Ten Takes on Mole, Mexico’s National Dish
Mole negro. Wikimedia Commons
Life has been a bit hectic lately so I have not had a chance to polish my next posts on Thinking About the Land. They’re all there in draft and will be up soon.
Right now, I want to return to a topic I have visited again and again: mole, Mexico’s national dish. Beginning in the present and going back.
Take Ten. 2019. Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley, hosts of the renowned podcast, Gastropod, publish “Celebrate Mexico’s True National Holiday with the Mysteries of Mole.” Like all their episodes this is fast-paced, well-researched, and generally delightful. Iliana de la Vega, restaurateur, friend, and frequent fellow presenter on mole is interviewed. So are the Lopez brothers of the Guelaguetza restaurant in Los Angeles. And so am I talking about the connections between Mexican mole and medieval Islamic cuisine.
Take Nine. 2018. Sandra Aguilar Rodriguez, (Moravian College) a fine scholar and friend, also interviewed in the podcast, untangles the complex story of how twentieth-century Mexican cookbook authors made mole the national dish. Aguilar-Rodríguez – 2018 – Mole and mestizaje race and national identity in twentieth-century Mexico.
Take Eight. 2016. Should I laugh or cry over “mölli” as a marketing device for chamoy, a Chinese-Mexican sauce? That’s the way food evolves, folks.
Take Seven. 2014. Then there are huevos moles (roughly soft eggs). These are a rich confection (above) or dessert coating made by pouring beaten egg yolk into hot syrup. They have a fascinating history spreading to Asia and Latin America from Iberia in the sixteenth century. Clearly associated with the Baroque and Counter Reformation, what if anything do they have to do with savory moles?
Take Six. 2009. Surely there are Mesoamerican influences on mole? Yes, of course. The chiles, the chocolate (if used), the thickeners, many ingredients are Mesoamerican. So is the metate (grindstone) on which mole is prepared. This should be longer to make two points. (1) when a dish travels, the first thing to be changed/added are specific ingredients. (2) Many dishes with Islamic origins that reached Mexico could be further elaborated there because the metate was ideal for making pureed sauces, much better than the clumsy European ways. Of course, you had to have a slave or servant to do the work.
Take Seven. 2008. Ah, the idea that mole and curry are distant cousins is becoming commonplace. Maria Skipsey, an editor of the fine but short lived journal Sabor goes off to India to compare the two methods, citing the famed Mexican cook and author Patricia Quintana in her book Mulli: El libro de los moles and me.
Take Six. 2008. A very knowledgeable Indian correspondent, V. Gautam, contributes this analysis of the technical bases of mole and curry.
Take Five. 2008. Are moles even a family? And how do they relate to other sauces and marinades found in Mexico? To this point, Ricardo Muñoz Zurita, in his magisterial Diccionario enciclopédio de gastronomia méxicana has a table with details on thirty seven different moles.
Take Four. 2007. Following up a query from Adam Balic, I try the Catalan dish Mar y Muntanya to see whether it resembles mole. Answer, it’s like one of the simpler moles.
Take Three. 2007. Prompted by a query from Colman Andrews, I pursue the question of the techniques in mole a bit further. (1) thickening sauces with nuts, bread, and spices is common in the Mediterranean area from Roman times at least. (2) the use of ground chiles for color, flavor and texture is Mesoamerican. (3) chocolate is a secondary ingredient probably there to balance the humors.
Take Two. 2007. Mole and the question of class. Is mole an elite dish that “trickled down” or a peasant dish that “trickled up.” Something that Sandra Aguilar nicely addresses.
Take One. 2004. The Islamic Contribution to Mexican Cuisine. More than just mole.
Take Minus One. 1999. “Chiles, Chocolate, and Race in New Spain: Glancing Backward to Spain or Looking Forward to Mexico?” An article I wrote with Jeff Pilcher. Chiles, Chocolate and Race pdf.
That’s a long time thinking about mole!
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Friend and cookbook author Sheilah Kaufman notes that there was also considerable Jewish influence in Mexico, as “Conversos” (Spanish and Portuguese Jews forced to adopt Catholicism) flooded into the New World. So wondering how that fits this story.
Plus how is pipian different from mole? (Folks in the Yucatan told me it was virtually the same thing, but how virtually?)
I’ve read that “mole” just means “mixture,” at least in the original Nahuatl — which is why mixing stuff with avocados gives us guaca-mole. So are there other things where the word gets used?
Lots of interesting threads to follow up. I think eating a roasted sheep in Mongolia is probably one of the only times I’ve been certain that there weren’t other influences. :)
Yes, considerable Jewish influence but in culinary terms that influence differs little from the more general Islamic cuisine of al-Andalus, which was shared by Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
Many people count pipian as a mole. It’s my favorite in fact. Made with a lot of squash seeds.
I think mole means something more like sauce in Nahuatl. Guacamole is not primarily a dip in Mexico as it is in the US. Some people want to say that because mole is a Nahuatl word, the sauce is prehispanic. That doesn’t necessarily follow. Names of dishes and the dishes themselves can have different trajectories.
Indeed — just as in the Philippines, cooking meat in coconut vinegar predates the Spanish name for the dish — adobo.
And agree that pipian is lovely — encountered it while traveling in the Yucatan on my first trip to Mexico. Happily, can easily get it here in Chicagoland.
And yes, many consider pipian a type of mole — but that may have to do with trade routes as much as anything. One of the things I know for certain from studying history is that good ideas traveled all through the Americas.
IKR Mole is the bomb