Indigenous Roots

Mole sauce is a dish with indigenous roots. One origin story is that it was created when Montezuma invited Hernán Cortés and his men to dine in Tenochtitlan. Legend says Montezuma confused Cortés with being a God, because of his light skin and his arrival by ship and on horses. Because of this he welcomed Cortés into his village and served him the finest food in a move that would ultimately lead to the demise of the Aztecs. Regardless of the specifics of the origin story, mole is undoubtably an indigenous dish that was commonplace at the dinner table in the 19th century and before. In the time before the revolutionary war, it was seen as peasant food because of its indigenous roots and rarely served at middle or upper class tables in México (Aguilar-Rodriquez 2018.