CUISINE AND CULTURE - THE AZTEC EMPIRE

Religion and Ritual

In 1325, a people whose legend says that they came from Aztlan in northern Mexico, and who called themselves the Mexica, arrived at a valley 7,000 feet above sea level and ringed by mountains—the site of present-day Mexico City. Known now as Aztecs, these people worshipped many gods on whom their lives and their food depended: the sun god, Huitzilopochtli; the rain god, Tlaloc; mountain gods; corn gods; and others. The Aztecs believed that the gods had created all these forces of nature by sacrificing themselves and that the gods needed “the precious water”—human blood—to continue to exist.

Bloodletting was an essential part of Aztec religious rituals, as it was of Mayan rituals. The Aztecs drew blood from their ears or the calves of their legs. In elaborate sacred festivals, humans captured from neighboring tribes, purchased, or chosen as a special honor were adorned to resemble the gods and sacrificed in ways appropriate to each god. The rain god’s sacrifices were drowned; the fire god’s were thrown into a fire.89 Sometimes their beating hearts were cut out while they were alive and offered to the god. On rare occasions, the rest of the body was ritually divided, stewed with maize and salt, and a tiny bit eaten, about half an ounce, as if it were the body of the god.90 The gods also received offerings of beheaded quail, corn, and amaranth.

Cooking Equipment and Cooks

The Aztec god of fire lived among three other gods, represented by three stones on the hearth where all the cooking was done. Much of today’s Mexican cooking equipment and the food cooked on it are directly descended from the Aztecs. Tortillas were cooked on a clay griddle called a comalli (today, comal); corn was ground on a metate, a three-legged grinding stone, with the Aztec equivalent of the pestle, a stone that fit in the hand and was therefore called a mano—hand—by the Spanish. In the Aztec civilization, women were usually the cooks. Mothers taught daughters, and by the time a girl was 13 she was expected to be an accomplished cook. The exception was that men handled the barbecue. However, as Sophie Coe points out in America’s First Cuisines, it is still unclear how many times a day the Aztecs ate. Some sources say two, others say three—at dawn, 9:00, and 3:00.91

There was an upside and a downside to being a cook for nobility in a culture that practiced human sacrifice. The upside: you were employed in a wealthy household, so you had food. The higher the noble person’s rank, the greater the number of cooks. The downside: when the nobility died, they needed their chefs to cook for them in the afterlife. The serious downside: the nobles were buried dead but the cooks were buried alive.92

The Florentine Codex

Much of what we know about the Aztecs comes from a document called the Florentine Codex. This is a compilation of information about Aztec culture, written shortly after the Spanish conquistadores arrived in 1521. It was written down by a friar, Bernardino de Sagahun, who arrived in Mexico in 1529, just eight years after the siege of Tenochtitlan. Sagahun taught himself Nahuatl, the Aztec pictographic language. He spent 40 years recording the codex, a book of grammar, and a dictionary in three languages: Nahuatl, Spanish, and Latin. The books were finally finished 40 years later, in 1569.

The codex was prepared at the direction of the Catholic Church and at Church expense because they wanted to know about Aztec culture so that they could decide the best way to convert the Aztecs. But after Sagahun was finished, the Church kept the codex private because they did not want the Aztecs to dwell on their non-Christian past, and because the codex talked about the horrors of the conquest from the Aztec point of view. Instead, Sagahun’s 12 volumes were circulated only within the Church and the Spanish government, and then hidden. It was not until 1979 that a facsimile of the codex was published. It was translated into modern Spanish and then other languages and made widely available to the public.

Chinampas: The Aztec Agricultural Revolution

The Aztecs built their capital city, Tenochtitlan [ten-OHCH-teet-lahn], on an island in the middle of a lake because of a spiritual sign: an eagle landed on a heart-shaped cactus fruit. As the Aztecs grew more powerful and dominant over Central America, highly skilled Aztec engineers connected Tenochtitlan to land by roads built above the lake water. Aztec engineers were equally creative in providing ways to drain swamps and use the soil to farm on the water. They invented the system of chinampas, a combination of land and irrigation ditches that looked like floating fields. According to historian Jeffrey Pilcher, Aztec engineers “achieved a virtual agricultural revolution” with the chinampas.

