How to Read an Aztec Menu

The Aztecs spoke a grand and impressive language, and it casts all sorts of light on their food history. For one thing, it’s clear that chiles were everywhere in Aztec life. The word for sauce, chillacuecholli, really just means ground chiles. And the word for food, tlapaloli, means something (basically, tortillas or tamales) dipped in, or rather “colored” with, well, you know what sort of sauce. Red ants were chile ants (chilazcatl) and the cardinal was the chile bird (chiltototl).

There were bean tacos (tlahtlaoyoh) and a sort of enchilada called tlaxcalixchilloh, which means “a somewhat chile’d tortilla.” Aihhuachmolli was stew of squash seeds (aihhuachtli), which also included cornmeal . . . and chiles, of course. A tamalepahuax was a tamale stuffed with boiled beans, but a tamale with no filling was tamaltetl--literally, a “stone” tamale, which doesn’t sound much like a delicacy.

For that matter, the word for fruit, xocotl, which basically meant plum, comes from a word meaning sour. And the Aztec walnut was probably the river walnut, a tree-like shrub whose nuts are not particularly appealing. The Aztecs called it michpahtli (“fish medicine”), because they used the leaves to make a fish poison.

We can sort of recognize some familiar food words in their original Aztec form: xicamatl (jicama), tzapotl (sapote), chayohtli (chayote), chiyantli (chia). But most of the vocabulary did not pass to other languages. Two examples: meat seller (nacanamacac) and baker (tlaxcalchihualoyan). The Aztecs had a grand and impressive language, all right, but it just took too long to pronounce.