If you ask ten Argentines what the best dulce de leche is, you'll probably get ten different answers.
Nobody argues about whether dulce de leche is good. We argue about which one is the best.
For me, the taste of childhood is La Serenísima Estilo Colonial. If I want something more artisanal, I reach for Poncho Negro. And when I'm making alfajores de maicena, I almost always use Bakalim, because its texture is perfect.
Every Home Has a Jar
Many countries have their own version of dulce de leche. Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, Peru and even India all have caramelized milk sweets with different names and traditions.
But Argentina's relationship with dulce de leche is different.
We don't simply eat it.
We build desserts around it.
It's spread on toast, tucked inside medialunas, poured over flan, layered into birthday cakes, folded into ice cream, sandwiched inside alfajores and, quite often, eaten straight from the jar with a spoon.
More than one hundred dairy producers make dulce de leche in Argentina, from large national brands to small artisan producers. Every Argentine has a favourite.
The Story Everyone Knows
Like many iconic foods, dulce de leche has its own legend.
The best-known Argentine story says that one of Juan Manuel de Rosas' maids was preparing a sweet milk drink called lechada. She became distracted, left the pot on the fire, and when she returned it had turned into a thick caramel cream.
Did it really happen?
Probably nobody will ever know. Similar preparations existed elsewhere long before.
Personally, I don't think the real question is who invented dulce de leche.
What matters is who made it part of everyday life.
The First Time I Made It
I only learned to make dulce de leche because I was living abroad.
Years ago I was working in a small café in Eilat, Israel. The owner was an Argentine who had emigrated during the military dictatorship. He still drank mate, still managed to get copies of Clarín, and carried Argentina with him everywhere.
After he was hospitalised following an accident, I wanted to cheer him up.
So I made him a single jar of homemade dulce de leche in the tiny kitchen of my apartment.
When I brought it to him, it wasn't simply dessert.
It was home in a jar.
What I Learned
Industrial dulce de leche is cooked in enormous steam-heated kettles. At home, patience does most of the work.
Over the years I've developed my own method. I like rich whole milk, sometimes a little cream or milk powder, and if I'm making pastry dulce de leche I'll finish it with a touch of starch so it keeps its shape inside alfajores.
The recipe matters.
But patience matters even more.
More Than a Recipe
If tomorrow somebody proved that dulce de leche was invented somewhere else, it honestly wouldn't change the way I feel about it.
A food's identity isn't defined only by who invented it.
It's also defined by who embraced it, improved it, shared it with their children and ended up keeping a jar in almost every kitchen.
And in that respect, Argentina is in a league of its own.