Arri London extrapolated from data available...

>
>
> Olivers wrote:
>>
>> Bob (this one) extrapolated from data available...
>>
>>
>> >
>> > I'll give you honey, but vanilla is a stretch for being a
>> > sweetener.
>> >
>>
>> Tell Jennings that Ole Moctezuma probably had about 10,000 nekkid
>> maidens (tribal tribute, bound for the altar and the dinner table)
>> out at Xochimilco straining the sweet nectar out of the banks of
>> honeysuckle along the road.
>>
>> Shoot, if it's fiction, make it colorful.
>>
>> I do want to try chocolate in atole which was sort a national
>> dish/soup/porridge of the region, a corn kernel starchy pulp belnd
>> which would have been at least semisweet for a short period in each
>> corncob's life cycle.
>
> From 'Historic Cookery'
>
> Champurrado:
>
> To 2 cups of (prepared) atole or polvillo add two squares spiced
> chocolate or Mexican chocolate dissolved in 1/4 cup boiling water.
> Sweeten to taste.
>
> Polvillo is toasted flour gruel:
>
> Toast wheat flour in the oven until brown.
>
> 6 tbs browned flour
> 4 tsp cold water
> 2 C boiling water
> White or brown sugar to taste
>
> Dissolve flour in cold water, pour into boiling water and cook
> thoroughly
>
>
>>
>> The modern horchata and the popular "liquados", fruit shakes, of
>> mexico provide some concept ofg the availabilities for Aztec dining
>> (beyond tribute tribesfolk, solving the local protein deficiency.
>>
>> TMO
>
> Dunno about the horchata. Mexican horchata is made with white rice,
> which would have come with the Spanish.
>

I've always thought of Horchata is one of those affectations of affluence,
what folks raised on atole turned to when they had a couple of persos to
rub together...

Like my grandmother, raised an orphan on a hardscrabble West Texas ranch
near "old" (not the new one) Buffalo Gap in the 1880s/90s, who when I
walked over from junior high to have lunch with her, persisted in serving
store bought "light bread", in her mind a symbol of her social mobility and
culinary dynamics. That I would have begged on bended knee for her hot
water cornbread or scratch biscuits never occurred to her. They
represented the deprivation of the bad old days. Her idea of "feast" was
as many fresh vegetables, cooked and raw, as could be placed on the table
at once. That she could have only lived to enjoy Chilean fruit. In her
later years, she was partial to cured pork, but rarely a taste of
beef....twice a day, every day, in youth and that the somewhat rangy
specimens ("dry cows" or the injured) likely to fall to the selection of
what to slaughter for the house and crew

TMO