Whence
Atole (warm corn drink)
Drink

Where does Atole (warm corn drink) come from?

Atole comes from Mesoamerica, the land of the ancient Maya and Aztecs in Mexico and Central America. This thick, warm drink of corn dough cooked in water or milk is far older than Spanish rule, and it is still ladled steaming from street stalls today.

Written on Maya cups

The oldest written evidence comes from the Classic Maya. Many of their painted vessels carry an inscription that scholars call the 'dedicatory formula' or 'primary standard sequence', which usually names the type of vessel, its contents and its owner. When these texts were deciphered in the 1980s, the two main drinks they named were cacao and atole, a maize gruel, and the list of flavourings soon grew. The cups record what was poured into them.

Atolli in Aztec Mexico

The word most likely comes from Nahuatl, the Aztecs' language, in which atolli was a drink of finely ground maize mixed with water; Spanish took it over as atole. Sixteenth-century texts from central Mexico describe several kinds, including a thick white atolli, one made from maize dough softened with lime, and fruit atolli. Atole was a trade, too: in mid-1500s Coyoacan, maize-gruel sellers paid a tax of two tomines, and a Mexico City chronicle of 1613 mentions a widow who sold bitter atole.

Why people say Peru

Corn drinks are made in many parts of the Americas, which makes atole easy to place in the wrong country. Atole itself belongs to Mexico and Central America. In Mexico it is made with masa, nixtamalized corn dough, and flavoured with cinnamon, vanilla, piloncillo sugar or fruit; chocolate atole is called champurrado, and atole typically comes with tamales. In Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, atol de elote is a common drink.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · link.springer.com ↗ · nahuatl.wired-humanities.org ↗ · mexiconewsdaily.com ↗

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