Encyclopedia of the Incas

(Pouteria lucuma); and wild herbaceous plants. They also domesticated nonfood
plants, most prominently gourds (Lagenaria siceraria), for storage, as fishing
net floats and for transporting liquids; cotton (Gossypium barbadense) for nets,
bags, and clothing; coca (Erythroxylum coca) and tobacco (Nicotiana spp.) for
psychological transformation. In fact, it is quite likely that mind-altering and
spicy plants were some of the earliest South American domesticates.
Food is a fundamental building block of biological, ecological, and economic
human systems. It is also a symbol; a means for communicating highly
condensed, powerful statements about the political, cultural, and religious
systems of a given society. Many studies demonstrate that people do not eat all
things that are edible. Additionally, people eat inedible and even poisonous
things. The Incas were no exception. Their culinary interests were based on a
long history of Andean food traditions, linked to productivity, cooking styles,
tastes, textures, and life ways (see Cuisine; Feasts, State-Sponsored). They
built their empire on what they considered good food—meat and potatoes—
which was reflected in their forms of cultivation and farming.
What was proper food for Inca people and their leaders? What was sacred
food, state food, or lowly, everyday food? While many of the ingredients
overlapped among these scenarios, the Inca leadership clearly preferred special
foods for specific political settings. People across the empire were identified by
domesticated varieties in addition to clothing styles and dialects. The Incas
encouraged these differences to help account for the myriad groups that they
codified in their hierarchical record keeping, with the local leaders reporting to
Inca administrators via quipus, the knotted strings that listed all stored food and
other goods in the royal storage buildings, called collcas (see Storage).
Most people ate two main meals a day. The first was consumed in the mid-
morning, a thick soup with varying amounts of potatoes, quinoa, maize (and at
times, fine soil for added minerals), depending on the elevation of the farm. On
the coast this soup likely contained sweet potato, manioc or maize, with lima
beans. At dusk, the highland evening meal was usually solid food of boiled
potatoes with beans and a spicy sauce of chili peppers and wild herbs, eaten out
of a common cooking jar or from a woven cloth. Meat was sometimes included,
though it was usually only eaten on feast days. Camelid or guinea pig was the
main meat source; less often, deer, wild ducks, rabbits, or other wild animals.
Along the coast, fish, shellfish, and seaweed would have been common, spiced
with chili peppers and wild herbs.