Dining in the Aztec Empire
At the time of the Spanish conquest (1519-1521) the Aztec Empire was at its height. Its
military and economic power extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico and
Guatemala. Emperor Moctezuma II (1466-1520) ruled from the capital of Tenochtitlan
(today, downtown Mexico City) – one of the largest cities in the world, with several
hundred thousand people and another million or so in the surrounding cities.
When the Spaniards made their way to Tenochtitlan from present-day Veracruz under
Hernán Cortés (1485-1547), they were astonished by the foods and luxury goods found in
its thriving markets. Corn, chocolate, squash, beans, avocados and a vast array of chiles
and spices did not exist in the Old World. They discovered a life centered on home and
hearth. Women prepared food, wove cloth, harvested and processed maguey sap, and
sold their wares in the markets. Men farmed, labored as construction workers and
performed military service. Both men and women made daily offerings of food, incense
and prayer to the gods.
Though no cookbooks were written during the pre-colonial and colonial times (the first
Mexican cookbook doesn’t appear until the late nineteenth century), culinary observations
are documented in the diaries of missionaries. The most notable of these is
Historia
general de las cosas de Nueva España (General History of the Things of New Spain)
, or the
Florentine Codex by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1499-1590). Regarded as the father of
ethnography and one of the first culinary historians, he began collecting material on the
Aztecs from native informants and illustrating and recording their culture in Spanish,
Nahuatl (the Aztec language) and Latin. This codex gives us exhaustive lists illustrating
food and dining in sixteenth century Mexico.
Tour
The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of the Empire,
prepare a meal using New World
ingredients and celebrate the bicentennial of Mexican independence.
¡Buen provecho!
Maite Gomez-Rejón
The Getty Villa
June 2010
Images from left to right:
Squash vessels from Colima, Mexico, 200 BC – 500 AD, clay, LACMA; Map of The Aztec Empire in 1521; Woman cooking maize, from the
Florentine Codex, 1575-77