Large-scale drainage work began at the command of Itzcóatl (1426–1440) and culminated in the reign of Moctezuma the Elder (1440–1467), when almost 100 square kilometers lay under intense cultivation. The use of aquatic plants for fertilizer and a complex rotation of maize, beans, and vegetables yielded high productivity with virtually no fallow.93

Corn: History

For the Aztec, food meant corn, up to 80 percent of their daily calories.94 Everything else was sauces or sides. So it is not surprising that the ancestors of corn and the oldest examples of corn were found in Mexico.

One of modern maize’s ancestors is a wild grass called teosinte. It was discovered in 1978 in southwestern Mexico. This grass provided the root and the stalk of our modern corn plant. Another ancestor is Domestic Corn. The earliest cobs found are from about 10,000 years ago in Mexico. The cobs were tiny, about the size of the nail on the little finger of a human hand. From this corn we get the ear and kernels in rows. Domestic Corn crossed with teosinte, but scientists do not know if it was an accident performed by nature or deliberately done by humans.

From this early corn, humans have spent centuries breeding different types of corn. Sweet Corn is what Americans know as corn on the cob. It has a high sugar content and can be eaten raw. Flint Corn and Flour Corn are hard corn for grinding to make into flour. The flour is called masa and is used in tortillas. Dent Corn is a cross of flint and flour corns. The Aztec grew corn in white, black, blue, yellow, and other colors. In the United States today, the most popular variety of corn is Yellow Dent. This is used for corn chips, taco shells, cornmeal, and cornstarch.

One of the oldest types of corn is popcorn. Sometimes it was popped right on the ear. Cobs between 2,000 and 3,000 years old were found in a cave in 1948—they were still able to pop. Popcorn is not just eaten as popcorn; it can also be ground into meal.

Corn: Religion

Many of the rituals recorded in the Florentine Codex involve corn—worshipping corn gods like Cinteotl or goddesses like Chicomecoatl, offering food to the gods, or eating it themselves. Sometimes young women carried full ears of maize on their backs to the pyramid temple to have them blessed. The Florentine Codex explains the place of corn in Aztec religion and cuisine:

"... it was indeed this Chicomecoatl who made all our food—white maize, yellow maize, green maize shoots, black maize, black and brown mixed, variously hued; large and wide; round and ball-like; slender maize, thin; long maize; speckled red and white maize as if striped with blood, painted with blood—then the coarse, brown maize... green maize; the small ears of maize beside the main ear; the ripened green maize."95

Corn: Tortillas

Tortillas were Aztec essentials, according to the Florentine Codex:

"For he who eateth no tortillas indeed then fainteth; he falleth down: he droppeth quickly; there is a twittering as of birds in his ears; darkness descendeth upon him".96

Tortillas were made from flour ground from corn that went through a process called nixtamalization to remove the outer coating of the kernel. This was done by briefly boiling the kernels in water and ashes, often from juniper wood, then leaving them to soak overnight and washing away the hard outer part of the kernel. The drained corn was then ground into flour. Nixtamalization does two things: (1) the juniper ash imparts flavor to the flour, the way that juniper berries give gin its distinctive woodsy flavor; and (2) it adds vitamin B and calcium, which are not naturally present in corn.97

Corn: Tacos

Tortillas had other advantages, as historian Jeffrey Pilcher points out. Because they were thin, they cooked quickly and used very little fuel. Also, filled with meat or vegetables and folded in half, they became tacos. This was efficient because it kept food hot and needed no utensils. These are what we know today as soft tacos, not deep-fried, brittle preshaped taco shells.98 Also, handmade, freshly cooked tortillas are pliable, elastic, and taste like corn. They bear no resemblance to the piles of cardboard sold in supermarkets.

