vicente de Abando, in the school of El Sagrado Corazón and in organisations promoting female education such as the Emakume Abertzale Batza, a women's association of the Basque Nationalist Party. The climate of revolution at the beginning of the century made it possible for a woman like María Mestayer to break the limits attributed to her sex and social class and begin to write about cooking professionally.

The Marquesa de Parabere As her reputation as a gastronome grew, she started writing for local newspapers, first under the pseudonym of Maritxu, and from 1929 onwards under the pen name of the Marchioness of Parabere (sp. Marquesa de Parabere). She wrote for a varied range of publications, including the Bilbao sports paper Excelsior, the daily El Diario Vasco, or the Argentine newspaper La Nación, and in specialised magazines such as El Gorro Blanco, La Revista Culinaria and Menage.

Ill with diabetes, Maria Mestayer continued to work until the time of her death on what was to be her most complete and ambitious work, a Great Culinary Encyclopaedia in twelve volumes covering all the gastronomic knowledge available at the time. She was only able to complete five (so far, unpublished) before she died of a diabetic coma in Madrid on 19 November 1949, shortly before his 72nd birthday.

Work Confitería y repostería, 1930 La cocina completa, 1933 Platos escogidos de la cocina vasca, 1935 Entremeses, aperitivos y ensaladas, 1936 Conservas caseras, 1936 Historia de la gastronomía (esbozos), 1943 Pastelería Royal, 1947