Feasting with foam: Ceremonial drinks of cacao, maize, and pataxte cacao

Abstract

Five hundred years ago, Spanish cleric Diego de Landa recorded that his Maya informants enjoyed foamy beverages of cacao and maize for major celebrations. Landa (1941[1566]:90) remarked on the high value the Maya placed on the buttery foam crowning these beverages. His words elicit two questions that will be considered in this analysis: How could stable foam be created on a beverage of maize gruel (atole) and chocolate, and why was the foam so highly valued? My fieldwork in the Yucatán, Tabasco, and Oaxaca provided some answers, as did replication experiments in my California kitchen using ingredients gathered while in the field. The work of previous investigators was also invaluable. But local people like Don Isaac Vásquez and his family in Oaxaca expressed a strong interest in preserving significant indigenous customs in danger of disappearance and these ethnographic sources were most important. The Canul family in Xocen, Yucatan, was equally committed to providing insight, especially Fátimo Canul Noh and his mother, Doña Jacinta Noh Pech. Not to be underestimated were the personal culinary demonstrations and help given to me by women and men whose names appear in the acknowledgments. © 2010 Springer-Verlag New York.