A Good Hot Meal—Notes to a Culinary History August 6, 2024mayoid by Stephen Houston (Brown University) Humans like their food warm. Heat reduces the number of pathogens, makes proteins easier to digest, and increases the amount of energy from meals (Carmody et al. 2011; Smith et al. 2015). Over millennia, this biological benefit became a pleasure, a trait of our species: “[w]e humans are the cooking apes, the creatures of flame” (Wrangham 2009:14). Perhaps, as pyrophiles, our ancestors even took detours, dumping meat for simmering in hot springs or eating flame-licked foods left by wildfires (Herzog et al. 2022; Sistiaga et al. 2020). Cool food has its place, but hot meals are better. Still, pyrophilia has its limits. A fire keeps the body warm on chilly or frozen nights. In cooking, however, that same fire carries risks. It can spread out of control and, in more elaborate food preparation, requires kitchens that, in pre-Modern times (and even at present), reek of slops and swarm with flies (Woolgar 1999:140–41). For elites, these are problems. Costly buildings cannot be allowed to go up in flames, and cooking, no matter how refined, needs separation from the complicated, almost “balletic,” rank-accentuating displays of “grand eating” (Strong 2002:237; comparative evidence of royal courts in Adamson [ed.] 2000; Duindam et al. 2011). The churning machinery behind the scenes should stay there, away from dining as a social performance. Nor do elites welcome the rude talk and bustling noise of, in the European past, specialized, often male kitchens (Woolgar 1999:136). The idea of placing customers in the midst of food preparation may be popular today. Consider the “chef’s table” concept. But it would have horrified cuisiniers like Antonin Carême or Auguste Escoffier. In the France of Louis XIV, operational flaws—the parting of Oz’ curtain—had consequences, as when François Vatel, majordomo of Minister Fouquet and the Prince de Condé, ran himself through with a sword when seafood came late to a feast (Michel 1999). Keeping food labor away from diners accentuated their sense of refinement. It reinforced hierarchy and the illusion of seamless work. Yet the opposite was also true, for gaps and flaws in dining exposed deficits in the host. Needs varied. At Versailles, during the reign of Louis XIV, closer, smaller kitchens did effective service when the king and queen dined en famille (Chateau de Versailles:2), a pattern seen also at the Château de Marly, Louis’ leisure retreat, where austere etiquette sometimes took a holiday (Bergeret 2014; Ringot and Sarmant 2012). In contrast, the more stultifying meals, the grand couvert, resulted from more distant, labor-intensive food preparation (Strong 2002:249–56). Many plates were necessary, many mouths had to be fed. Repasts required complicated place settings, service, habits of eating, and diktat about who sat (or stood) when and where. In general, both in France and elsewhere, royal food followed a long and complex trajectory from larder to mouth, to say nothing of the challenges of gathering foodstuffs at their source. All of this meant that, as a cross-cultural matter, royalty could have, once the food made it to the table, a tepid and unappetizing meal. In Medieval France, after a suitable fanfare and washing of hands, “dinner was brought in” but “none too warm” (Wheaton 1983:6). At Eltham Palace, in greater London, English kings probably experienced the same, at least to judge from site plans. The royal kitchen lay across a moat from the dining hall, where meals must often have arrived lukewarm (Steane 1999:91, fig. 43). Serving order made this worse. If dishes were brought in all at once, in the service à la française named after customs at Versailles, food cooled and sauces congealed (Strong 2002:231; see also Fine 2020:7): all show, little pleasure. Fast eating would not solve the matter. Royal tables had too many dishes, too many strictures against gauche, lunging behavior, too many servers to do their work in proper order; plates might be whisked away before people had their fill. A later development, the service à la russe, with one course at a time, ensured warmer servings, but historical evidence from Medieval and Early Modern times suggests a mixture of both sorts of service (Woolgar 1999:161). There were other remedies. In Medieval England, a “pentice,” a covered way, or a half-door, a “hatch,” allowed servants to rush-deliver a meal from kitchen to table (Steane 1999:91, fig. 43; Steane 2001:101–102; Woolgar 1999:145). Insulated boxes further helped to keep food warm (Taylor 2005:629, fig. 4), or there could be chafing dishes with a small flame underneath. These were about rewarming: a gentle heat only, and, in some cases, prongs to support the plate or bowl being heated, or an all-in-one combination of a bowl with flame and modicum of fuel (Vakasira 2020). In late 19th and early 20th century Europe and America, blurrings between kitchen and table service resulted in the so-called guéridon in which waiters prepared food on a trolley brought to the table (Naus 1991). Often gendered, these performances—a kitchen outside a kitchen!