Tag Archives: food history
Aztec “Farm to Table” Cuisine
By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken
The Aztecs, or as they called themselves, the Mexica, ardently embraced the style of cuisine that we currently call “farm to table.” When they first settled the area that has become Mexico City, the geography was ideal for protection from enemies – swampy land kept flooded by five lakes of brackish water – but was hardly suitable for long-term habitation, much less farming.
The Floating Islands of Mexica Agriculture
The ingenious settlers, as described in detail by Julie Etra in The Eye (February 2023), constructed aqueducts to bring fresh water into the area and rectangular gardening plots, called chinampas, in the lakes (see “The Venice of the West,” elsewhere in this issue). The materials from which the chinampas were constructed provided rich nutrients for growing crops, and the nutrients were replenished naturally by the algae growing in the surrounding water. While the Mexica nobility owned multiple chinampas that were farmed by their servants and captive slaves, the hoi polloi were also granted garden plots, reportedly distributed as one for each family.
Produce from the Chinampas. The primary crop planted on the chinampas was maize – many varieties of corn ranging from almost white to black with a rainbow of colors in between. After the ripe ears were harvested, the kernels were soaked in a home-made clay pot in an alkaline solution of local lime (not the fruit, but limestone, which is composed of organic fossils). The soaking softened the kernels and enriched them with health-enhancing minerals. This process, called nixtamalization, is still used in Mexico today. The corn was then thoroughly washed, dried and ground, always by women, on a grinding slab, or metate, using a stone pestle, or mano. As still happens today, the ground corn was used to make dough (masa) for tortillas or tamales. Corn smut, or huitlacoche, a fungus that grows between the kernels of corn, was harvested and used as a delicacy, as were other naturally occurring edible mushrooms.
Other crops grown on the chinampas were beans, pumpkins and other squash, and many varieties of chiles, including the precursor of the modern-day poblano. Amaranth and chia, both pseudo-grains (actually seeds) were part of the ordinary produce. Small sweet tomatoes were a common crop, as were herbs and spices that were cultivated from wild progenitors such as culantro – a pungent variety of cilantro – and others that are familiar today, including epazote, hoja santa, and annato bushes, which produced achiote. Spices were ground in a stone molcajete using another stone – implements resembling a mortar and pestle. Dishes could also be cooked and served in large molcajetes, and since the stone retains the flavors of spices, subsequent uses of the same implement instantly provided flavor to the dish being prepared.
Fish and Game. While maize prepared in different incarnations was the primary farm-to-family staple, the lakes provided tasty protein supplements. Fish and crustaceans were frequent dietary additions, and algae, especially the blue-green spirulina, were harvested from the water and shaped into nutrient-rich cakes and baked. Wild land animals also were caught and cooked – mainly in casseroles – including iguanas, gophers, salamanders, and the occasional deer that came to eat crops but instead were eaten.
Insects. Particular insects became favorites for adding crunch and flavor to foods. Grasshoppers, or chapulines, were a popular addition and another source of protein. Chicatanas, or flying ants that take to the air after the first spring rains and literally fall from the sky, may have been included as a treat, but their habitat is more closely allied to the Oaxaca area, where the Zapotecs lived, than to the Aztec territory. Prized for their taste and actually farmed in the local waters by the Mexica were the eggs of the water fly, or ahuautle. They are a seasonal treat and most abundant during the summer months; the Aztecs spread woven mats slightly under the water in areas where the flies were known to swarm, and thousands of the tiny golden eggs were deposited and then harvested. Since Montezuma himself was known by the Spanish invaders to have a hankering for this caviar, it became prestigious for a meal to include ahuautle.
Livestock. Animals that are commonly found on farms in Mexico today were not present until the Spanish settlers introduced them, so cattle, goats, and sheep were not on the Aztec menu. The Mexica did domesticate and cook some animals. Ducks and turkeys were additions to the menu primarily for the noble class. But dogs, especially breeds related to today’s chihuahuas, were easy to raise at home and provided a welcome addition to maize-based dishes.
