About Mexican & TexMex cuisine ancient Mayas & Aztecs atole and pozole avocados, mole & guacamole bunuelos & churros burritos chile peppers chili con carne chimichangas Dia de los Muertos/Day of the Dead enchiladas fajitas flan

maize Mexican wedding cakes mole poblano nachos quesadillas refried beans salsa sopaipillas & fry bread tacos & taco salad tamales tortillas

Have questions? Ask!

ABOUT TEX MEX CUISINE
Food historians tell us TexMex cuisine originated hundreds of years ago when Spanish/Mexican recipes combined with Anglo fare. TexMex, as we Americans know it today, is a twentieth century phenomenon. Dictionaries and food history sources confirm the first print evidence of the term "Tex Mex" occured in the 1940s. Linguists remind us words are often used for several years before they appear in print. TexMex restaurants first surfaced ouside the southwest region in cities with large Mexican populations. The gourmet Tex Mex "fad" began in the 1970s. Diana Kennedy, noted Mexican culinary expert, is credited for elevating this common food to trendy fare. These foods appealed to the younger generation.

What is Tex-Mex?
"Tex-Mex food might be described as native foreign food, contradictory through that term may seem, It is native, for it does not exist elsewhere; it was born on this soil. But it is foreign in that its inspiration came from an alien cuisine; that it has never merged into the mainstream of American cooking and remains alive almost solely in the region where it originated..."
---Eating in America, Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont [William Morrow:New York] 1976 (p. 281)

[1940s] "Tex-Mex. A combination of the words "Texan" and "Mexican," first printed in 1945, that refers to an adaptation of Mexican dishes by Texas cooks. It is difficult to be precise as to what distinguishes Tex-Mex from true Mexican food, except to say that the variety of the latter is wider and more regional, whereas throughout the state and, now, throughout the entire United States."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 325)

[1950s] "Mexican restaurants, whos popularity coincided with the arrival of large numbers of Mexican immigrants after 1950, have for the most part followed the from and style of what is called "Tex-Mex" food, and amalgam of Northern Mexican peasant food with Texas farm and cowboy fare. Chili, which some condsider Texas's state dish, was unknown in Mexico and derived from the ample use of beef in Texan cooking. "Refried beans" are a mistranslation of the Mexican dish frijoles refritos, which actually means well-fried beans...The combination platter of enchiladas, tacos, and tortillas became the unvarying standards of the Tex-Mex menu, while new dishes like chimichangas (supposedly invented in the the 1950s at El Charro restaurant in Tucson, Arizona) and nachos (supposedly first served at a consession at Dallas's State Fair of Texas in 1964...) were concocted to please the American palate....One Tex-Mex item that may someday rival the pizza as an extraordinarily successful ethnic dish is the fajita...introduced at Ninfa's in Houston on July 13, 1973, as tacos al carbon. No one knows when or where it acquired the name fajita, which means girdle' or'strip' in Spanish and refers to the skirt steak originally used in the preparation...Only in the last decade has refined, regional Mexican food taken a foot-hold in American cities, reflecting not only the tenets of Tex-Mex cookery by the cuisines of Mexico City, the Yucatan, and other regions with long-standing culinary traditions."
---America Eats Out, John Mariani [William Morrow:New York] 1991 (p. 80-1)

[1970s]
"In the good old days, Texans went to "Mexican restaurants" and ate "Mexican food." Then in 1972, The Cuisines of Mexico, an influential cookbook by food authority Diana Kennedy, drew the line between authentic interior Mexican food and the "mixed plates" we ate at "so-called Mexican restaurants" in the United States. Kennedy and her friends in the food community began referring to Americanized Mexican food as "Tex-Mex," a term previously used to describe anything that was half-Texan and half-Mexican. Texas-Mexican restaurant owners considered it an insult. By a strange twist of fate, the insult launched a success. For the rest of the world, "Tex-Mex" had an exciting ring. It evoked images of cantinas, cowboys and the Wild West. Dozens of Tex-Mex restaurants sprang up in Paris, and the trend spread across Europe and on to Bangkok, Buenos Aires and Abu Dhabi. Tortilla chips, margaritas and chili con carne are now well-known around the world." --- Houston Post, 6 part series, all online:

Los Angeles Times Cookbook: Old Time California, Mexican and Spanish Recipes [1905]

History & evolution:

• Mexico and Highland Central America, Cambridge World History of Food
• Mexican cuisine, Sally's Place (regional overview)
• About Spanish foods
• Food for the Ancestors, PBS (culture & cuisine)
• TexMex Foods, Handbook of Texas Online
• Foodways of the Rio Grande, New Mexico CultureNet
• First the Mexicans, Then the Food, New York Times (retail food industry)
• New Mexico Cuisine, NM Dept. of Tourism
• Early Texas Cuisine
• Six part history of Tex-Mex, Houston Press

Recommended books:

America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe
American Food: The Gastronomic Story, Evan Jones [chapter III "Padres and Conquistadores"]
Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy
Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [separate entries for specific foods--fajita, tamale, chalupa...]
Food Culture in Mexico, Long-Solis& Vargas
The History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, "The History of Cereals, Maize in the West" (pages 164-176)
New Mexico Cooking: Southwestern Flavors of the Past and Present, Clyde Casey
Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Mexico]
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew J. Smith [Mexican American Food]
Que Vivan Los Tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity/Jeffrey M. Pilcher
The Story of Corn, Betty Fussell
You Eat What You Are, Thelma-Barer-Stein ("Mexico"

The history of bunuelos and churros can be traced to ancient peoples. fritters were known to many cultures and cuisines; each evolving according to local tastes and customs. These foods were introduced to Mexico by Spanish settlers. There are several foods closely related to bunuelos and churros: sopaipillas & fry bread. In other countries, simliar recipes evolved as doughnuts, funnel cake, and waffles.

About bunuelos

"Most countries have their version of bunuelos, or fritters, either sweet or savory, and they are certainly great favorites throughout Spain and Latin America. In many parts of Mexico bunuelos are made of a stiffer dough, which is rolled out thin anywhere up to 12 inches in diameter and then fried crisp and staked up ready for use. In Uruapan...they are broken into small pieces and heated\ quickly in a thick syrup of piloncillo, the raw sugar of Mexico. These of Veracruz are very much like the churros of Spain, but flavored with aniseeds, and served with a syrup."
---The Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy [Harper Row:New York] 1972 (p. 329-330)

About churros

"At every Spanish festival or carnival, one is sure to find a huge cauldron of bubbling oil where Churros are quickly fried, shaped into loops, and threaded into reeds that are then knotted for easy carrying. They are meant to be purchased immediately after frying, usually by the dozens, and are munched on by visitors as they wander about taking tin the sights. Churros are nothing more than fried batter of flour and water, but they are essential to a Spanish breakfast, dipped either in sugar or in a cup of coffee or thick hot chocolate...If one is out on an all-night binge--a juerga, as it is called--it is the custom to end the evening by eating Churros and hot chocolate at the churreria, or churro store, which opens by dawn."
---The Foods and Wines of Spain, Penelope Casas [New York:Knopf] 1982 (p. 342)
[NOTE: this book has a recipe for churros, we can send you a copy if you like]

RECOMMENDED READING:
The Foods and Wines of Spain/Penelope Casas
---recipes for several different kinds of bunuelos; pages introducing desserts (p. 340-1) sum up the ingredients used and holiday connections.