—became in other cases a focus of male camaraderie or domestic amusements of fleeting popularity. More extensive rewarming was done at the French Court, in the réchauffoir of the “hamlet” built for Marie-Antoinette at the Trianon villa (Heitzmann 2000: 71, 81–82). Thus, to maintain temperature, there could be expedited delivery, insulation or coverings (of middling effectiveness), and implements or places to rewarm food prepared elsewhere. Worries about keeping food warm were not confined to Europe. Hernán Cortés’ “second letter” to Charles V, probably sent in 1520, describes an impressive protocol of dining for the Emperor Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, probably in his palace, the “Domus Don Muteczuma” (Boone 2011:34; see also Houston and Newman 2021). “Three or four hundred boys came bringing the dishes, which were without number, for each time he lunched or dined, he was brought every kind of food: meat, fish, fruit and vegetables. And because the climate is cold, beneath each plate and bowl they brought a brazier with hot coals so that the food should not go cold. They placed all these dishes together in a great room where he ate, which was almost always full. …While he ate, there were five or six old men, who sat apart from him; and to them he gave a portion of all he was eating. One of the servants set down and removed the plates of food and called to others who were farther away for all that was required. Before and after the meal they gave him water for his hands and a towel which one used was never used again, and likewise with the plates and bowls, for when they brought more food they always used new ones, and the same with the braziers. He dressed each day in four different dressed again in the same ones” (Cortés [1524] 1996:111– 12; emphasis mine; see also a similar description from Bernal Díaz, discussed in Coe 1994:74). Here is evidence of service à la française, all the dishes coming at once, along with reports of food sharing, changes of clothing, and heating of food. The Florentine Codex, prepared in the period up to 1577, supplements and at times contradicts this description, albeit for nonimperial (if high status) banquets. A wealthy merchant would buy the spices, crockery, chocolate, baskets, cloth—for guests to wear or clean their hands?—garments, turkeys, and, according to the image in Book 9, folio 27v, instruct a woman as to their preparation (Figure 1). The virgules by the speaker’s mouth and his wagging finger suggest the heavy hand of gender roles: an instance of proto-mansplaining. There are hints, in Book 9, folio 28r, of sequencing too, a kind of service à la russe. The meal starts with tobacco, a key initiator of social interactions, then wafts of bouquets of flowers in specific order, a palette cleanser for the senses, followed by tamales. (Of late, gastronomy has once again found the importance of ambient smells, Spence 2022.) At the end comes chocolate, on folio 29r. This was to be given to high ranking people, along with a gourd with beating stick and a coil on which to rest it. The Nahuatl text makes it clear that all others received their chocolate in clay vessels, the perishable (a gourd) being accorded greater value than the permanent (a ceramic). Tamales seem only to occur in woven baskets, rather like the zhēnglóng (蒸笼; 蒸籠) bamboo steamers of China. Perhaps the similiarity came from the steamed nature of foods within, and the necessity of modulating or discharging moisture. Figure 1. Stages or courses of a wealthy merchant’s feast (photographs from the Digital Florentine Codex, Getty Research Institute). The overall setting for the Aztec feast appears to be outdoors, on flagstones; a schematic, masonry building occurs in the background without the circular cornice-insets of a lordly residence. Nonetheless, the host and guests sit on the high-backed tepotzoicpalli thrones of Indigenous lords. The reference to braziers, suitable for a cold clime, appears to be a chafing process, perhaps using the fuel mentioned on folio 27v in the Florentine Codex. The conquistador Bernal Díaz, an eyewitness, provided more detail about Motecuhzoma’s meals. When the weather was cold, servants warmed the emperor with braziers filled with nonsmoking bark, along with a screen “worked in gold” to moderate the heat; his meals might conclude with another toke on a pipe filled with tobacco and sweetgum, followed by a nap (Coe 1994:74). In archaeological reports from Aztec sites, cooking braziers are not mentioned outside of vessels, usually globular jars in domestic contexts, or noted sparingly, but they may well have been transported closer to places of serving as a sort of mini-réchauffoir (Olson and Smith 2016:142, Table 2; Rodríguez-Alegría