Corn: Tamales

Tamales were staples of Aztec cuisine, essential at religious festivals. Tamales are corn stuffing inside corn husks. A seasoned corn filling is placed on corn husks, rolled into a small packet, and steamed. Many kinds of tamales were sold in the marketplace in Tenochtitlan:

"... salted wide tamales, pointed tamales, white tamales ... roll-shaped tamales, tamales with beans forming a seashell on top, [with] grains of maize thrown in; crumbled, pounded tamales; spotted tamales; white fruit tamales, red fruit tamales, turkey egg tamales; turkey eggs with grains of maize; tamales of tender maize, tamales of green maize, adobe-shaped tamales, braised ones; unleavened tamales, honey tamales, beeswax tamales, tamales with grains of maize, gourd tamales, crumbled tamales, maize flower tamales."99

Tamales appear frequently in the Florentine Codex. They were distributed by the government at religious festivals. Each person was given as many tamales “as he could hold in one hand.” But he was only allowed to do this once. If he tried to cheat and get too many tamales, “they struck him repeatedly, leaving marks on him with a cord made of reeds.”100 Then they took all the tamales away from him and he was left empty-handed.101

Corn: Huitlacoche

Huitlacoche [wheat-la-COH-chay] is a fungus that is sometimes called “Mexican truffles.” However, unlike truffles, which grow underground, or mushrooms, which grow on the ground, huitlacoche grows on the ears of corn. It begins white, then turns black. It is considered a delicacy and is prized by diners today. Huitlacoche can be used raw or cooked, just like truffles or mushrooms. The young white huitlacoche is better for eating raw, while the black is better cooked. Farmers hate it. They consider it a blight because it destroys the corn. To farmers, it is just corn smut.

Amaranth

The amaranth plant was also important in Aztec religious rituals and cuisine. The leaves of this plant are edible only when the plant is very young; later it becomes a tough weed. Amaranth tamales were offered on some festival days. The Florentine Codex lists multiple varieties of amaranth:

"... the variety of amaranth called cocotl, fine red amaranth seed, [common] red amaranth, black amaranth, bright red or chili-red amaranth, fish amaranth,... brilliant black amaranth seed, the bird-seed called petzicatl."102

Amaranth seeds were combined with a sweet syrup like honey from the leaves or sprouts of the agave plant [ah-GAH-vay] to make a dough called tzoalli. The agave, also known as the maguey plant [muh-GAY], is native to Mexico. (If the agave sap is fermented it becomes a wine called pulque [POOL-kay]. When the pulque is distilled, it becomes the hard liquor mezcal, with a worm added to the bottle. Another member of the agave family, the blue agave, is the origin of tequila.) The tzoalli dough was shaped into images of Aztec gods or pyramids. These were handed out and eaten with reverence: “They fashioned for [the gods] their teeth of squash seeds, and their eyes of some beans... And then they offered [the gods] their offerings of food, and they worshiped them.”103 Spanish religious authorities put a stop to this by prohibiting the cultivation of amaranth, which they called diabolical.104

Chocolatl: Food of the Gods

"One of the most important foodstuffs in Aztec cuisine and culture was chocolate. The Aztecs called it chocolatl. The Europeans named it theobroma, which means “food of the gods.” It had much more than culinary significance in the Aztec culture. It was the beverage of Aztec emperors and warriors. They drank it lukewarm, frothed on top the same way it is done today, by rubbing a swizzle stick or molinillo between the palms of the hands. In their book The True History of Chocolate, Sophie and Michael Coe discuss at length how the Aztecs flavored chocolate. They used finely ground chile powder, or sometimes maize, honey (there was no sugar yet), a flower related to the custard-apple, another flower related to black pepper, and “black flower”—what they called vanilla because of the color of the pod.105 They also made a beverage out of unripe green cacao pods."106

