"Like water for chocolate" (Mexican proverb) (1935)

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:24 PM -0500 3/6/05, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>(GOOGLE GROUPS)
>     2001newsgroupie Sep 22 2001, 3:30 pm
>     Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.past-films  From: "2001newsgroupie"
><2001newsgroupi... at SPAMhome  Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 22:30:32 GMT
>Local: Sat, Sep 22
>2001 3:30 pm   Subject: Like Water for Chocolate
>
>I recently saw this movie but I missed the  significance of the title. I
>understand that it is a partial quote of a  Mexican proverb. Does  anybody
>happen to know the whole proverb?  Thanks.
>...
>...
>I don't know what Fred Shapiro has for this Mexican/chocolate proverb. It was
>  the title of a 1993 movie.

And the movie was based on an eponymous novel by, if memory serves,
Laura Esquivel.  I don't recall the movie explaining the proverb, but
I assume the book does.

Larry

>...
>PURO MEXICANO
>\edited by J. Frank Dobie
>Austin
>Texas Folk-Lore Society Publications--Number XII
>1935
>Pf, 213: _Ranchero Sayings of the Border_, by Howard D, Wesley
>Some other expressions, for most of which there are English analogues, are
>_"Comiste gallo?"_ (Did you eat a fighting cock?) and _"como agua para
>chocolate"_ (like water for chocolate, which is hot). The first is a
>clever way  of
>asking, "Are you angry?" and corresponds loosely to our saying, "He must have
>got up on the wrong side of the bed." The other expression is applied to one
>who  is angry.