and Stoner 2016:199). Book 8, folio 50v, of the Florentine Codex mentions foods of war, in essence, Aztec MREs, the provender of soldiers (Meals Ready to Eat). The directors of the markets were charged with gathering this food, “biscuits, dried maize and chía seeds, and dried maize dough, and dried, lime-treated maize dough.” The impression is that warriors traveled with cold foods, or preserved (but processed) foods that could be heated quickly near a campfire or nibbled en route to conflicts. Even in conditions of extended field operations or restricted intake, presentday estimates calculate a range of 1500 to 3600 kilocalories a day. A single tortilla averages about 240 kilocalories, a tamale just north of 200 (Weber et al. 1996). Presumably, these quantities—an absolute minimum of 6 to 7 tortillas and 8 to 9 tamales a day, and that in conditions of duress—were not transported by noble warriors but by tumplined servants and camp followers. Those people likely also carried the equipage of warriors, which could be burdensome, needing repair or patching and careful tending after each scuffle. But the point was that heating was desirable but not necessary. Writing of the very early Colonial Maya of Yucatan, Diego de Landa also reports that banquets involved gifts of clothing and the washing of hands (Tozzer 1941:91–92). Both the Florentine Codex (Book 9 in particular) and Landa’s description of feasts append slightly surreal and, in the Aztec instance, hallucinatory rituals, dances, and music afterwards. To judge from the sequence in these descriptions in Landa and the Florentine Codex, these events may have followed banquets, a hypothetical “Stage 4” to the three other courses reflected in Figure 1: stretching on for hours and, for the Aztecs, with mushroom ingestion to release selfrevelatory visions. A greater similiarity may lie in the apparent sequencing of consumption and the disposition of serving plates and vases within Classic Maya tombs: were they deposited in a way that, step-by-step, reflected notional food service at a banquet? A Maya service à la russe vs. service à la française? That is: not simply an aggregate of foods for the deceased but, in their placement and sequencing, a reflection of normative meal service. For their part, a banquet for the living might reflect, to reciprocal extent, the meals of the dead. Such a functional segregation appears, for example, in the Early Classic royal tomb of Burial 9 at El Zotz, Guatemala (Houston et al. 2015:86–156, fig. 3.2). Drinking vessels, presumably for chocolate, were perishable, and found only with fragments of their painted stucco coverings; other sectors of the tomb floor had probable bowls for tamales and, under the royal bier, offerings of children, apparently understood as the sacrificial food of deities (Scherer and Houston 2018:128–29, figs. 5.16–5.19; see also the now-destroyed Structure 1, jamb, Tohcok, Campeche, with the Jaguar God of the Underworld poised over a small figure in an incense burner, beneath the so-called wi-TE’-*NAAH sign linked to Teotihuacan; that tie is reinforced, in further allusion to that city, by the 18 BAAH *CHAN deity in the text—note Xcalumkin Jamb 6 for a comparable association of Teotihuacan raiment and the name glyphs of this being). The Maya Lowlands are, outside of tropical canopies, hot places for much of the year, although cloud cover and rain can chill the skin. In late December, sleeping in a hammock needs a light blanket to get through the night. These are not the Mexican highlands, however, although warm meals remain, as everywhere, desirable. To overwhelming extent, the solid foods consumed by the Classic Maya were, whatever the actual diet, exemplifed by tamales, waaj, often shown stuffed in the mouth, in counterpart to mouths with signs for “water,” ha’ (Figures 2; Houston et al. 2006:107–16; this fulcrum identification of tamales is in Taube 1989). The glyph itself, following a reading suggested by David Stuart, is WE’, “eat,” in the sense of softer mastication, not biting (k’ux), which is attested in hieroglyphs, in sacrificial contexts, or snacking on fruit (mak’), which is not (Zender 2000:1042–45; see also Tokovinine 2014:10, fig. 1; in some Mayan languages, words for “eat” are contingent on the food being consumed, Hinmán Smith 2004:44). The glyph in Figure 2 may read WE’-ne-la, perhaps, we’nVl, “eater/feaster” (‘eat [maize]’ + antipassivizer + nominalizer), namely, a participant in a banquet. (Incidentally, the transposition of the ne and la are most likely for aesthetic and practical reasons. A reduced ne, compacted to the side, could be confused with a ni syllable.) Figure 2. Possible glyph for “eater/feaster.” Unprovenanced lintel from the kingdom of Yaxchilan, reign of Bird Jaguar IV, Feb. 1, 753; sculpted by Chakjalte’ (photograph by Stephen Houston). The lintel from which the title comes is the only known image in the Classic period of what happens