Historical sources on Aztec food and diet
These sources offer a range of perspectives on food and diet in Aztec society, from the agricultural methods that sustained the empire to the foods traded at its great markets and consumed at its royal court.
The collection draws on eyewitness accounts from Spanish soldiers and officials who observed Aztec life during the period of conquest, as well as later historical works by scholars who drew on colonial records.
Source 1
Extract A
"In spite of the predilection [deep preference] of the Aztecs for the profession of arms [warfare], they neglected none of the useful trades, and they devoted special attention to agriculture. They, like all the nations of Anahuac [central Mexico], practised it at an early date. It is known that, during the long journey which, about the year 1160, brought the Aztecs from their primitive country as far as the shores of the lake where they founded their capital, they tilled the soil wherever they sojourned [stayed for a time], and lived upon the crops. Conquered by the Colhuas and the Tepanecs, and shut up in the islands of their lake, they neglected agriculture for many years for want of land. [Forced onto small islands with no soil to farm, the Aztecs invented a new method of creating agricultural land.] Their method of making these isles was very simple. With the aid of branches, roots, aquatic plants, and other light materials, they made a net-work sufficiently solid, then on this base they spread a bed of sea-weed, which they covered with the wet earth from the lake. These little islands, which were of the form of a parallelogram [rectangle], were generally forty-eight feet long and eighteen broad, and they were about a foot above the surface of the lake. These were the first fields which the Aztecs had after the foundation of their capital, — fields on which they cultivated maize, allspice, and the vegetables they needed. These movable gardens, called 'chinampas,' multiplied, and many of them were used in the cultivation of flowers and aromatic [sweet-smelling] plants."
Extract B
"The Aztecs were fond of gardens; they filled them with fruit-trees carefully planted in rows, with medicinal plants [plants used as medicine], and above all, with flowers."
Contextual information:
Lucien Biart (1829–1897) was a French naturalist and author who spent many years living in Mexico. He wrote The Aztecs: Their History, Manners, and Customs for a general audience, drawing on earlier Spanish colonial accounts and nineteenth-century scholarship on Mesoamerican history. The English translation by John Leslie Garner was published in Chicago in 1900.
Bibliographical reference:
Biart, L. (1885) The Aztecs: Their history, manners, and customs (J. L. Garner, Trans., 1900; pp. 129–130, 145). A. C. McClurg & Co.
Copyright: Public domain.
Source 2
Extract A
"Still pressing upwards, the traveller mounts into other climates favourable to other kinds of cultivation. The yellow maize, or Indian corn, as we usually call it, has continued to follow him up from the lowest level; but he now first sees fields of wheat, and the other European grains brought into the country by the Conquerors [the Spanish, who arrived after 1519]. Mingled with them, he views the plantations of the aloe or maguey (agave Americana), applied to such various and important uses by the Aztecs."
Extract B
"The emperor [Montezuma II, ruler of the Aztec empire] took no other beverage than the chocolatl, a potation [drink] of chocolate, flavored with vanilla and other spices, and so prepared as to be reduced to a froth of the consistency of honey, which gradually dissolved in the mouth and was taken cold. This beverage, if so it could be called, was served in golden goblets, with spoons of the same metal or of tortoise-shell finely wrought [beautifully crafted]. The emperor was exceedingly fond of it, to judge from the quantity, — no less than fifty jars or pitchers being prepared for his own daily consumption; two thousand more were allowed for that of his household."
Contextual information:
William H. Prescott (1796–1859) was a distinguished American historian who produced meticulously researched accounts of the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru despite near-blindness throughout much of his adult life. His History of the Conquest of Mexico, published in 1843, drew on archival materials from Spanish and Mexican repositories and is an important secondary source on the Aztec world.
Bibliographical reference:
Prescott, W. H. (1843). History of the conquest of Mexico (Vol. 1, pp. 91, 370). J. B. Lippincott Company.
Copyright: Public domain.
