Corn and chocolate in Oaxaca, Mexico

People in Mexico have grown corn for a very, very long time.

In a cave in Oaxaca, scientists found very old corn cobs. They are thousands of years old!

Corn, also called maize, was first grown by people in Mexico long ago. In the Valley of Oaxaca, in a cave called Guilá Naquitz, archaeologists found four small maize cobs. In 2001, scientists dated them to about 6,250 years ago. At the time, they were the oldest maize cobs known in the Americas.

UNESCO says that corn, beans and chili are the base of traditional Mexican cuisine, together with ingredients like tomatoes, squash, avocados, cacao and vanilla.

Dolores Piperno and Kent Flannery (PNAS, 2001) used accelerator mass spectrometry to date maize cobs from Guilá Naquitz Cave, 5 km from the town of Mitla in the eastern Valley of Oaxaca, to 5,400 radiocarbon years before present, about 6,250 calendar years ago, which they reported as the oldest cobs in the Americas. Older layers in the cave held no maize macrofossils or phytoliths (though Zea pollen had been reported from them), and the authors concluded that domestication probably happened elsewhere in Mexico. The cave also gave the earliest macrofossil evidence for domesticated squash.

UNESCO's description of traditional Mexican cuisine (inscribed 2010) names corn, beans and chili as the basis of the system, with milpas (rotating fields of corn and other crops) and chinampas as farming methods, and native ingredients such as tomatoes, squashes, avocados, cocoa and vanilla.

To make tortillas, dry corn is cooked in water with lime.

Then it is washed and ground into a soft dough called masa. Long ago, people ground it on a flat stone.

Corn for tortillas goes through a process called nixtamalization. Dry maize is cooked in water mixed with a little lime (a white mineral powder, not the fruit), then left to soak overnight. The next day, the soaked corn, now called nixtamal, is washed to remove its skins.

Then it is ground into masa, a soft dough. In the past, people ground it several times on a flat stone. Today, mills do the first grinding and the stone finishes the dough. UNESCO says nixtamalization makes the maize more nutritious.

FAO's Maize in human nutrition describes rural lime-cooking as Illescas first described it in Mexico in 1943: one part whole maize to two parts of an approximately 1 percent lime solution, heated to 80 °C for 20 to 45 minutes and left to stand overnight. The cooking liquor is drained and the grain, now nixtamal, is washed two or three times to remove seed coats.

The maize was originally turned into dough by grinding it repeatedly with a flat stone; today the first grinding is done with a meat grinder or disc mills and the dough is then refined with the stone. UNESCO's listing notes that nixtamalization increases maize's nutritional value and names grinding stones and stone mortars among the cuisine's singular utensils. FAO adds that lime-cooking raises the calcium content of the product by up to about 400 percent.

A ball of masa is patted flat into a round tortilla.

It cooks on a hot plate, first one side, then the other. In Mexico, tortillas are an everyday food.

To make a tortilla, a small ball of masa, about 50 grams, is patted flat. It is cooked on both sides on a hot iron or clay plate.

UNESCO describes tortillas and tamales, both made of corn, as everyday foods in traditional Mexican cuisine. Beans are part of the same base of corn, beans and chili.

FAO's account: a portion of about 50 g of masa is patted flat and cooked on both sides on a hot iron or clay plate. UNESCO calls tortillas and tamales, both made of corn, everyday foods of traditional Mexican cuisine, and notes that they also form part of Day of the Dead offerings.

Beans belong with corn and chili at the base of the cuisine UNESCO describes. The sources opened for this topic do not give a single standard Oaxaca breakfast plate, so this topic does not invent one; it shows the shared building blocks that many meals in Oaxaca and across Mexico are made from.

Oaxaca is known for its chocolate drinks.

The chocolate drink is made in a clay jug. Then it is whisked with a wooden tool called a molinillo. It gets lots of foam on top!

Cacao, the bean that chocolate comes from, has been used in Mexico for thousands of years: people on the coasts of Chiapas and Veracruz used it nearly 4,000 years ago. Chocolate is made by mixing sugar with cacao paste and cacao butter, sometimes with cinnamon, vanilla, nuts or almonds.

A 2013 guide from a cacao festival in Oaxaca explains that the drink is traditionally made in clay jugs and whisked with a wooden molinillo until it has lots of foam, then served in a clay cup. The guide links chocolate with fiestas and big occasions. It says chocolate made with water became popular from the 1600s.

The 2013 Posada del Cacao guide, from Oaxaca's Biblioteca de Investigación Juan de Córdova and a local chocolate maker, notes archaeological evidence of cacao use on the coasts of Chiapas and Veracruz dating to about 1900 and 1750 BC. Early colonial chocolate resembled today's chocolate-atole, a cold cacao foam over warm atole; chocolate de agua became popular only from the 17th century.

The guide's entry for traditional chocolate of the central valleys defines chocolate as sugar mixed with cacao paste and cacao butter, the kinds differing by proportion and by additions such as vanilla, cinnamon, nuts or almonds. In Oaxaca, it says, the drink is linked to fiestas and great occasions; it is prepared in clay jugs, beaten with a wooden molinillo to abundant foam and served in a clay cup. Champurrado, atole mixed with chocolate (for which the guide lists cacao, sugar, cinnamon and almonds), joins the two Mesoamerican staples, maize and cacao, and the guide says it is drunk daily in many places in Mexico.

In Oaxaca, people make many different drinks with cacao and corn.

Some are foamy. Some are drunk at parties. One is taken to the fields to give farmers energy.

Oaxaca's towns make at least eleven different cacao drinks, more than any other region, according to the 2013 cacao festival guide. Many mix cacao with corn.

In Santa Catarina Ixtepeji, a foamy corn drink called pinol is served for breakfast at community festivals and family celebrations. In San Andrés Huayapam, tejate, a drink of corn and cacao, is drunk every day, especially at planting time, when people carry it to the fields for energy.

The Posada del Cacao guide counts at least eleven distinct cacao drinks in Oaxaca, which it calls the region with the greatest diversity of cacao beverages; the event invites towns to present their preparations. Examples: pinol, a foam atole of maize, ash, cacao, cinnamon, achiote, sugar and dried rosita (cacao flower), offered as breakfast at mayordomías (community festival hosting) and at family events in Santa Catarina Ixtepeji; and tejate, of pre-Hispanic origin, drunk daily in San Andrés Huayapam, especially in planting season when it is carried to the fields as an energy source.

These examples show why one menu cannot stand for all of Oaxaca: drinks change from town to town and with the calendar.