ritually at the shift from one year to the next. One celebrant is a sajal, a subordinate rank, the other a youth, ch’ok; both use the title in Figure 3. The scene is noisy, boisterous, full of off-kilter dance. Each figure holds two rattles, their bodies in mirrored symmetry. One represents a vulture, the other a macaw; the two birds appear as small heads above their faces. Indeed, the motion may simulate that of birds. For its part, the dyadic pattern (two men, two birds) hints obscurely at some tie to the old and new years and to the transition between them. Figure 3. Apparent year bearer ceremony with vulture (uus, right) and macaw dancers (mo’, left), accompanied by rattles in each hand. Unprovenanced lintel from the kingdom of Yaxchilan, reign of Bird Jaguar IV, Feb. 1, 753; sculpted by Chakjalte’ (photograph by James Doyle). Revenge is a dish best served cold. Not so tamales, which taste their best while warm or hot, their juices seeping in, the texture soft, added meats piping hot. An argument has been made that, at Classic Maya sites, presumed censer burners were in fact for cooking or rewarming (Figure 4; Ball and Taschek 2007:458–61; see also Chase and Chase 2004b:355, fig. 16.7c). They show eminent portability, unpackable into parts. All appear to be from the final years of the Classic period and some decades beyond. Similar composites or ceramics are attested at far earlier dates in highland Chiapas and Guatemala, where they had been interpreted as incense burners, even when imitated in the Maya Lowlands (e.g., Borhegyi 1959; Miller et al. 2005:166, fig. 3.13; Popenoe de Hatch 1997:164–65, fig. 160; Sharer 1978:fig. 34). Three-pronged thermal devices, the better to support the dish being heated, are also documented in the Early Classic period at Teotihuacan, Mexico, with evident acceptance of their role in cooking or warming (Solís 2009:384). Figure 4. Braziers for possible cooking and warming of food: (upper left) Cayo Unslipped three-prong composite, based on partial examples from the Belize River valley, Belize (Ball and Taschek 2007:fig.1); (upper right) Cayo Unslipped brazier, Buenavista del Cayo palace (Ball and Taschek 2007:fig. 4); and (lower center) floor find, epicentral Caracol, Belize (Chase and Chase 2004:fig. 16.7w). The striking feature is that Aguateca, the Late Classic “Pompeii” of the Maya, has, despite its in situ finds and large inventory of complete ceramics, no evidence for such warmers in a palatial setting (Inomata et al. 2010). Here, perhaps, is culinary history: near-coeval sites with different heating or warming practices, an inception of réchauffoirs in the Preclassic in Highland zones to the south of the Maya Lowlands, possibly the relative proximity of kitchens for initial preparation. At Aguateca, they may not have been far away, while, at Caracol, the excavators comment on the absence of cooking in its many palaces (Chase and Chase 2004a:3). That incense was never heated on these devices may be difficult to prove, however: massive threepronged carvings at Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyu supported incense burners, not ceramics for food preparation (Parsons 1986:figs. 125–28). Their depiction of an early form of Chahk, the rain god, may indicate rites of rain-making, smoke being an obvious analogue (a stimulus?) to clouds. For ceramics, this is the eventual contribution of residue analysis, with the chance that, as among the Aztecs, fragrances could be regarded as a kind of food. Thermal devices, too, might have been put to multiple uses. Another ceramic hedged in time is the basal-flanged bowl with lid, from the Early Classic period (Figure 5). These are clearly intended for tamales, and one example on exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, looted from the area of Naranjo, Guatemala, shows a Maize God head in its interior, a trope for the foods made from his body, and a glyphic reference to “eating [tamales],” uht-i we’-? (K5458). The exceptions are equally noteworthy. The lone plate (lak) that refers to “chocolate” is almost certainly, as suggested to me by Shanti Morell-Hart, a unique glyphic reference to a Maya mole or at least to chocolate-flavored tamales (now at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, the ceramic derives from Structure F, Group 1, Holmul, Guatemala [11-6-20/C5666]; for varied drinks, see Beliaev et al. 2010). The dancing Maize God in the interior points to a delectable sauce for steamed breads or stews. The plate dates to the final decades of the Late Classic period and may betoken changing or introduced cuisines in a time of heightened foreign contact (Halperin 2023). No earlier reference to moles exists, although there would have been many available plates to do so. In much the same way, the restricted orifices of chocolate vases in the final years of the Classic period and into the Terminal and Postclassic periods raise the possibility that chocolate was