Source 3
Extract A
"Maize, or Indian corn, when in the milk [unripe], was eaten boiled; when dry, it was parched [dried by heat] or roasted, though it usually came to table in the shape of tortillas [flat corn bread], then, as now, the staple food of all Spanish America. What poi is to the Hawaiian, what rice is to the Hindoo, and what bread is to most civilized nations, the tortilla was and is to the inhabitants of Mexico. In making tortillas, the Nahuas [Aztec people] boiled their maize in water, to which lime [a white alkaline powder made from calcium], or sometimes nitre [a type of mineral salt], was added. When thus softened, it was crushed with a stone roller, and the dough, after being kneaded, was shaped into thin round cakes, which were baked in earthen pans, and piled one on another, so as to retain their warmth, for when cold they lost their savor [flavour]."
Extract B
"Beans, the etl of the Aztecs, and the principal [main] ingredient in the frijoles [bean stew] of the Spaniards, were boiled, when green, in the pod, and when dry were also boiled. Chilli, chile, or pepper was eaten raw, whether green or dry, and a sauce made from it formed a part of the seasoning of almost every Nahua [Aztec] dish."
Extract C
"Fish, and fowl, fresh or salted, were roasted, stewed, and boiled with dog-fat, and seasoned with chile and tomatl, or tomatoes. Fruits were, for the most part, eaten raw; but some, as the plantain and banana, were roasted or stewed."
Contextual information:
Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832–1918) was an American historian and publisher who produced multi-volume histories of the Pacific states and Latin America. A Popular History of the Mexican People (1887) is a condensed version of his earlier five-volume work The Native Races (1882). Both works drew on Spanish colonial sources including Sahagún and Torquemada, and Bancroft's descriptions of Aztec food summarise those colonial accounts.
Bibliographical reference:
Bancroft, H. H. (1887). A popular history of the Mexican people (pp. 56–57). The History Company.
Copyright: Public domain.
Source 4
Extract A
"[Among the products sold in the great market at Tlatelolco, in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (the city now known as Mexico City), Cortés observed] two thousand plants of cacap [cacao], which bears a fruit somewhat like almonds. This fruit they sell ground, and esteem so highly, that it is used instead of money all over the country, and with it everything can be bought in the market places and elsewhere."
Extract B
"They sell maize, both in the grain and made into bread, which is very superior in its quality to that of the other islands and mainland; pies of birds, and fish, also much fish, fresh, salted, cooked, and raw; eggs of hens, and geese, and other birds in great quantity, and cakes made of eggs. [This market was in Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, which was built on a lake in the highland valley of central Mexico, a region called Mesoamerica.]"
Extract C
"There is a street set apart for the sale of herbs, where can be found every sort of root and medical herb which grows in the country. There are houses like apothecary shops [pharmacies, where medicines are prepared and sold], where prepared medicines are sold, as well as liquids, ointments, and plasters [thick pastes applied to the skin to treat injuries or illness]."
Contextual information:
Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) was the Spanish commander who led the conquest of the Aztec empire between 1519 and 1521. His letters to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V are the most direct eyewitness accounts of Aztec civilisation from the period of contact. The Second Letter, dated 30 October 1520, contains a detailed description of the great market at Tlatelolco in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. This English translation was made by the historian Francis Augustus MacNutt and published in New York in 1908.
Bibliographical reference:
Cortés, H. (1520). Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V (F. A. MacNutt, Trans., 1908; Vol. 1, pp. 256–258). G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Copyright: Public domain.
Source 5
"From time to time they served him [Montezuma II, the Aztec emperor, who drank chocolate as an exclusive luxury of the royal household] in cups of pure gold a certain drink made from cacao. It was said that it gave one power over women, but this I never saw. I did see them bring in more than fifty large pitchers of cacao with froth in it, and he drank some of it, the women serving with great reverence."
Contextual information:
Bernal Díaz del Castillo (c. 1492–1584) was a Spanish soldier who took part in the conquest of Mexico under Hernán Cortés. He wrote The True History of the Conquest of New Spain from memory in his old age in Guatemala, and it is one of the most detailed eyewitness accounts of the Aztec court and of Montezuma's personal habits. This English translation was made by Alfred Percival Maudslay and published by the Hakluyt Society in London between 1908 and 1916. Note that Bernal Díaz wrote this account approximately fifty years after the events he describes.
Bibliographical reference:
Díaz del Castillo, B. (c. 1568). The True History of the Conquest of New Spain (A. P. Maudslay, Trans., 1908–1916; Vol. 2, p. 72). Hakluyt Society.
Copyright: Public domain.