Chile peppers are "New World" foods, so it stands to reason Native Americans (from South/Central America/American Southwest) ate them before the European Explorers discovered these lands. Hot chile peppers were sometimes combined with tomatoes to form an early version of salsa. It is important to note that there are many different kinds of peppers: sweet, bell, Holland. Some of these were introduced later by scientists. Hungarian famous paprika is derived from this commodity. Wilbur Scoville invented the famous chile "heat" scale bearing his name.

ABOUT CHILE PEPPERS: quick & general.

ORIGINS

"The fruits of Capsicum species seem to have a magnetic attraction for confusing colloquila nomes. It began with Columbus discovering them on his first voyage and calling them peppers of the Indies, initiating a mix-up which has lasted to this day... This fruit with many names brows on plants of the genus Capsicum, members of the Solanacae family like the tomatoes and potatoes... There were three species, or species groups, of cultivated chiles in ancient America...The white-flowered and white seeded Capsicum annum, chinense, Capsicum annum was in Mexico to be found, wild, in cultural deposits in the Tehuacan valley dating from 7200 to 5200 B.C..."
---America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe [University of Texas Press:Austin TX] 1994 (p. 60-61)

"Wild chillies were being gathered and eaten in Mexico c.7000BC, and were cultivated there before 3500 BC."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2nd edition, 2007 (p. 171)

CHILE PEPPER MIGRATION

"Interestingly...it was not the Spanish who were responsible for the early diffusion of New World food plants. Rather, it was the Portuguese, aided by local traders following long-used trade routes, who spread American plants though the Old World with almost unbelievable rapidity...Unfortunately, documentation for the routes that chilli peppers followed from the Americas is not as plentiful as that for other New World economic plants... it is highly probable that capsicums accompanied the better-documented Mesoamerican food complex of corn, beans, and squash, as peppers have been closely associated with these plants throughout history...The fiery new spice was readily accepted by the natives of Africa and India...From India, chilli peppers traveled...not only along the Portuguese route back around Africa to Europe but also over ancient trade routes that led either to Europe via the Middle East or to monsoon Asia...In the latter cakes, if the Portuguese had not carried chilli peppers to Southeast Asia and Japan, the new spice would have been spread by Arabic, Gujurati, Chinese, Malaysian, Vietnamese, and Javanese traders...In the Szechuan and Hunan provinces in China, where many New World foods were established within the lifetime of the Spanish conquistadors, there were no read leading from the coast. Nonetheless, American foods were known there by the middle of the sixteenth century, having reached these regions via caravan routes from the Ganges River through Burma and across western China..."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge], Volume One, 2000 (p. 282)

ABOUT PEPPERS IN EUROPE

"Despite a European 'discovery' of the Americas, chilli peppers diffused throughout Europe in circuitous fashion. Following the fall of Granada in 1492, the Spaniards established dominance over the western Mediterranean while the Ottoman Turks succeeded power in northern Africa...the Mediterranean became...two separate seas divided by Italy, Malta, Sicily, with little or no trade or contact between the eastern and western sections. Venice was the center of the spice and Oriental trade of central Europe, and Venice depended on the Ottoman Turks...From central Europe the trade went to Antwerp and the rest of Europe, although Antwerp also received Far Eastern goods from the Portuguese via India, Africa, and Lisbon. It was along these avenues that chili peppers traveled into much of Europe. They were in Italy by 1535...Germany by 1542...England before 1538...the Balkans before 1569...and Moravia by 1585...But except in the Balkans and Turkey, Europeans did not make much use of chilli peppers until the Napoleonic blockade cut off their supply of spices and they turned to Balkan paprika as a substitute. Prior to that, Europeans had mainly grown capsicums in containers as ornamentals."
---Cambridge World History of Food (p. 282)

"We know that Columbus was the first European to see Native Americans consuming capsicum peppers, and our word for them reveals that he was really searching for black pepper and called these 'pimiento' with as much enthusiasm as he called the natives 'Indians.' But the very fact that they could also be found far away as China within a few years has led some scholars to suggest that they may have reached Asia even before they did Europe. It is certain though that the Portuguese brought peppers to their colonies in Asia. Peppers were first described in Europe in the German herbal of Leonard Fuchs in 1542, but he thought they came from India. Like several other New World imports though, it appears that poor people were the only ones willing to eat them; they are not even mentioned in cookbooks which naturally catered to a literate and elite audience."
---Food in Early Modern Europe, Ken Albala [Greenwood Press:Westport CT] 2003 (p. 32)

"Chile is historically associated with the voyage of Columbus (Heiser 1976). Columbus is given credit for introducing chile to Europe, and subsequently to Africa and to Asia. On his first voyage, he encountered a plant whose fruit mimicked the pungency of the black pepper, Piper nigrum L. Columbus called it red pepper because the pods were red. The plant was not the black pepper, but a heretofore unknown plant that was later classified as Capsicum. Capsicum is not related to the Piper genus. In 1493, Peter Martyr (Anghiera 1493) wrote that Columbus brought home "pepper more pungent than that from the Caucasus." Chile spread rapidly across Europe into India, China, and Japan. The new spice, unlike most of the solanums from the Western Hemisphere, was incorporated into the cuisines instantaneously. Probably for the first time, pepper was no longer a luxury spice only the rich could afford. Since its discovery by Columbus, chile has been incorporated into most of the world's cuisines. It has been commercially grown in the United States since at least 1600, when Spanish colonists planted seeds and grew chile using irrigation from the Rio Chama in northern New Mexico (DeWitt and Gerlach 1990)."--- SOURCE

ABOUT PEPPERS IN BRITAIN

"A few new spices reached Britain after the end of the Middle Ages. The Spaniards brought back from Central America several members of the capsicum family, which were naturalized in southern Europe. The larger fruits were imported thence into England under the name of Guinea pepper. The smallest, reddest and hottest of the American capsicums, when dried and powdered, produced cayenne pepper, the 'chyan' of English eighteenth century recipe books."
---Food & Drink in Britain From the Stone Age to the 19th Century, C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago] 1991 (p. 293)

"The use of the term pepper for fruits of the capsicum family dates from the eighteenth century, an allusion to the similar pungency of taste. In particular it refers to the Capsicum annuum, a native of tropical America, which is generally called more fully the sweet pepper (an alternative name in American English is bell pepper)."
---An A to Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 251)

