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Concept
Tamale
Summary
A tamale, in Spanish tamal, is a traditional Mesoamerican dish made of masa, a dough made from nixtamalized corn, which is steamed in a corn husk or banana leaves. The wrapping can either be discarded prior to eating or used as a plate. Tamales can be filled with meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, herbs, chilies, or any preparation according to taste, and both the filling and the cooking liquid may be seasoned.
Tamale is an anglicized version of the Spanish word tamal (plural: tamales). Tamal comes from the Nahuatl tamalli. The English "tamale" is a back-formation of tamales, with English speakers applying English pluralization rules, and thus interpreting the -e- as part of the stem, rather than part of the plural suffix -es.
Tamales originated in Mesoamerica as early as 8000 to 5000 BC.
The preparation of tamales is likely to have spread from the indigenous cultures in Guatemala and Mexico to the rest of Latin America. According to archaeologists Karl Taube, William Saturno, and David Stuart, tamales may date from around 100 AD. They found pictorial references in the Mural of San Bartolo, in Petén, Guatemala.
The Aztec and Maya civilizations, as well as the Olmec and Toltec before them, used tamales as easily portable food, for hunting trips, and for traveling large distances, as well as supporting their armies. Tamales were also considered sacred, as they were seen as the food of the gods. The Aztec, Maya, Olmecs, and Toltecs all considered themselves to be people of corn, so tamales played a large part in their rituals and festivals.
Thanks to the expansive Florentine Codex written by Reverend Bernardino de Sahagún, the different forms of Tamales eaten and sold in Aztec markets is well documented. In book X he describes Aztec tamales used a variety of corn for their flour base and were cooked in earth ovens, or olla, which were heated by the steam of dried cane grown and harvested for the expressed purpose of cooking tamales. Fillings would consist of meat (turkey, fish, frog, axolotl, gopher), fruit, bean, squash seed, turkey egg and even no filling.
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