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Chicago Foodways Roundtable

Taco World
A Global History of Mexican Food
Presented by Jeffery Pilcher, PhD

Saturday, October 6, 2012 at 10 AM
Kendall College, School of Culinary Arts
900 North Branch Street, Chicago
(West of Halsted Street, North of Chicago Avenue)
Free Parking
Cost: $3.
Free to Kendall students and faculty with ID.

For the past 20 years, Jeffery Pilcher has investigated the history, politics and evolution of Mexican food, including how Mexican silver miners likely invented the taco, how Mexican Americans in the Southwest reinvented it, and how businessman Glen Bell mass-marketed it to Anglo palates via the crunchy Taco Bell shell.

The origins of the taco are really unknown. Pilcher’s theory is that it dates from the 18th century and the silver mines in Mexico, because in those mines the word “taco” referred to the little charges they would use to excavate the ore. These were pieces of paper that they would wrap around gunpowder and insert into the holes they carved in the rock face. When you think about it, a chicken taquito with a good hot sauce is really a lot like a stick of dynamite. The first references [to the taco] in any sort of archive or dictionary come from the end of the 19th century. And one of the first types of tacos described is called tacos de minero—miner’s tacos. So the taco is not necessarily this age-old cultural expression; it’s not a food that goes back to time immemorial.

Jeffrey M. Pilcher, a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, is author and editor, respectively, of Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (Oxford University Press) and The Oxford Handbook of Food History. His previous books include The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City, 1890-1917 and ¡Que vivan los tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity.

This program is hosted by the Chicago Foodways Roundtable. To reserve, please e-mail: chicago.foodways.roundtable@gmail.com with your name and number in your party.

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Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

I wonder if tacos operated from the same principle as a Cornish pasty. A food that served as its own packaging, specifically food that could be taken in the mines to be eaten underground at lunch. I guess we will know in a month.

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Toast, as every breakfaster knows, isn't really about the quality of the bread or how it's sliced or even the toaster. For man cannot live by toast alone. It's all about the butter. -- Adam Gopnik

Yeah, I am interested to learn this myself.

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Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

I'm no cultural anthropologist, but it strikes me as implausible that no indigenous American culture placed meat or veg on a tortilla (or tortilla-like maize bread documented by the first European observers and thought to go back 3,000 years) before the 1700s.

Then again, no one in Europe made a hoagie before the 4th Earl of Sandwich, apparently right around the same time that the taco and gravity were invented!

HI,

We will be serving Enchiladas picadillo from LostRecipesFound.com. This is largely due to the backstory and its north of border twists.

Regards,

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Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

I'm skeptical... I thought I'd read that taco derives from an Aztec word "tlacoyo"

also note that the maki roll dates from the same time period as the earl of sandwich (per Alton Brown)

[edited to fix stupid autocorrect, if you want the original, Cathy2 quoted it]

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What is patriotism, but the love of good things we ate in our childhood?
-- Lin Yutang

You are welcome to attend and question this presenter.

Regards,

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Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

In Chile, a taco is a traffic jam, and I've never been able to discern how that relates to the food term, except perhaps as a pile-up.

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"I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

this was a fascinating lecture. i bought jeffrey's book, 'taco planet'. even though i havent finished it, i feel i can recommend it- no recipes, just information on how the taco has travelled around the world. i was lucky enough to go out to lunch afterwards with him and his SO, donna gabaccia, an author as well. she's a professor who specializes in immigrant history, and has authored a book called 'we are what we eat: ethnic food and the making of americans' which i hope to read one day soon.

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"the only things money can't buy are true love and homegrown tomatoes" (guy clark)