"The word "cayenne" seems to come from kian, the name of the pepper among the Tupi Indians of northeastern South America. The pod type probably originated in what is now French Guiana and was named after either the Cayenne River of the capital of the country, cayenne. It owes its spread to Portugal, whose traders carried it to Europe, Africa, India, and Asia. Although it probably was introduced into Spain before 1500, its circuitous route caused it to be transferred to Britain from India in 1548...In 1597, the botanist John Gerard referred to cayenne as "ginnie or Indian pepper" in his herbal, and in his influential herbal of 1652, Nicholas Culpepper wrote that cayenne was "this violent fruit" that was of considerable service to "help digestion, provoke urine, relieve toothache, preserve the teeth from rottenness, comfort a cold stomach, expel the stone from the kidney, and take away dimness of sight." Cayenne appeared in Miller's The Gardener's and Botanist's Dictionary in 1768, proving it was being cultivated in England--at least in home gardens."
---The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia, Dave DeWitt [William Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 68-69)

"The melegueta pepper enjoyed great popularity during the Elizabethan Age in England, primarily through trade with Portugal."
---ibid (p. 23)

Gerard's Herbal 1633:
"Peppers - pages 364-366. "Capsicum. Ginnie or Indian Pepper. ...Ginnie pepper hath the taste of pepper, but not the power or vertue, notwithstanding in Spaine and sundrie parts of the Indies they do vse to dresse their meate therewith, as we doe with Calecute pepper: but (saith my Authour) it hath in it a malicious qualitie, whereby it is an enemy to the liuer and other of the entrails... It is said to die or colour like Saffron; and being receiued in such sort as Saffron is usually taken, it warmeth the stomacke, and helpeth greatly the digestion of meates."

CHILE PEPPERS IN COLONIAL AMERICA
This passage best sums up the introduction of chile peppers to the United States:

"Peppers of the annuum species were transferred into what is now the American Southwest--first by birds and then by humankind. Botanists believe that the wild annum variety known as chiltepins spread northward from Mexico through dissemination by birds long before Native Americans domesticated peppers and made them part of their trade goods. These chiltepins still grow wild today in Arizona and in South Texas, where they are known as chilipiquins. According to most accounts, chile peppers were introduced the second time into what is now known the United States by Calitan General Juan de Onate, who founded Sante Fe in 1609. However, they may have been introduced to the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico by the Antonio Espejo expedition of 1582-83. According to one of the members of the expedition..."They have no chile, but the native were given some seed to plant." But by 1601, chiles were not on the list of Indian crops, according to colonist Francisco de Valverde..But soon chiles were being grown by Spanish and Indians alike.. We do know that soon after the Spanish arrived, the cultivation of peppers in New Mexico spread rapidly and the pods were grow both in Spanish settlements and native pueblos...During the 1700s, peppers were popping up in other parts of the country. In 1768, according to legend, Minorcan settlers in St. Augustine, Florida, introduced the datil pepper, a land race of the Chinese species...Other introductions were also occuring during the eighteenth century. In 1785, George Washington planted two rows of "bird peppers" and one row of cayenne at Mount Vernon, but it is not known how he acquired the seed. Another influential American, Thomas Jefferson, was also growing peppers from seed imported from Mexico. By the early 1800s, commercial seed varieties became available to the American public. In 1806 a botanist named McMahon listed four varieties for sale, and in 1826, another botanist named Thornburn listed "Long' (cayenne), "Tomato-Shaped' (squash), 'Bell' (oxheart), 'Cherry' and 'Bird' (West Indian) peppers as available for gardeners. Two years later, squash peppers were cultivated in North American gardens and that same year (1828), the 'California Wonder Bell' pepper was first named and grown commercially."
---The Chile Pepper Encyclopedia, Dave DeWitt [William Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 13-4)
[NOTE: This book contains far more information than can be paraphrased here. Your librarian will be happy to help you obtain a copy.]

Food historian Karen Hess observed:
"Bell pepper is a large, flesh mild green pepper, turning into red or gold when fully ripe. Sturtevant cites Lionel Wafer in 1699, who mentions Bell-pepper and Bird-pepper as growing in the Ithsmus of America, and Edward Long in 1774, who lists nine varieties of Capsicum as being under cultivation in Jamaica; of these, "the Bell is esteemed most proper for pickling," Sturtevant repeats. Among numerous references to Capsicum by Jefferson, one unmistakably refers to bell pepper, seeds of which were sent from Mexico in 1824: 'Large Pepper, a good salad the seeds being removed." Plantings of Piperoni in 1774 and Capsicum Major in 1812, among others, would seem to refer to bell pepper as well. Cayenne pepper (Capsicum frutenscens L. var. longum Bailey) was planted by Jefferson as early as 1767. The presence of hot peppers in the West Indies had been chronicled since 1494, according to Sturtevant. Long pepper was a popular name for the elongated cayenne, but it had been appropriated from the eastern Piper longum, the fruit spikelet of which had fallen into disuse by the time of the voyages of discovery. The use of capsicum peppers seems to have come to Virginia by way of the West Indies (see Pepper Pot an Gumbo, for instance). The choice of pepper for Pepper Vinegar is not altogether clear. I opt for cayenne because of the implied heat in comparing the flavor to that of black pepper; also Jefferson correspondence in 1813 (Garden Book) refers to vinegar in which cayenne is steeped brine used as seasoning. (This must have been the basis for later southern barbecue mixtures.) However, some argue for the use of mild pepper in this recipe, but I think that Mrs. Randolph would have so specified. In any event, the use of hot peppers in traditional Virginia cookery was highly skilled and discreet, just enough to brighten the taste, not to set it afire."
---The Virginia Housewife, Mary Randolph, with historical notes and commentaries by Karen Hess, facsimile 1824 edition [University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984 (p. 282-3)
[NOTE: This book contains several additional notes and selected recipes for Capsicum, Bell and Cayenne peppers. Your librarian will be happy to help you obtain a copy.]

RECOMMENDED READING:

• Cambridge World History of Food/Kiple & Ornelas
• Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink/Mariani
• Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America/Smith

About chili

Notes on the history of Tex-Mex foods.

It is interesting to note that El Charro resturant, Tucson, AZ, (one of several places that is credited for inventing the chimichanga) doesn't take credit for inventing the item in their history of the restaurant.

