What else we know about Aztec cuisine is from inference from
colonial cooking after. The foods that seem to be almost completely
native rather than imported are the sauces: pounded sauces like
ahuaca-mulli, the ancestor of guacamole, made with avocados, new
world onions, and tomatoes—it’s probably the food we recognize
that has changed the least since Aztec times.
Tomatoes are actually native to South America and were brought
north. They were mashed with chilies (and epazote, not oregano
or cilantro) into the ancestors of what we now know as salsa, a
chunky sauce that is very foreign to European cooking and actually
isn’t adopted there for several centuries. What is similar, just by
coincidence, is the way sauces are used; they are presented in a
little bowl, and food is dipped into them with the fi ngers.
Aztecs also had fermented drinks, the most important of which,
pulque, was fermented from the maguey or agave plant—kind of
like an undistilled tequila. Apparently, the Aztecs were very strict
about not allowing public drunkenness, and pulque was supposed
to be drunk only by the upper classes and priests, but it was not a
strictly enforced rule. Pozol was also a kind of fermented maize
drink that was probably similar to undistilled bourbon, which is
made from sour mash corn.
Aztecs also drank chocolatl, another drink especially reserved for
nobles and priests. It came as a tribute from the South and was even
apparently used as money. They had no sugar, so typically it was
fl avored with chili peppers and an orchid species: vanilla.
Cacao was used earlier by the Maya, who buried their dead with
chocolate in pots. They probably got it from the Olmec, and the
Aztecs got it from the Maya. They typically drank it hot and frothed
up with a device that is a stick with wooden rings around it—a
molinillo. Unlike the Maya, they added honey to sweeten it and
typically drank it after a meal.