of corn recently purchased. Next to her are three rocks onthe ground which served as a cooking facility the previous evening. The authordescribes the details of what had been cooked on that fire a ragout of black beans and a piece of toucinho, topped with manioc meal.Without knowing, Debret is describing the ancestor of the most symbolicBrazilian dish the feijoada. In addition to being roasted on its cob,corn has several other uses in the country. What the vendor is selling is greencorn, whose grains may also be removed from the cob and cooked like peas, according to the author. Itis worth noticing that Europeans often attempted to establish a resemblancebetween exotic food from the tropics and the food they were familiarized with.That attempt may explain why some American foods became popular in Europe whileothers were not immediately incorporated into the European diet. Debret did notseem to be familiarized with corn, or at least with popcorn, given theextremely detailed description he makes of it. He goes on describing corn meal,corn floor, canjica and other cornby-products and dishes. Interestingly, he states that corn is quite present inthe food habits of Mineiros (MinasGerais natives), and how they substitute wheat flour for corn flour to makebread (les mineiros mangent habituelmentdu gateau de farine de ble de Turquie, en guise de pain. p. 201). Eventoday, corn flour broas are a typicalpatisserie item from Minas Gerais.4. Jean-BaptisteDebret, The Corn vendor, 1820 .Watercolor 15.7 x 21.9cm. Museus Castro Maya, Rio de Janeiro, IBRAM MiNC 4. ConclusionDuring fifteen years living in Rio de Janeiro in the early19th century, the French painter Jean-Baptiste Debret created an unprecedentedand perhaps matchless rapport of Brazilian society through hundreds ofpaintings, drawings, portrays, watercolors, and other works of art. His innumerousaccounts of the Brazilian eating habits in the period provide a one of a kindlist of fruits, staple foods, meats, dishes, drinks, and customs in addition toan astounding amount of information on the commerce of foods, where they werepurchased, how they were sold, and who ate them.It becomes important to point out that his written work Voyage pittoresque et historique au Bresil,which he wrote upon his return in France between 1834 and 1839, far complements his artistic work. Itis because of his detailed accounts that we understand who the people in hiswatercolors are, and what they represent in Brazilian society. Because of thebook, for instance, we know whether a black woman selling food on the street isa freed or an enslaved person. We understand better for whom the black peoplefrequenting the shops are buying food themselves or their masters. And thedetails of his descriptions come to the point of writing a list of whichingredients are in a hot pot of food, boiling on a street corner of Rio.Such richness of details allows us to design asignificantly well-structured scheme of the eating habits of the Brazilianpeople in the 19th century. Hence one of the primary conclusionswhich may be drawn, the abyss between what ate the upper and middle class andthe enslaved men. And by comparing the current food habits of Brazilians today,it is quite clear that, on