If you need more information, ask your librarian to help you find these articles:

• The great chimichanga quest, Arizona Highways, September 1997 (p. 32+)
• Chimichanga mysteries, Sunset, October 1999 (p. 40+)

ABOUT AVOCADOS

Food historians generally agree this New World food originated in Central America. There is much debate regarding the exact origin and subsequent dispersion of this fruit. Notes here:

"The avocado (Persia americana) apparently originated in Central America, where it was cultivated as many as 7,000 years ago. It was grown some 5,000 years ago in Mexico and, but the time of Christopher Columbus, had become a food as far south as Peru, where it is called palta. Legend has it that Hernando Cortes found avocados flourishing around what is now Mexico City in 1519. The English word "avocado" is derived from the Aztec ahuacatl, which the Spaniards passed along transliterated as aguacate."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000, Volume Two (p. 1725)

"The avocado tree, a member of the laurel family, is native to subtropical America, where it has been cultivated for over 7,000 years, as archaeological remains demonstrate. There are three original races of species. The Mexican type, which was called by the Aztecs ahuacatl...The Guatemalan type...and the West Indian type."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 43)

"We are also told that the avocado is a native of Peru...this is an error...caused because it was in Peru that the Spaniards found it first. But Pizarro entered Peru only in 1527, while th avocado had already been described in 1519 in the Suma de geografia of Margin Fernandex de Encisco, who discivered it near what is now Santa Marta, Colombia. We are told too that avocados were first cultivated in Peru during what is called the 'Formative Period' of Peruvian agriculture, which runs from 650AD to the beginning of our era...however, Garcilaco di la Vega...wrote more plausible that it was brought from Ecuador into the warm valleys near Cuzco by the Inca Tupac Yupanqui, who reigned in the fifteenth century AD..."
---Food, Waverly Root, [Smithmark:New York] 1980 (p.17-18)

Foods America Gave the World, (A Hyatt Verrill, page 168) concludes "We have the ancient pre-Incan races of Peru, the Mayas of Yucatan and Guatemala and the Aztecs of Mexico to thank for having given us this splendid fruit...Whether the pre-Incans, the Mayas or Aztecs were the first to see the possibilities in the development of the aguacate [avocado] will probably never be known, for the fruits are depicted on pottery and sculptures of all these immeasurably ancient races."

"The small, nearly spherical seeds of wild avocados are found in archaeolgical sites in Oazaca and the Tehucan valley of Mexico at dates of 8000 to 7000 B.C. They are seeds of the cold and drought-toleratant upland avocado...tree...By 6000 to 5000 B.C. they were being cultivated in Tehuacan, as shown by the increasing size of the fruit and the change in seed shape from the round wild type to egg-shaped. The two other races are the Guatemalan...and the misnamed West Indian race, which was not found in the West Indies until after the arrival of the Europeans."
---America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe [University of Texas Press:Austin] 1994 (p. 44-5)

Notes regarding regional dispersion are chronicled here:

"One of the first Europeans to taste the avocado was Fernando de Oviedo, who noticed its external resemblance to a dessert pear, so ate it with cheese; but other Spaniards preferred to add sugar, or salt and pepper...The same applies to the first mention in English, in 1672, by W. Hughes, a royal physician, after a visit to Jamaica...However, despite such favourable comments, the avocado was slow to spread from its native region. For Europeans, it remained for a long time no more than a tropical curiosity; and commercial cultivation in N. America only began in California in the 1870s and in Florida from about 1900."
---Oxford Companion to Food (p. 43)

"The Spaniards ate avocados with sugar, salt, or both, and introduced them into other parts of the Americas as well as other tropical parts of the world. But until the end of World War II, avocados were virtually unknown in Europe."
---Cambridge World History of Food (p. 1725)

"The avocado, which originated in Mexico, Guatemala, or South America...its cultivation spread slowly from the New World to the Old, but in recent times it has been grown in nearly all countries where the climate was suitable. Among these may be mentioned India, where it has been cultivated cince 1860, the South Sea Islands, and the countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea."
---Food Products from Afar, E.H.S. Bailey and Herbert S. Bailey [The Century Co.:New York] 1922 (p. 213-4)

There is also some controversy as to where (in the United States) avocados were first grown for commercial purposes. Waverly Root states "I have no reason for doubting the report that a horticulturist named Henry Perrine first planted avocados in Florida in 1833, but avocado culture did not get un way on a commercial scale in the United States until about 1900, when Florida fruit growers became interested in its possibilities."(Food, page 18). Eating in America: A History, (Waverly Root & Richard de Rochemont, page 297) adds: The first person known to have taken it [avocado] seriously was a horticulturist named George B. Cellon, who, circa 1900, learned by experimentation that grafted trees could be induced to perpetuate superior strains of this fruit in Florida...The tree grew well on the slightly sandy soils of Florida, and an avocado industry was launched in that state, an example followed shortly afterwards by California."

This claim is disputed by the California Avocado Commission, which dates their industry beginning in the 1870s. Davidson also cites this information, "Commercial cultivation on N. America only began in California in the 1870s and in Florida form about 1900." (Oxford, page 43). "This fruit was introduced into California at Santa Barbara in 1870, and since that time many orchards of from five to ten acres have been planted," confirms Food Products from Afar, Bailey & Bailey (p. 215).

The History of the Avocado, California Avocado Commission
Avocados, California Rare Fruit Growers Assn.--note the different cultivar dates for specific trees! Avocado source, links to proceedings of the World Avocado Congress, global production statistics & industry experts

ABOUT GUACAMOLE

"There is good reason for the popularity of the avocado. The diet of pre-Columbian America was what we would consider low fat. The avocado is one of three fruits that contain large amounts of oil in their flesh...In addition to fat, avocados also contain two or three times as much protein as other fruits, and many vitamins as well. We know little about how avocados, or paltas, as they are called in Peru, were eaten in pre-Columbian America. The one recipe that we may be sure of is the Aztec ahuaca-hulli, or avocado sauce, familiar to all of us today as guacamole. This combination of mashed avocados, with or without a few chopped tomatoes and onions, because the Aztecs used New World onions, and with perhaps some coriander leaves to replace New World coriander...is the pre-Columbian dish most easily accessible to us...If few pre-Columbian recipes for the avocado survive, the European writers more than make upfor the lack. The Europeans fell into three camps. There were those who ate their avocados with salt, those who ate them with sugar, and those who liked them both ways." ---America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe [University of Texas Press:Austin] 1994 (p. 44-45) [NOTE: This book has more information than can be paraphrased here. Ask your librarian to help you find a copy.]

ABOUT MAIZE

"It is usually accepted that maize was growing in Meosamerica by betweent 8000 and 5000 B.C. Reliable archaeolgical evidence of domesticated maize dates froma s long ago as 3600 B.C. in what is now central Mexico, and it is thought that domestication of the crop first took place--doubtless at a much earlier date--in this general area. To the south, a separate domestication of maize may have been accomplished at about the same time by South American Indians in the central Andes, or the crop may simply have traveled to that area from its point of origin. To the north, however, there seems to be no doubt that domesticated maize arrived much later, with locally adapted varieties appearing in the Eastern Woodlands of North America around A.D. and in the central portion of the continent by about A.D. 600. Indigenous American societies intensively cultivated maize, and it became a principal staple of the Aztecs, the Inca, the Maya, and many groups of North American Indians--especially those in what is now the southeastern United States--for several centuries before the arrival of Europeans. All parts of the plant were used for food and other purposes; the Inca even made maize "beers," known collectively as chica...Chritopher Columbus carried maize to Spain, where by 1500 or so it was under cultivation. Before many years had passed, maize was being grown throughout the Iberian and Italian peninsula and had appeared as a garden vegetable in England and central Europe...By the seventeenth cnetury, maize had become an important European field crop and staple food, especially in those areas that now comprise northern Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia, and Bulgaria, in addition to Spain...As the new crop spread across Europe, its New World origins were largely forgotten, but in each locality people at least knew that it came from somwhere else..."Corn" was a generic word meaning simply "grain" in a number of European languages, so that its many aliases acutally identified maize as "foreign grain," and the American usage of "corn" for maize grows out of such terminology--in this case, "corn" is the shortened version of the English term "Indian corn," by which the colonists meant, of course, "Indian grain," or maize. During the sixteenth century, Portuguese traders carried the plant to East Africa and Asia, whereas Arab merchants were probably responsible for its introduction to North Africa...The crop spread rapidly throughout the African continent...In Asia, maize spread along trade routes from the Indian subcontinent, reaching points in China and Southeast Asia by the mid-sixteenth century, and during the eighteenth it was much expanded as a crop in China. From there, it spread to Korea and Japan."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] Volume Two, 2000 (p. 1805-6)

