How were tacos invented?

Answer 1

The term "Taco" refers to anything wrapped in a tortilla.

Mesoamerican cultures have been cultivating and hybridizing corn and making the little flat bread called tortilla for around 7000 years.

Taking these two facts into consideration, it is likely that the first "Taco" was eaten around 5000 BCE.

Answer 2

Tacos were invented the way Sandwiches were: as a way to eat food that might be too messy to just hold in the hand, or to hold a variety of foods which would be difficult to manage in one hand. In other words, tacos - like slices of bread, bread rolls, pita breads, naan breads, Pizza, and so on, are sort of edible plates which keep the food (toppings or fillings) together without too much mess.

Answer 3

In northern Mexico and much of the United States, tortilla means the flour version. Flour tortillas are the foundation of Mexican border cooking and a relatively recent import. Their popularity was driven by the low cost of inferior grades of flour provided to border markets and by their ability to keep and ship well.

3000 B.C. - Excavations in the valley of "Valle de Tehuacán", in the state of Puebla, revealed the use, for more than seven thousand years, of the basic cereal by excellence of the Mesoamerican diet, a little wild cob that along with roots and fruit was a complement for hunting. According to Agustín Gaytán, chef and Mexican cuisine historian, in a Greeley Tribune newspaper article:

Sometime about 3000 B.C., people of the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico hybridized wild grasses to produce large, nutritious kernels we know as corn. Mexican anthropologist and maize historian Arturo Warman credits the development of corn with the rise of Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Mayans and the Aztecs, which were advanced in art, architecture, math and astronomy. The significance of corn was not lost on indigenous cultures that viewed it as a foundation of humanity. It is revered as the seed of life. According to legend, human beings were made of corn by the Gods."

By the time Spaniards reached the shores of what is now Mexico in the 1400s, indigenous Mesoamericans had a sophisticated and flavorful cuisine based on native fruits, game, cultivated beans and corn and domesticated turkeys.

1519 - When Hernán Cortés (1485-1547), also known as Hernando Cortez, and his conquistadores arrived in the New World on April 22, 1519, they discovered that the inhabitants (Aztecs Mexicas) made flat corn breads. The native Nahuatl name for these was tlaxcalli. The Spanish gave them the name tortilla. In Cortés' 1920 second letter to King Charles V of Spain, he describes the public markets and the selling of maize or Indian corn:

This city has many public squares, in which are situated the markets and other places for buying and selling. . . where are daily assembled more than sixty thousand souls, engaged in buying and selling; and where are found all kinds of merchandise that the world affords, embracing the necessaries of life, as for instance articles of food. . . maize or Indian corn, in the grain and in the form of bread, preferred in the grain for its flavor to that of the other islands and terra-firma.

1529 - In the monumental manuscript books, General History of the Things of New Spain (Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espana), by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun (1450-1590), it is known that the Aztec diet was based on corn and tortillas, tamales and plenty of chilies in many varieties. Considered one of the fathers of culinary history. He compiled and translated testimonies of his culinary informants from the native language Nahuatl into Spanish. His work is the most complete record of Aztec foods and eating habits.

Sahagun was sent to New Spain (Mexico) to compile, in the Aztec language, a compendium of all things relating to the native history and custom that might be useful in the labor of Christianizing the Indians. The work thus undertaken occupied some seven years, in collaboration with the best native authorities, and was expanded into a history and description of the Aztec people and civilization in twelve manuscript books, together with a grammar (Arte) and dictionary of the language.

1940s - In the 1940s and '50s, one of the first widespread uses of small scale gas engines and electric motors was to power wet grain grinders for making masa. A hand press or hand patting were used to form the masa into tortillas.

1960s - Early tortillas took hours to make but by the 1960s, small-scale tortilla-making machines could churn out hot, steaming tortillas every two seconds.

1520 -Bernal Diaz del Castillo (1496-1584), a Spanish soldier who came with Hernán Cortés to the New World, wrote an intriguing and detailed chronicles called A True History of the Conquest of New Spain. He also chronicled the lavish feasts that were held. From the article by Sophie Avernin called Tackling the taco: A guide to the art of taco eating:

The first "taco bash" in the history of New Spain was documented by none other than Bernal Diaz del Castillo. Hernan Cortes organized this memorable banquet in Coyoacan for his captains, with pigs brought all the way from Cuba. It would, however, be a mistake to think that Cortes invented the taco, since anthropologists have discovered evidence that inhabitants of the lake region of the Valley of Mexico ate tacos filled with small fish, such as acosiles and charales. The fish were replaced by small live insects and ants in the states of Morelos and Guerrero, while locusts and snails were favorite fillings in Puebla and Oaxaca.

1914 - The first-known English-language taco recipes appeared in California cookbooks beginning in 1914. Bertha Haffner-Ginger, in her cookbook California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book said tacos were:

"made by putting chopped cooked beef and chili sauce in a tortilla made of meal and flour; folded, edges sealed together with egg; fried in deep fat, Chile sauce served over it."

1929 - Pauline Wiley-Kleemann in here cookbook Ramona's Spanish-Mexican Cookery, featured six taco and tacquito recipes. These included recipes for Gorditos that came from Santa Nita or Xochimilco, Pork Tacos composed of snout, ears, jowls, kidneys, and liver, Cream Cheese Tacos, Egg Tacos, Mexican Tacos, and Tacquitos

Taqueria or taco trucks are found throught the West and Southwest of the United States. There are two kinds of taco trucks; traveling trucks that cruise around neighborhoods and business areas, and non-cruising trucks parked permanently in lots.

Answer 4

"The origins of the taco are really unknown. My theory is that it dates from the 18th century and the silver mines in Mexico..."

Answer 5

"The origins of the taco are really unknown. My theory is that it dates from the 18th century and the silver mines in Mexico..."

Answer 6

a long time ago on a place called planet earth.

Answer 7

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Answer 8

august 3 2004