A readable, highly informative, and insightful history of some dimensions of the material culture in Buenos Aires from late colonial times to the end of the 19th century. Particularly convincing are the discussions on the mutual exchanges among the native, criolla, and immigrant culinary traditions, the increasing privatization of the domestic space, the changes in the tableware, and the diversity of the Ri o de la Plata diet in which beef was not, as common knowledge has tended to stress, the only consumed meat. [DA]