About Mexican & TexMex cuisine ancient Mayas & Aztecs atole and pozole avocados, mole & guacamole bunuelos & churros burritos chili con carne chili peppers chimichangas enchiladas fajitas flan

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

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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

Suggested reading:

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]
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.

"The burrito, meaning literally little burro or donkey, became irreversibly linked to the tortilla-rolled packages. Burrito lovers David Thomsen and Derek Wilson believe that the modern burrito originated "in the dusty borderlands between Tucson and Los Angeles." The word burrito first saw print in America in 1934. It was sold at Los Angeles's famed El Cholo Spanish Cafe during the 1930s. Burritos entered Mexican-American cuisine in other parts of the Southwest around the 1950s and went nationwide a decade later."
---Tacos, Enchiladas and Refried Beans: The Invention of Mexican-American Cookery, Andrew F. Smith
[NOTE: this page has been delinked from Oregon State University. You can still find the full-text by searching Google and pulling it from the cached copy.]

"Burrito. A tortila rolled and cooked on a griddle, then filled with a variety of coniments. Burritos are a Mexican-American staple. The word, from Spanish for "little donkey," first saw print in America in 1934. If fried, the burrito becomes a chimichanga."
---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink," John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 48)

Recommended reading:
Burritos-A Search for Beginnings, Peter Fox, Washington Post, November 4, 1998 (p. E-20)

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+)

Mama Ninfa's brings home fajitas, Houston Press

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)

• 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

  Recommended reading: America's First Cuisines/Sophie D. Coe

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 teh 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.]

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.
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