ABSTRACT
The first cooking show on Portuguese television, Culinária, broadcast between 1958 and 1970, is considered a milestone in national culinary identity, culture and heritage, and the host of the show, Maria de Lourdes Modesto, as the central point of reference in what today is known as “Portuguese cuisine”. This paper focuses on this show’s significance for the implementation of a national gastronomy of a traditional nature and how it allowed the middle class access to a specific form of culinary capital, thanks to the political propaganda strategy of the nationalist regime, Estado Novo, then in power.
