Before the Blender

Now here’s a question. How did Mexicans make agua fresca before every household had its blender?  Some fruits–the citrus–are easy to juice.  But that’s not true of other agua fresca bases such as barley, rice, or pineapple.

Well, here’s the answer.

This 1860 oil by a wonderful Mexican painter, José Agustín Arrieta, shows horchata vendors. The girl behind the table is pouring horchata into a glass. Also shown are the mechanics of this. On the left is a water seller presumably delivering the water to make the horchata. On the right is a young girl kneeling behind her metate (grindstone). Given the pineapple and pineapple tops scattered about she has actually been grinding pineapple, not rice. The pulp would have run off into a bowl like the one at the bottom of the metate. And she is straining the pulp of a pineapple into another bowl.

Very hard work but much more effective than, say, trying to push rice or pineapple through a sieve.

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