Subject: Re: Aztec food??

From: [email-masked] (What a long strange trip it's been)
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 1994 02:36:24 GMT

Stuart Siu ([email-masked]) wrote:
: John E. Taylor III ([email-masked]) wrote:
: : In article <[email-masked]>,
: : [email-masked] (Rebecca Tolhurst) wrote:

: : > Hi folks..
: : >
: : > I am going to be running a feast shortly in a gaming area which is based
: : > around an aztec theme, and I am interested to know if anyone has any
: : > information on the sorts of foods that they ate, and how they would have
: : > been prepared...

: : Maize, beans, still-beating human hearts...

: You forgot the insects.

I thought they invented guacamole, too. 

And there are a couple of breeds of dog that used to be raised for 
feasts. Mexican Hairless, and Chihuahua are both descendants of 
dogs the Aztecs used for food. 

Brings a whole new meaning to "Chili Dog" . 

I'm sure I can come up with an adequate recipe. 
I wonder if you need to use a purebred ankle-biter, or if you could 
substitute the neighbors' car chasers? 

I'll dig through my recipes. 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Lars 
[email-masked]    
Murphy's Sixth Law :   Don't Take yourself so Seriously.
                       No one else does.
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From: [email-masked] (SDunavan)
Date: 25 Aug 1994 13:04:06 -0400

Check out Sophie Coe’s “America’s First Cuisines”, (1994, Univ. of Texas
Press).  It’s fun and well written too.  I haven’t seen the following
historic reference (so let me know, anyone, if you have), but it may also
prove useful:
 	Morgan, Lewis H.  (19th c., reprinted in 1950).  Montezuma’s
Dinner:  An Essay on the Tribal Society of the North American Indians.  
(New York Labor News Co., NY).

You may want to follow this up with Ortiz de Montellano’s “Aztec Medicine,
Health, & Nutrition” (1990, Rutgers Univ. Press).

I’d vote for serving quinoa -- available at health & natural food stores
(a South American variety but probably not very different from the Aztec
crop), amaranth, nopalitos (look in Mexican food stores, cactus leaves),
along with lots of chili peppers of various kinds, avocados, turkey, lots
of maize products (tortillas, tamales, etc.), tequila (unless you have
access to pulque, which is not distilled but fermented maguey juice),
tomatoes, chocolate, vanilla, and maybe rabbit & venison.  If you serve
fresh sweet corn you can also look for corn smut, or huitlacoche, a black
jello-like fungus that was (and still is in someplaces) a delicacy.  If
you don’t want to sacrifice a person a small maize dough figurine mixed
with blood would probably do.   I think I’d skip the insects & insect eggs
& larvae.  SDunavan

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From: [email-masked] (Christopher Currie)
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 1994 22:04:26 +0000

In article: <[email-masked]>  
[email-masked] (Rebecca Tolhurst) writes:
> 
> Hi folks..
> 
> I am going to be running a feast shortly in a gaming area which is based
> around an aztec theme, and I am interested to know if anyone has any
> information on the sorts of foods that they ate,

Hearts.

> and how they would have
> been prepared...

Alive, with an obsidian knife through the breastbone.

They also drank chocolate without sugar. And ate tomatoes. And maize.
And chihuahuas. I believe the chihuahuas were cooked first.

In yucatan, the Maya ate yuca, but I don't know if the Aztecs did.

More seriously, there's an 
(old) book on Daily Life of the Aztecs by Louis 
_____? which has a certain amount about food. 

Christopher Currie           [email-masked]
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From: [email-masked] (James Harvey)
Date: 25 Aug 94 16:06:38 -0500

> I thought they invented guacamole, too.

See

Benitez, Ana M. de.  Cocina prehispanica (Pre-hispanic cooking. tr. English
by Mary Williams de Varela).  Mexico: Ediciones Euroamericanas, 1974.
--
James Harvey   [email-masked]
Disclaimer:  These are my own opinions.  I do not speak for Indiana University.

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From: [email-masked] (Cameron Laird)
Date: 31 Aug 1994 10:01:42 -0500

In article <[email-masked]>,
SDunavan <[email-masked]> wrote:
			.
			.
			.
>crop), amaranth, nopalitos (look in Mexican food stores, cactus leaves),
Slow down a moment there; did Mesoamericans grow
quinoa?  I haven't researched the point, but I'd
always heard, at the conversational level, that
it was exclusively Andean until quite recently.
References, anyone?
>access to pulque, which is not distilled but fermented maguey juice),
How widely available in US markets is pulque?
			.
			.
			.
Feel free to adjust follow-ups.
-- 

Cameron Laird
[email-masked] ([email-masked])	+1 713 267 7966
[email-masked] ([email-masked])  	+1 713 996 8546

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From: [email-masked] (Rebecca Tolhurst)
Date: Thu, 1 Sep 1994 01:00:56 GMT

Cameron Laird ([email-masked]) wrote:
: In article <[email-masked]>,
: SDunavan <[email-masked]> wrote:
: 			.
: 			.
: 			.
: >I’d vote for serving quinoa -- available at health & natural food stores
: >(a South American variety but probably not very different from the Aztec
: >crop), amaranth, nopalitos (look in Mexican food stores, cactus leaves),

: Slow down a moment there; did Mesoamericans grow
: quinoa?  I haven't researched the point, but I'd
: always heard, at the conversational level, that
: it was exclusively Andean until quite recently.
: References, anyone?

