In honor of Hispanic History month we turn to North America. In colonial Mexico City indigenous women gradually shaped the cookery and preferences of Iberian owned homes and eateries. This happened despite the attempt of Iberian born wives to teach their Indian cooks how to prepare meals according to Spanish culinary styles. Spanish women gradually learned cost saving methods from their domestic servants learning that their meals “turned out much cheaper [and easier] to feed everyone” in a large household. The culinary and economic savvy of Indigenous women, some free and some enslaved, resulted in the transformation that occurred in the diet of new arrivals from Europe.