Maya & maize

"The Maya creation legend in the Popul Vuh, describes how man was made from corn. Corn is the most important ingredient in any of the agricultural offerings to the deities and plays a crucial part in the daily diet of the village Maya. The average adult consumes at least to kils of corn each day--more than four pounds. Every part of the plant is put to use. The husk is utilized as the wrappings for tamales and cigarettes. It also serves as a dish or pot scourer and is used to remove stains from laundry. Husks may serve a s afilling for stuffing pillows or other soft objects and even provide a medicinal tea. The stigmas from the maize plant serve as a diuretic. Bakal, the cob, is used as fuel for fires, bottle stoppers and toilet paper. Ground and mixed with honey dregs, the cob becomes forage for the animals. The leaves, green stalks and roots serve as fertilizer. A few Maya still remember how to use their maize kernels to divine the future. This method of foretelling the future is called xixte and means 'to separate the good from the bad.' Xixte was at one time a principal method used by the xmen to determine the outcome of an illness. To ascertain a prognosis, a portion of grains is singled out from a container and arranged in piles of four. A favourable outcome for the problem at hand can be predicted if the piles of four are even in number and the remaining pile of kernels is also even. If both of the piles are split, one even and one uneven, then the outcome of the event is difficult to ascertain. There is another method of using maize to predict the course of an illness. When corn kernels are dropped into a bowl of atole or Saka, floating kernels indicate a favorable prognosis. When corn sinks to the bottom of the bowl, the outcome of the situation appears grim. Ix K'anle'ox, the goddess of corn and mother of all the gods, is associated with the color yellow and the cardinal direction, South."
---Mayan Cooking: Reciepes from the Sun Kingdoms of Mexico, Cherry Hamman [Hippocrene Books:New York]1998 (p. 340-1)

"Maize gods native to Central and South America were far more ancient than Christian saints...For these Maya descendents, the association of maize with blood is as old as the oldest Maya memory, as old as the first planted seed. As their culture evolved, ancient Maya feritlized seeds of corn with the sacrificed blood of their enemies and the blood of their own kings. For the Maya a single kernel of corn is symbolic of what Christians smubolize as the holy cross-the tragic and monstrous truth that the seed of life is death. Today, in the Maya ruins of Palenque in the Yucatan jungle, the Temple of the Foliated Cross reveals in its carvings what Christians call the Tree of Life. For the Maya, it is the World Tree in the shape of a cross, where the crosspiece or branches are formed by leaves and silk-topped ears of corn, each ear a human head. The corn sprouts from a trunk of blood rooted in the head of the Water-Lily Monster that floats on the primal waters of the Underworld. Here out of the monster's mouth a god is born--God K, the Young Lord, the Maize God...So subtle and complex is the ancient Maya language of corn, carved in stone, painted on walls and pottery and screen-folds made of beaten bark, that only in recent years have its mysteries begun to be decoded. We now see that the Maya maize God, like the medieval Christian God, stands at the center of a cluster of images and symbols that evolved slowly but took primary shape in the third to ninth centuries after Christ, a period rich in Christian saints and Maya maize gods. Rich also in Maya script which recorded the history and destiny of a people...Maya hieroglyphs, once we can read them, may help us learn what 'discovery,' 'growth' and 'begining' meant to a civilization built on the symbolic as well as the physical potency of maize...The life cycle of maize was the great metaphor of Maya life, the root of its language, its rituals and its calendar. We now see that the many configurations of the Maize God evolved from the seed of life embodied in the Kan sign. Kan is only one of the twenty named days of the Maya calendar, but wherever the kan sign appears in conjunction with a god, it refers to crops and the powers for good and evil that affect them. Kan is also the syllable wah, which denotes bread, tortilla, tamale. Bowls holding Kan sins may represent offerings of maize, and therefore blood offerings and other precious things..."
---The Story of Corn, Betty Fussell [North Point Press:New York] 1992 (p. 30-34)

• Maize/National Geographic
• Maize/Purdue University
• Maize in Peru/Cornell's findings

Recommended reading

• America's First Cuisines/Coe
• Histories of Maize/Benz, Tykot & Stoller
• Maize and Grace: Africa's Encounter with a New World CRop 1500-2000/McCann
• Oxford Encylopedia of Food and Drink in America/Smith
• The Story of Corn/Fussell

ABOUT MOLE

Mole is a new world food; its invention is generally credited to the Aztecs. Turkeys (and other fowl) were likewise enjoyed by ancient cultures. The two were sometimes combined in casserole. This is the foundation for mole. In Mexico and other South/Central American countries, mole poblano de guajolote (turkey in mole poblano) is now connected with Christmas, thanks to Spanish socio-culinary influence.

"The sauce dishes or casseroles contained a wide sample of the animal kingdom, as well as some purely vegetarian mixtures. The lords also ate many kinds of casseroles;...one kind of casserole of fowl made in their fashion,with read chile and with tomatoes, and ground squash seeds, a dish which is now called pipian; they ate another casserole of fowl made with yellow chile...They ate many kinds of chile stews...one kind was made of yellow chile, another kind of chimolli (sauce with chile) was made of chiltecpitl (a kind of chile) and tomatoes; another kind of chilmolli was made of yellow chile and tomatoes'."
---America's First Cuisines, [University of Texas Press:Austin] 1994 (p. 115)
[NOTE: this book has much more information than can be paraphrased. If you need additional details about early American foods ask your librarian to help you find a copy.]

About mole poblano

"The idea of using chocolate as a flavoring in cooked food would have been horrifying to the Aztecs--just as Christians could not conceive of using communion wine to make, say, coq au vin. In all the pages of Sahagun that deal with Aztec cuisine and with chocolate, there is not a hint that it ever entered into an Aztec dish. Yet today many food writers and gourmets consider one particular dish, the famous pavo in mole poblano, which contains chocolate, to represent the pinnacle of the Mexican cooking tradition. The pavo in the dish's title is the Mexican-Sapnish word for turkey, a Mesoamerican domesticate, to be sure: mole is a creolized verion of the Nahuatl milli, (sauce); and poblano refers to the palce of origin of the dish and its sauce, the Colonial Puebla de los Angeles; this beautiful city, unlike others in central Mexico, has no Aztec foundations--and neither does the dish, regardless of what food writers may say. Its true, creolized and hispanicized nature is given away by [the] list of ingredients from an authentic recipe...Ten of [the] 19 ingredients are Old World."
---The True History of Chocolate, Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe [Thames and Hudson:London] 1996 (p. 216-7)
[NOTE: This book is considred one of the best treatises on the history of chocolate. It is well documented and contains an extensive bibliography for further study. Ask your librarian to help you find a copy.]