Hey, hey.. we are not actually after *complete* authenticity, however we
are interested in making this as authentic as we can...

: >along with lots of chili peppers of various kinds, avocados, turkey, lots
: >of maize products (tortillas, tamales, etc.), tequila (unless you have
: >access to pulque, which is not distilled but fermented maguey juice),

: How widely available in US markets is pulque?

Ummm... it makes no difference to me, I am in Australia. =]
I now have one week. Wish me luck....

Bec
xxxx

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From: [email-masked] (SDunavan)
Date: 31 Aug 1994 22:22:14 -0400

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
(Cameron Laird) writes:  
<Slow down a moment there; did Mesoamericans grow quinoa? >

Well, technically, Mesoamericans didn’t (and don’t today) grow “quinoa”,
or  _Chenopodium quinoa_.  But they did (and do) grow a closely related
species of Chenodium known as _Chenopodium nuttalliae_ , or _Chenopodium
berlandieri subsp. nuttalliae_.  The two species’ seeds are virtually
indistinguishable without a microscope, and I can’t taste any difference. 
According to Charles Heiser (see below for references), this Mexican
chenopod “exists as three main cultivars:  huauzontle, used like broccoli,
quelite, used like spinach, and chia used as a grain.”(p. 68).  This is
not the same chia as the stuff on your chia pet, however, so don’t try to
get a crop off that.
	The only place I’ve seen the Mexican grain variety for sale is
from Native Seeds/SEARCH, a nonprofit group that maintains quite a few
traditional varieties of Native American crops.  They’ve branched out to
sell some food, too (their address is 2509 N. Campbell, Tucson, AZ 85719,
ph. 602/327-9123 for a catalog).  
	But get this!  The really exciting thing is that there is good
archaeological evidence for a domesticated variety of Chenopodium
berlandieri right here (well, that’s where I am) in the prehistoric
midwestern U.S.!  So instead of buying quinoa, it might be more authentic
to go gather the native variety yourself.  However, its a weedy species
now, with thicker, black seed coats.  Whether you collect it or buy it,
you should rinse it well to get some of the saponin off the seed coat.
	Some more trivia on the Mexican variety:  “Annual yields, as
reflected by tribute lists, were massive and the crop was well integrated
into ‘first fruit’ religious ceremonies associated with important Aztec
gods of fire and war....Ceremonial use of the plant, probably cultivars
with heavy pigmentation, involved production of a grain-based paste
(zoales) which was used to make idols.  This use in Aztec ceremony...was
the driving force for early Spanish extirpation of the plant and the
resulting paucity of ethnographic data” (Wilson 1990, p. 102).  It is
still grown quite a lot in Michoacan and Puebla, though.
	I could go on about chenopodium for a lot longer than most people
want to read, so e-mail me if anyone wants more.  Here’s some references
-- (apart from Sophie Coe’s book):
	
Wilson, Hugh D. (1990).  Quinua and relatives (Chenopodium sect.
Chenopodium subsect. Cellulata).  Economic Botany 44(3,
Supplement):92-110.

Heiser, Charles B. (1985).  Some botanical considerations of the early
domesticated plants north of Mexico.  In Prehistoric Food Production in
North America, edited by Richard I. Ford, pp. 57-72.  University of
Michigan Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers 75, Ann Arbor.

Safford, W. E.  (1917).  Chenopodium nuttalliae, a food plant of the
Aztecs.  Journal of the Washington Academy of Science 8:521-527.  

Wilson, Hugh D. and Charles B. Heiser (1979).  The origin and evolutionary
relationships of ‘Huauzontle’ (Chenopodium nuttalliae Safford),
domesticated chenopod of Mexico.  American Journal of Botany 66:198-206.

for the midwestern U.S. chenopod, many works by Bruce Smith have been
reprinted in a 1992 Smithsonian book called ‘Rivers of Change:  Essays on
Early Agriculture in Eastern North America’.

PULQUE -- you can buy it in cans at some big city Mexican groceries (like
in Chicago).  Supposedly this is not as good as fresh pulque.  The canned
was pretty gross.  SDunavan