Mexican Moles: Are They a Family?
Back to the Mexican dishes called moles. Confusion reigns. Often when talking about mole, people mean mole poblano, the rich reddish sauce of spices (including chocolate), chiles, tortillas that is made in the city of Puebla. Sometimes they mean the famous seven moles of Oaxaca. Sometimes they include moles made all across Mexico. But do adobos (often used as a marinade) and pipianes (with a high proportion of seeds and nuts) count in the class of moles or are they something different?
Is a soup such as mole de la olla (a soup of vegetables and meat with a seasoning of rehydrated, ground chiles) a mole? Are mole-like dishes with other names such as tlatonile, or pascal, or remole, or texmole (no, that’s nothing to do with texmex food) moles?
I tend to think moles are not what philosophers would call a natural kind. Nor do I think they are all descended from some original technique or dish. I tend to think they are a heterogenous collection of dishes with different histories, some of which at various times and for various reasons have been called moles.
But that’s just a guess. Until we have a much more thorough investigation of older and regional Mexican cookbooks and of other historical sources, we simply don’t know. And even when we do there may not be enough evidence to decide this question.