"Mole. The most famous Mexican sauce, takes its name from moli, a Nahuatl word meaning mixture or concoction; and it is indeed a mixture of many ingredients. The constant factor among the numerous different versions is the starring role played by chili peppers and the fact that the mixture is always cooked. Mole poblano de guajolote...or Pabo in mole poblano...is a dish of some antiquity and has achieved some fame for the inclusion of bitter chocolate in the sauce, although the quantity is small and the effect not separably discernable. Some have thought that the dish was made, with chocolate already added, in pre-Columbian times, but the lack of evidence for pre-Columbian use of chocolate as an ingredient in any food dish tells against this conclusively; and indeed the attitude of the Aztecs to chocolate was such that they would have been no more likely to use it in cooking than Spaniards would have been to cook with communion wine. Quite apart from this particular question, it is doubtful whether mole poblano dates as far back as the 17th century, as has been generally believed."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 511)

"The wild turkey or guajalote is indigenious to Mexico and the New World. For centuries before the Spaniards arrived, the nobility ate roasted turkey, quail, and casseroles of turkey prepared with chilies, tomatoes and ground pumpkin seeds. The turkey is still one of the most important foods in Yucatan....No special festival is compelte without mole poblano de guajolote. It is prepared with loving care, and even today, more often than not, it is the one dish that brinds out the metate: chilies, spices, nuts, seeds, and tortillas are all ground on it...It would be impossible to say just how many versions there are; every cook from the smallest hamlet to the grandest city home has her own specials touch--a vew more mulatos here, less anchos, or a touch of chipotle cooke with the turkey; some insist on onion, others won't tolerate it. Many cooks in Puebla itself insist on toasting the chilies, often mulatos only, over an open fire and grinding them dry...The world mole comes from the Nahuatl word molli, meaning "concoction." The majority of people respond, when mole is mentioned, with "Oh yes, I know-that chocolate sauce. I wouldn't like it." Well, it isn't a chocolate sauce. One little piece of chocolate (and in Mexico we used to grind toasted cacao beans for the mole) goes into a large casserole full of rich dark-brown and russett chiles... There are many stories attached to its beginnings but they all agree that the mole was born in one of the convents in the city of Puebla de los Angeles. The most repeated version...it that Sr Andrea, sister superior of the Santa Rosa Convent, wished to honor the Archbishop for having a convent especially constructed for her order; trying to blend the ingredients of the New World with those of the old, she created mole poblano. Yet another story goes that the Viceroy, Don Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, was visiting Puebla. This time it was Fray Pascual who was preparing the banquet at the convent where he was going to eat. Turkeys were cooking in cazuelas on the fire; as Fray Pascual, scolding his assistants for their untidiness, gathered up all the spices they had been using, and putting them together onto a tray, a sudden gust of wind swept across the kitchen and they spilled over the cazauelas."
---The Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy, [Harper & Row:New York] 1972 (p. 199-200) [NOTE: this book contains recipes for other moles with history notes.]

More on chocolate & turkey.

As such, quesadillas are a blend of Old World tradition and New World foods. Recipes for turnover-type foods (aka portable filled pastries, both sweet and savory) were popular fare in Medieval Spain. About portable pies. Chicken (chicken quesadillas) is also an Old World food, introduced to Mexico by the Spanish settlers in the 16th century. New World fowl included turkey, strikingly similar in flavor and composition. The turkey, however, was not used for simple snacks. It was saved for special holidays. Cheese (queso/quesa) is also an Old World food.

• History of tomatillos (ancient tomatoes)
• History of chillies
• TACOS, ENCHILADAS AND REFRIED BEANS: THE INVENTION OF MEXICAN-AMERICAN COOKERY
  --check the end notes (bibliography) at the end of the article if you need books/articles
• The Salsa Saga (current trends)
• "Salsa Plays Ketchup," American Demographics Magazine, January 1998

Recipes for sopaipilla/fry-bread foods were known to ancient old world cooks. Deep fried doughs with flavored with honey, nuts and spices were enjoyed by peoples of Greece, Rome and Egypt. In many places they were called fritters. The Spanish word "sopaipa" (from which sopaipilla is derived) means honey cake. "Sopaipilla. A deep fried fritter usually served with honey. Sopaipillas, whose name is from the Spanish, are a staple of Mexican-American menus...history reveals they originated in Olde Town, Albuquerque, [New Mexico] about 300 years ago...Diana Kennedy, in her Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico (1978), writes "For years I have been denying to the aficianados of the sopaipillas of New Mexico that they have a Mexican counterpart. I have now disvovered that they can be found, though rarely, in the state of Chihiahua...I have yet to see them on an restaurant menus in the north." A good sopaipilla is supposed to resemble a puffed-up pillow; if cut into a round shape, it is called a "buneulo." "Sopaipilla" was first found in American print circa 1940."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 303)

History of the word sopaipilla

ABOUT NAVAJO FRY BREAD

One of the foods many people today connect with the Navajo people is fry bread. If you visit Navajo country you will find dozens of "traditional" fry bread stands. Many of these stands are run by families working out of modified Rvs. Most gift shops in the area sell souvenier bags of "Traditional Indian Fry Bread Mix, " "Ancient Anasazi Beans," "Blue corn tortilla mix," and a host of other Native American "traditional" (prepackaged) foodstuffs. These inexpensive items are very popular with the tourists.

True, Native Americans in most areas traditionally ground corn/maize into flour for tortillas and other breadstuffs. Navajos included. These items were baked, dried, fried and cooked on griddles. These cooks used leavening agents (wood ash, lime, lye, sourdough). They also used nut oils & animal fat to cook some of these corn-based foods. Check out The Story of Corn, Betty Fussell, (pps. 167-248) for details.

The problem with current recipe for "traditional" Navajo Fry Bread (or Indian Fry Bread, Squaw Bread) is that the ingredients (wheat flour & baking powder [1850]) and cooking utensils (frying pans, iron cauldrons) were not traditionally used by Native Americans. They were introduced to this continent by European explorers & pioneer families. European and American cookbooks from all time periods abound with recipes for fried breadstuffs.

About fritters

Why wheat & baking powder? Food historians tell us some Native Americans embraced wheat flour and modern leaveners for practical reasons. They could easily obtain the finished products through trade and they adapted well to traditional recipes. To boot? These wheat-based products proved appealing to European/American travelers/tourists.The current recipe for Navajo fry bread is very tasty and sells well.