Even though the Aztecs had pulque, an alcoholic beverage made from agave, they didn’t consider it fit for men to drink. Old people could drink it, but chocolate was the drink preferred by nobles and warriors and restricted to them. It was part of a warrior’s food ration, along with tortillas, beans, dried chiles, and toasted maize.107 Besides, drunkenness was punishable by death. However, chocolate was not consumed indiscriminately. It was served as a ritual beverage after a banquet, by itself, along with tobacco to smoke, in a male bonding ritual that echoes the Greek symposium, where wine was restricted to men and consumed ritually after the meal.

The cacao beans were stored in the public granaries, along with maize, but they were much more than food. They were also money in the Aztec Empire. They could be used to pay wages and to purchase items. A turkey hen or a rabbit cost 100 cacao beans, an avocado cost three, a large tomato cost one.108 But cacao, like other forms of money, could be counterfeited: old beans were stuffed with mud or other debris and mixed in with real beans.

Turkey and Other Proteins

Protein in the Aztec diet came from “deer, peccary, rabbits, jackrabbits, mice, armadillos, snakes, gophers, opposums, and iguanas” that were caught, kept in cages, and fattened up. There were dogs in the Americas, but they were not like modern dogs or the ferocious armored war dogs the Spaniards brought with them. The American dogs were hairless, small, and soft, like a little rolled roast with feet. They were bred and raised for food, probably fed mostly maize, along with avocados and other vegetables.109

Also on the Aztec menu were foods from the surrounding lakes: water bugs and their eggs, frogs and tadpoles, lake shrimp, and larvae of the Comadia redtenbacheri worm that today resides at the bottom of the mezcal bottle.110 These were cooked in a variety of ways: ground up into balls, roasted and salted, and cooked in maize husks like tamales. The Spaniards found them palatable; they said the water bug eggs tasted like caviar. One lake food the Spanish could not bring themselves to eat was a plant the Aztec called tecuilatl—edible seaweed (Spirulina geitleri). It was partially sun-dried, formed into cakes, then completely sun-dried, and used to make tortillas. Supposedly, it tasted like cheese “but less pleasing and with a certain taste of mud.”111

The Emperor Moctezuma received the best food, of course. The emperor himself got 300 different dishes each day: “spicy stews of turkey, duck, partridge, pheasant, quail, squab, fish, rabbit, and venison.”112 A thousand dishes were prepared for the rest of his household. The turkey was sometimes considered “a sacred sun bird.”113 Images of turkeys were found in the burial crypts under the Aztec pyramids, along with emblems of the sun with rays.

Notes

89 Soustelle, Daily Life Aztecs, 96–99.
90 Coe, Cuisines, 98.
91 Ibid., 110.
92 Ibid., 111.
93 Pilcher, ¡Que Vivan Los Tamales!, 13.
94 Ibid., 12.
95 Florentine Codex, Book 2, Part III, 64.
96 Ibid.,
97 http://aces.nmsu.edu/news/1999/110299_bluecorn.html
98 Pilcher, ¡Que Vivan Los Tamales!, 11.
99 Fussell, Corn, 202.
100 Florentine Codex, Book 2, Part III, 97.
101 Ibid., 14.
102 Ibid., 65.
103 Ibid., 29.
104 http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/1492/amaranths.html
105 Coe and Coe, True History of Chocolate, 89–93.
106 http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles.php? issue=10&article=beerchocolate
107 Ibid., 97.
108 Ibid., 98.
109 Coe, Cuisines, 97.
110 Ibid., 99–100.
111 Ibid., 100–101.
112 Pilcher, ¡Que Vivan Los Tamales!, 18.
113 Krupp, Echoes of the Ancient Skies, 245


By Linda Civitello in "Cuisine & Culture - A History of Food and People", third edtion, John Wiley & Sons, USA, 2011, excerpts fourth course. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

Share this post