How Did the Mexica Cook and Serve Their Food?
Most dishes were prepared by baking, steaming, and especially stewing in clay casseroles. The addition of ground chiles and salt was ubiquitous. Cooking implements did not include metal pans, nor did the Mexica fry foods in cooking oils. Likewise, there were no metal eating utensils. Tortillas served in baskets were used to scoop up food from a casserole shared among families. And although the cuisine was locally grown and prepared, tables were a European concept. People sat on mats for meals – except the nobility who enjoyed sitting on beautifully carved low benches – however this elevated seating was just for men. The nobility also had very beautiful bowls and pots decorated in multiple colors that can be seen in museums today.
The Spanish Conquest of Aztec Cuisine
The Spanish invasion brought dramatic changes to Aztec cuisine. In addition to introducing small-pox and other diseases that killed off a large proportion of the indigenous population, and large farm animals that no doubt raised the cholesterol in the Mexica diet to dangerously high levels, the Spanish settlers also introduced rice, garlic, cooking oils, and new spices including cinnamon and coriander, greatly altering the everyday cuisine in the Aztec territories.
The importance of their cuisine to the Mexica, especially food containing chiles and salt, can be noted by their frequent religious fasts followed by feasts. Eating was not considered merely a way to survive but a deeply spiritual practice. The consumption of human flesh, the flesh of fallen warriors of enemy tribes, was not, as the Spanish reported, a casual practice of cannibalism, but was bound to sacred rituals. The flesh could only be consumed after cooking by the family of the Mexica warrior who killed the enemy in battle and not by the Mexica warrior himself.
Unlike today, when farm to table cuisine is experienced as a novel way of enjoying a usually delicious albeit rather expensive meal, for the Mexica farm to table cuisine was part of their lives devoted to finding stability in a shifting world.
Thyme and Spice in Time and Space
By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken
One of the remarkably innovative activities that sets humans apart from our closest primate relatives is cooking our food and flavoring it with spices. According to some anthropologists, this behavior may have emerged while we were still nomadic hunters and gathers. To carry a kill to the next temporary home site, our ancestors probably wrapped the meat in leaves – and a distant relative with a fine palate realized that the meat wrapped in some leaves lasted longer and was tastier than meat wrapped in others. The former leaves became desirable and assigned a higher trading value than others. Similarly, specific flavorful roots, bulbs, berries, flowers and even pollen became prized first as enhancements for cooking and preserving and, after observation of beneficial effects, medicating.
Once humans settled down in farms, towns, and cities and developed writing and reading, one of the first uses of these newly emerged forms of communication was accounting in long-extinct languages for amounts of spices traded. Recipes using spices for preservation, including mummification, were shared; thyme was used as an ingredient over 5500 years ago in Egyptian unguents that were used to prepare bodies for the afterlife. As writing became a method of expressing religious beliefs and poetic expressions, literature produced millennia ago equated thyme and other spices with love, riches and the best of human life. The incredibly beautiful Song of Songs in the Hebrew Scriptures (aka Old Testament) mentions many spices including cinnamon and saffron.
The Song of Songs is said to have been written in the 9th century BCE, so we have evidence from that time period of the availability in the land of Israel of cinnamon native to Sri Lanka and India, and saffron from Crete, which must have made their way via the ships of ancient mariners to the Middle East. In fact, literature from China and other accounts from around Eurasia provide evidence that spices growing wild millennia ago in various parts of the known world were harvested and sold or bartered in distant lands. When given root in favorable climates far from their origin, they were cultivated and harvested for local use or became a currency of exchange.
There is also archeological evidence that in the Western hemisphere, including Mesoamerica, different species of plants from those in Eurasia were also harvested in the wild and began to be cultivated. Like the use of spices across the oceans, they were used to flavor foods, for preservation, including mummification, and for medicinal purposes. It is not surprising, then, that many millennia later, during the Age of Exploration and the Spanish invasion of Mexico and South America, one of the earliest cultural exchanges consisted of adopting Western spices in Europe and Eurasian spices in the New World.
