Food customs depend on the culture in question, which is why gastronomy in Mesoamerica has become, for the conquerors who came from Europe, an unknown surprise, sometimes pleasant and sometimes not, because being so different and having them the need to replenish the provisions that they used to get to that part of America, they had to taste the food that they had to offer them; either curiosity or hunger, he forced them to eat unknown dishes.
It must have been an amazing culture shock. see how the natives consumed insects such as ants, grasshoppers, larvae, maguey worms and a great variety of other insects that today have become protagonists of the new western gastronomy and it has been proven that they have a high protein content, even much higher than meat; Among the foods that they considered the most atrocious is the consumption of human flesh, since they were cannibals and they extracted the victim’s heart and the rest of the body was dismembered and distributed to upper class people for the common diet.
Today’s gastronomes consider that there is a kind of communion between nature, gods and men, that fertility works as the first condition to conform the spiritual sense that organized the union and that gives a moral and attractive sense, for the good that was asserted by living under the indicated paradigm; The Spaniards who arrived in the adventure of the New World brought with them many dreams, but also the concern that they would face the unknown. Veteran travelers informed them that there was no bread or winehowever, there were delicious products for taste sensations.
The conquerors brought with them barley, grapes, wheat, sheep, cattle and pigs as well as spices, fruits and their traditional recipes; here they met corn, beans and chili, this could mean a cultural clash between the Hispanics and the ancient pre-Columbians but also the bilateral discovery of different diets and culinary habits distant in time and space from what both considered familiar in their kitchens.
Out of necessity and unavoidable appreciation for the food of the new lands, the Spaniards who arrived in the New World assimilated the food and the ancestral indigenous culinary techniqueswhich produced the emergence of mestizo cuisine as a result of the exchange of raw materials and culinary knowledge.
Mexican cuisine begins and ends in Mesoamerica, passing through countries like Spain and France; Colonial dishes such as chiles rellenos existed at Nahuatl banquets but they filled them with iguana meat, jumiles, grasshoppers, beans, instead of cheese and cream and like us, they ate them with tortillas.
To maintain this heritage and continue to renew it, the mexican chefs they begin to give it the assessment and study it deserves; sustaining itself on it to elaborate tastes, aromas and dishes that show the world its enormous culinary richness.