"Fry bread, the important of the foods of the pan-Indian movement and the symbol of intertribal unity, does not represent precontact indigenous foods ro cooking style. The origins of this dish are apparently in the nineteenth century and reflect the ongoing cultural change that happens everywhere. Fry bread usually is made with a dough of wheat flour and milk or water. The dough is leavened with yeast or baking powder, kneaded, flattened into individual patties of farying sizes, and then deep fried. Fry bread is served with a variety of accompaniments, such as honey, maple syrup, and sugar, and sometimes wrapped around hot dogs or other filling in place of a bun or tortilla. The Lakota today sometimes eat fry bread topped with pureed and sweetened fruit pudding. In a variation, popovers (stuffed fry bread) are made by piling raw bread dough with a mixture of cooked beef, chili,onion, tomato sauce, and taco seasoning and then folding and deep frying the result. This dish sometimes is likened to tacos. Whatver the combinations, fry bread has a central role at powwows. Some historians believe that ggru bread originated as a result to Navajo incarceration at Fort Sumner, where the Indians had access only to flour and lard. Other see a connection to Spanish deep-fried churros and sopaipillas, which are flat, lard-fried, breadlike treats often served with sugar. Accroding to another theory, the Plains Indians were among the first to make fry bread, having been influenced in the early nineteenth century by the French, who were particuarly noted for their fine yeast-leavened breads and who, more importantly, maintained influence and contact with tribes throughout the Mississippi area from Canada to Louisiana. Still another claim is that fry bread resulted from the creative efforts of inventive reservation women with government rations."
---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 169)

"In frontier America, as in colonial America, any form of bread made with corn instead of wheat was the sad paste of despair," writes Ms. Fussell (p. 220). "Native corn eaters on the Southwest, whose caste status did not depend upon wheat, nonetheless incorporated wheat into their cornmeal pastes as the incorporated the Madonna into their Corn Mothers. A recipe for contemporary Navaho cake, in Traditional Navajo Foods and Cooking [1983], is a true child of the hybrid cuisine engendered when wheat met corn. (p. 225).

The earliest recipe we have for modern fry bread dates to the early 1930s:

"Squaw bread..2 tablespoons Royal baking powder, 1 quart like warm water, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon compound, flour enough to make about like biscuit dough. Roll and cut any shape desired. Fry in kettle of boiling compound. Recipe from Nancy Rogers Ware (Cherokee)"
---Indian Cook Book, The Indian Women's Club of Tulsa, Oklahoma [1932-33] (p. 7)

The origins of traditional foods such as tacos cannot usually be traced to a particular year or person. They are foods that evolved because the ingredients and technology needed to cook them were readily available. The history of tacos begins with the story of corn and the cooking of tortillas.

"To most people in the United States, a taco is a tortilla bent in half to form a deep U shape, then fried crisp and stuffed to overflowing with ground beef, shredded iceberg lettuce, sliced tomato, and grated cheese. Throughout Mexico, however the simple taco consumed by millions of people daily is a fresh, hot tortilla rolled around some shredded meat or mashed beans and liberally doused with any one of the endless variety of sauces for which Mexico is justly famed, but which are sadly misrepresented this side of the border...Tacos are usually eaten as a snack between meals, in the evening with a bowl of soup for supper, or as an appetizer before the main meal of the day."
---The Tortilla Book, Diana Kennedy [Harper & Row:New York] 1975 (p. 53-4)

When did tacos become popular in the United States?

TACOS, ENCHILADAS AND REFRIED BEANS: THE INVENTION OF MEXICAN-AMERICAN COOKERY, Andrew F. Smith

"1931--The Los Angeles restaurant El Cholo opens at 1121 South Western Avenue in a courtyard with a mission-style fountain. Proprietress Rosa Borquez serves enchiladas, chiles rellenos, Sonoran-style chimichangas, burritos, tacos and green-corn and cheddar tamales..."
The Food Chronology, James L. Trager [Henry Hot:New York] 1995 (p. 467)

According to El Cholo this restaurant opened in 1927. The history portion of the site does not mention tacos.

"Taco...in Mexico this refers to a stuffed and folded tortilla, but in the United States a taco' is more commonly a crisp fried tortilla shaped into a U and filled with various stuffings. The word was first printed in English in 1930....The word is Mexican-Spanish, meaning a "wad" or "plug," but colloquially refers to a light meal or snack...A National chain of taco stands under the name of "Taco Bell" was begun in 1962 by Glen Bell in Downey, California. It is now owned by Pepsico, Inc...."
---The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 321)

"Taco salad...This salad arrived with the Tex-Mex fast-food franchises, which began to pepper the country in the 60s...The first recipe I could find for Taco Salad appeared in the May 1968 issue of Sunset [magazine]...The reader who submitted the Taco Salad was a Californian from Alhambra..."
---American Century Cookbook, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 305), includes recipe for taco salad.

"Tamales are made for an occasion, and an occasion is made of making them. Men, women, children, and servants all join in with good humor, shredding, chopping, stirring, and cleaning the husks, until all is prepared. Then everyone converges to form a real assembly line, some daubing the husks with masa while others add the filling, fold, and stack into the steamer...Tamales are fiesta food, the Sunday night special in many restaurants, the ceremonial food prepared in honor of the dead on All Saints' Day--and they were eaten by the Mexican rulers long before the Spaniards came to the New World. Those early inhabitants of Mexico also had tamales of corn tassels mixed with aramanth seeds and the meat of ground cherries. And them made them of tender corn, like the uchepos of Michoiacan today. And what an enormous variety there is today, from the smallest norteno to the three-foot sacahuil from the Huastec countury...Probably the most surprising members of the tamal family are the shrimp ones form Escuinapa in Sinaloa. Small unskinned shrimps are used...In Sinaloa, too, they make large tamales like elongated bonbons. They are filled with the usual pork and tomato sauce, but added to it are all sorts of vegetables cut into little strips--zucchini, potatoes, green beans, plantains, and chiles serranos. Chiapas seems to have more than its share of varieties. On the coast there are those of iguana meat and eggs, and inland around Tuxtla Gutierrez the Indians make countless varieites...Tamales colados in Campeche and Merida...are cooked in banana leaves, with a wonderfully savory filling seasoned with achiote and epazote. The tamal itself is made of uncooked tortilla dough that has been diluted in water, strained, and thickened over the fire...Michoaca...is famed for its tamales: the fresh corn uchepos and the corundas--the bread of the Tarascan Indians--made of maize dough leavened with wood ash and wrapped cunningly into rhomboid shapes with the long leaf from the corn stalk...Throughout Mexico there are tamales filled with fish, pumpkin, pineapple, and peanuts, and those made of black and purple corn and rice. Wherever you go you will find something different...The tamales from central Mexico have a white, spongy dough that bears no resemblance to the rather soggy, grayish dough of most commercial tamales available here [in the United States]. Today the Mexican housewife has a choice of many first-class flour prepared especially for tamales."
---The Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy [Harper & Row:New York] 1972 (p. 84-88) [NOTE: This book contains several tamale recipes.]