The Spanish conquistadores were accustomed to a diet flavored with garlic, onions and, for the most wealthy, saffron. Imagine their surprise when neither garlic, large onions, nor crocus producing saffron were to be found to be growing in “New Spain,” and the small scallion-like onions were a far cry from the plump sweet vegetable growing in the Mediterranean. Instead, they found a plethora of other spices being used by indigenous civilizations. A wide variety of peppers unheard of in the Old World – ranging from sweet to extremely hot and spicy – were dried and ground and added to many dishes. Cacao, a new and addictive chocolate-tasting fruit, was used to flavor both food and drink. Tomatoes, which originated in the Andes in South America, had been brought north and were cultivated and formed the basis for many different salsas. Anise seeds added a depth to dishes and achiote seeds were “discovered” to impart a distinct flavor and an attractive deep red color to food. Herbs and flowers added while cooking included chipilin, epazote, mint, and pre-Columbian coriander (different from modern day cilantro), each contributing a delicious taste to a diet which, mainly prepared with corn, squash, and beans, could have been quite bland.
To the great delight of those living in Eurasia, tomato seeds were brought from the New World and cultivated in many parts of those continents. Today many Europeans would deny that tomatoes are not native to their countries and would claim they had always been part of their heritage. Similarly, European peppers were primarily sweet peppers, but, learning from their Mesoamerican hosts, Spanish cooks began drying and smoking a large sweet variety of red pepper and then grinding the peppers, producing what is today called Spanish paprika. And of course, chocolate produced from cacao became associated with countries far from the trees that bear the flavorful fruit (think of Switzerland).
In turn, 16th-century colonists began cultivating spices in the lands of the New World that had never grown there. Mexican thyme, which originated in Africa long before the Spanish invasion, was introduced. Cumin, originally cultivated in the Middle East, was introduced and became so ubiquitous that it almost seems synonymous with Mexican cooking – especially in US chain quasi-Mexican restaurants where it tends to be overused. Garlic and large white onions are staples in Mexican grocery stores and kitchens, although relatives of the original scallion-like onions are more flavorful and also still used.
While some of the exotic spices from distant lands could be grown in countries that took a liking to them, other plants have difficulty thriving outside their native land. Over a period of centuries, the spice trade became a highly lucrative enterprise and was dominated by large companies, such as the British East India Company, which was founded at the end of 1600 and continued to exercise a monopoly on some markets for 274 years. Around the time the Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, folded, two brothers named Schilling, who had immigrated from Germany to San Francisco formed their own spice company. Shortly thereafter, Willoughby McCormick founded his spice company in Baltimore. McCormick bought out the Schilling brothers’ company in 1946. Today, McCormick is still a dominant force in the field, employing 10,000 people and selling $3.5 billion of spices annually.
As with other markets in the 21st century, spice production is global. However, the country that dominates spice production is India, providing almost 11 million tons between 2021 and 2022. We took a walk down a road in the Southern State of Kerala that was lined with shops displaying heaps of ginger and burlap bags of other spices; it was such a heady experience that we will never forget being there. India is such a prolific producer that Mexico actually imports red peppers from that part of the world. Other countries specialize in individual herbs and spices; cinnamon, so ubiquitous in Mexican cooking and baking, is often a product of Sri Lanka. But Mexico has to a small degree turned the tables; nutmeg, originally from the Banda Islands in Indonesia, is now grown in Mexico and exported primarily to the U.S. And although thyme can be grown in most places in the world, China is the world’s leading producer.
As humans emerged from hunter-gatherer groups and small agricultural units to span the globe and conquer time and space, so did thyme and other herbs and spices we so love. Perhaps when humans colonize other planets, thyme and spices will be among the first possessions brought across time and space.
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