Mestizo and Colonial Cooking

With Hernan Cortes the spaniard conqueror, many new flavors arrived on Mexican tables coming from Spain and the Caribbean: bacon, bread, sugar cane, cereals, orchards, fruit, spices, wines, animals. Even the name our Teoxintli (corn) adopted comes from the Caribbean islands. Thanks to these arrivals, our food was enriched and it became what it is today: well-known Mexican food.

Europeans fell for tortillas, chocolate, beans, turkey, vanilla and chili, among many other pre-Hispanic dishes. From the mix of so many tastes and flavors, the mestizo food of the age of the Colony appears. Haciendas (Country properties), convents and monasteries of the XVIth Century participated in the development of our gastronomy. Nuns, in-between prayers, used new techniques and recipes for preparing the dishes for their confessors. Without even knowing, they were the ones in charge of finding a patron saint for cooks: San Pascual and of the development of Colonial food. Native and Creole women also contributed in the haciendas and many recipes of popular cooking were born.

One of the most representative dishes of mestizo gastronomy is the mole poblano, in which colonial ingredients are included such as almonds and sesame seeds, with pre-Hispanic ones such as chili, chocolate and turkey. Rice is an ingredient brought by the Nao of China, which is very important to garnish this dish. Mole first appears in Puebla in March 1681 elaborated by the nuns of Santa Rosa, specifically Sister Andrea. They are said to have dedicated that famous dish to bishop Don Manuel Fernandez de Santa Cruz y Sahagun, thanking him for building their own convent. Among the mentioned ingredients in its first preparation are: chilies mulato, ancho, pasilla and a little bit of chipotle; lard, chocolate, almonds and peanuts; green tomatoes, red tomatoes, garlic and onions; white bread, tortilla, raisins, chili and pumpkin seeds; pepper, clove, cinnamon, anise, cumin and sesame seeds. All mixed make a sauce used for the Mexican huexolotl (turkey).

Pastry colonial art per excellence comes from the same convents: convent candy. Each religious order had it specialties: alfeñiques (sugar paste) of San Lorenzo, raisins and jellies of the Bernardinas, squash preserves from San Jerónimo, jams and doughnuts of San Jose de Gracia.

Alfeñiques are cooked sugar paste, stretched and twisted into bars painted green or pink. Aleluyas are made with an almond paste and were offered on Holy Saturday. Yemitas are small soft balls made with eggs and pecans, pine nuts or almonds. Alfajor de panocha is a paste made with honey and spices which is put in small boxes and is decorated with sesame seeds, pine nuts, pecans or almonds. Other sweets are jericallas, alfajores, cajetas, cocadas colonches, cabellitos de angel, bien-me-sabes, manjar blanco, jamoncillos, merengues, puchas, huevos moles, etc. Nuns also sold crystallized fruit. Sometimes during religious holidays special sweets were created. For All the Saints and The holy dead sugar skulls and burials. On Corpus Christi, mules made with sugar paste painted with colors. For Christmas posadas colaciones (sugar candy), aguinaldos wrapped in cut color paper, milk candy, nougat candy, nougat of honey, etc.


BREAD

Natives learned how to make wheat bread and they gave it many different shapes and flavors. Bread was made with water, lard or eggs, in big round pieces or bars. Smaller figures had different names depending on their shape: cannons, horns, screws, etc. Bread with shapes made in Mexico had names like: pambazo, semita poblana, chalupa, ojo de Pancha, bola, trenzado, hogaza, nudo, etc.

Sweet rolls were created later on and they complemented chocolate, becoming traditional for breakfast and dinner. Some investigators say the different ways of making sweet rolls were because it was forbidden for natives to make figures of their gods with amaranth. So, they molded bread with those figures, which was accepted by Spaniards. Some of the most popular shapes are seashells, limes, cocoles (diamond-shape), chilindrinas, gendarmes, rolls, counts, dukes, queens, ties, braids, calamares, and many others.