Food historian Sophie Coe noted "Paintings of Classic Maya vases show us plates of round objects with dark spirals on their upper surfaces, exactly the patter one would expect on the cut top of a tamale filled in this fashion...Today tamales are always werved with their wrappers, but this may be because postconquest additions like lard and broth make them too sloppy to be served conveniently without them." America's First Cuisines, [University of Texas Press:Austin] 1994 (p. 148)

What kinds of tamales did the Aztecs eat?

"It is said that tamales saved Hernando Cortes and his men from starvation in Mexico. When the Aztecs realized that the Spanish soldiers were not (as had been thought because of their "pure" white skin) high priests from Quetzalcoatl, the god of plenty, they stopped giving the invaders food. Cortes, howeever, had won the loved of a woman named Malinche and told her he would have to leave if his men could not obtain food. Malinche told Cortes to storm the gates of the city on a certain evening. He did, and Malinche led a group of friends who bombard the Spaniards with tamales."
---American Heritage Cookbook: and Illustrated History of American Eating and Drinking, Menus and Recipes, [American Heritage Publishing CO.:New York] 1964 (p. 398)

"Tamales...are an important feature of Mexican food and date back to pre-Columbian times. A specially prepared cornmeal dough, usually stuffed with something but sometimes cooked blind, is steamed inside little...packages of carefully trimmed corn husks or similar wrappings such as banana leaf. The dough is...made from a particular kind of ground nixtamalized corn kernals, and pure lard (which was not used...in pre-Columbian times). It produces what could be described as an aromatic bun with the consistency of firm polenta. Size and fillings vary widely...Sweet tamales are made as well as savoury ones...Tamales are almost invariably eaten with atole, corn gruel. They remain, as in the past, an important festival food...However, tamales have become much more than just a festival food, being available at all seasons; they can be bought from street vendors for breakfast."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 780)

"Tamale. A term describing a wide range of dishes based on a cornmeal-flour dough that is placed inside cornhusks (sometimes a banana leaf) and then steamed. Tamales are of Mexican origin and were enjoyed by the Aztecs (the word comes from the Nahuatl tamalli) in several versions, from appetizer to sweet dessert. In Mexico they are traditionally served in restaurants on Sunday nights and as a ceremonial food on All Saints' Day. As early as 1612 Englishman Captain John Smith mentioned a kind of tamale made by the Indians of Virginia, and by 1691 note was made by others of a bean-filled tamale of the Southwest...Tamale pie. A Dish of cornmeal mush milled with chopped meat and a hot chili sauce. The term first appeared in 1911."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 322)

Tamales online, GourmetSleuth (good for history, customs & pictures)

About Tamale Pie

"Origin of Tamale Pie. In The Dictionary of American Food and Drink (revised edition, 1994), John Mariani writes that the term "tamale pie" first appeared in print in 1911. It may be so, but my own research has turned up nothing that predates World War I. Then, as during World War II, women were urged to save meat. Conservation Recipes (1918), a booklet compiled by the Mobliized Women's Organization of Berkeley and published by the Berkeley Unit, Council of Defence Women's Committee, offers five recipes for Tamale Pie, each from a different woman. All are completely meatless and all contain corn, cornmeal, and tomatoes in some form (puree, sauce, canned tomates., etc.). Some enrich the mix with ripe olives or cheese, and some don't. Tamale pie also appears in Everyday Foods in Wartime (1918) by Mary Swartz Rose, assistant professor, Department of Nutrition, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York...The Tamale Loaf in Good Housekeeping's Book of Menus, Recipes, and Household Discoveries (1922) also adds ground beef, only here it's cooked, then ground...The July 1941 issue of Sunset published a tamale pie in its popular "Kitchen Cabinet" column and called it a version of "a long-time Western favorite." A Chicken Tamale Pie (with canned corn) makes the 1943 edition of Joy of Cooking and another chicken variation, the 1948 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Tamale pie surged in popularity after World War II, when, according to Gerry Schremp (Kitchen Culture: Fifty Years of Food Fads, 1991), it became the darling of potluck suppers."
---The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century, Jean Anderson [Clarkson Potter:New York] 1997 (p. 148)

Tamale Pie, recipe circa 1905

RECOMMENDED READING
America's First Cuisines/Sophie D. Coe
The Story of Corn/Betty Fussell

First, there was maize. Then, there were tortillas:

"Tortilla...a round, thin unleavened bread made from ground maize, a basic food of Mesoamerica. It is not known how many millennia this has been a staple; but when the conquistadores arrived in the New World in the late 15th century, they discovered that the inhabitants made flat corn breads. The native Nahuatl name for these was tlaxcalli and the Spanish gave them the name tortilla...The art of tortilla-making was highly developed by the native Mesoamericans; 17th century Spanish observed, Francisco Hernandez, remarked on the fine, almost transparent tortillas prepared for important people....Fresh tortillas are eaten as bread, used as plate and spoon, or filled to make composite dishes such as tacos and enchiladas."
---The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 803)

"The most common and popular antojito (appetizer) of all is the everyday taco. You just take a warm tortilla, put some cooked and shredded meat across it, couse the meat with a sauce, and roll up the tortilla. In true Mexican style, which you tip one end of it toward your mouth you should curl the other up with your little finger so that none of the sauce is lost. Not quite so common is the fried taco...Of course, there are exceptions to this...for in parts of Jalisco and Sinaloa they make thin tortillas especially for crisp tacos, and in Yucatan the cotzito is a taco, tightly rolled around some shredded meat and fried crisp. In Chihuahua and Baja California they just double the tortilla over and fry it--but it is practically never fried crisp."
---The Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy [Harper & Row:New York] 1972 (p. 116-7)

"Tortillas are small flat maize-flour cakes served hot with a variety of fillings of toppings. They are of Mexican origin, and have become more widely known in the late twentieth century owing to the increasing popularity of Tex-Mex cuisine. Etymologically, the word means virtually 'little tart'. It is an American Spanish diminutive of the Spanish torta, 'round cake', which in turn goes back to late Latin torta (probably source of English tart). It was first mentioned in an English text as long ago as the end of the seventeenth century ( Tartilloes are small Cakes made of the Flower of Indian Corn,' William Dampier, New Voyage Round World, 1699), but it did not really become established until the mid-ninetheenth century."
---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford Univeristy Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 347)

"Tortilla...The world comes from the Spanish-American diminutive for the Spanish torta, "round cake." (In Spain, the tortilla espanola is more like an omelet.)"
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariana [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 330)

"A Spanish tortilla has nothing in common with its Mexican counterpart except its Latin root--torte, meaning a round cake...a Spanish tortilla is simply a potato omelet.."
---The Foods and Wines of Spain, Penelope Casas [Alfred A. Knopf:New York] 1982 (p. 163)

RECOMMENDED READING
1. America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe
2. The Story of Corn, Betty Fussell

About these notes: Food history can be a complicated topic. These notes are not meant to be a comprehensive treatment of the subject, but a summary of salient points supported with culinary evidence. If you need more information we suggest you start by asking your librarian to help you find the books and articles cited in these notes. Article databases are good for locating current recipes, consumer trends, and new products.
Have questions?

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Research conducted by Lynne Olver, editor The Food Timeline. About this site.