frothed in a different way, perhaps, as in later times, with sticks (for such a drinking pot, see Martin 2020:fig. 73c). By common claim, the beating stick, the molinillo, is thought to be post-Conquest, and pouring was the proper—and well-documented—way to raise a froth (Coe and Coe 1996:87–88). Yet there is a pronounced similarity between restricted orifices on colonial chocolate pots and the small apertures and large bodies of chocolate vessels in Terminal Classic times (Coe and Coe 1996:images on pp. 131, 132, 160, 237). Evidence of stick-wear or the lack of it may prove decisive. Figure 5. Early Classic basal-flanged bowl with lid, Vessel 19, Burial 9, El Diablo, El Zotz, Guatemala, ca. AD 400 (photograph by Jorge Pérez de Lara). A notable contrast with later tamale and food-serving dishes is the presence of a lid. Not a single tamale plate from the Late Classic period retains a cover, if they ever had them. The thermal implications need some thought. The Early Classic lids plausibly helped to retain heat during long services, in an array of assembled dishes, or if kitchens lay at some remove from places of consumption. Several examples have open-bottomed ceramics that were inserted into spouted bowls (Houston et al. 2015:98, 118–19). These may have been employed for certain kinds of steamed cuisine, intensifying moisture, or perhaps as a way of retaining heat. (We do not know the role of the baskets stressed by the Aztec, for none of them survive other than as impressions in tomb muck or building fill.) By contrast, Late Classic depictions of tamales typically display them in uncovered bowls, ready for eating; perhaps they were covered with textiles, but there are no hints of this in surviving imagery. Are the bowls from the Early Classic an indication of service à la française, plates brought in unison, at hazard for cooling in a lengthy meal? (Whipping off a lid might have provided its own form of drama, a “reveal” to induce smiles and salivation.) Did the open plates of the Late Classic correspond, in service à la russe, to the timed delivery of individual dishes, or, as Andrew Scherer speculates to me, to a heightened emphasis on the display of food rather than its palatability? Alternatively, the discrepancy may simply have resulted from the shifting proximity of kitchens or the means to rewarm or reheat. Far-cooking, if delectability were the aim, needed measures that nearcooking did not. The single image of service à la française comes from the final years of the Late Classic period, in a mythic scene where animals bring open tamale bowls and vases for chocolate to God D and a set of Twins; seemingly, two scribal monkeys tally the haul (Figure 6). The dishes and vases are held aloft in the t’abayi or k’ahlaj gesture of toasts and offerings (Houston 2018:62–67). Actual consumption in Classic imagery is almost never shown, and the food appears largely to flow to a royal presence: the regal body or its supernatural analogue is the consumer, with almost non-existent depictions of subsequent dispersal of gathered foods. A daring dwarf, probably thought to be amusing, quaffs a beverage on one pot, but the scene is highly unusual (Houston et al. 2006:127–28). Figure 6. Offerings of tamale bowls and chocolate(?) drinks to late version of God D, ca. AD 800 (photograph by Justin Kerr, K3413). There is another seldom-noted property of tamale plates from the Late Classic period. To my knowledge, not a single example shows a historical or dynastic scene, which is the heavy (but non-exclusive) content of imagery on the vases (for images on plates, see this, this, and that). If present, historical figures are in the distant, Teotihuacano-past, places might be referred to, drenched with maize-related glyphs, or a Hero Twin has his arm ripped off (Chinchilla Mazariegos 2017:figs. 64–65). All interior designs display the Maize God in various guises, or scenes from the Classic Maya mythos and calendrical notations (k’atun [winik-ha’b] endings) of impersonal if broad import. Another anomaly marks the earlier, lidded bowls: frequently appearing with modeled animal or human heads, almost none of them, other than peccary, relate to what might be in those bowls as food. The majority are heads of humans or scribal howler monkeys (mythic, not creatures of the canopy), or they show macaw or other birds (e.g., Houston et al. 2015:88–144). In general, these are, in an anthropological sense, “not-foods,” i.e., unfit for humans yet emplaced on receptacles for human fare. The sacralization and aberrancies seem pervasive in the foodware of the Classic Maya. Daily consumption acquired the tincture of the supernatural, of personages not in the present, of creatures abhorrent to human diets. A final comment on heat. Four Late Classic ceramics in a “codex-style” (black line on beige background, red highlights on rims) spell out an enigmatic sequence of glyphs (Figure 7). One plate refers to itself, u-lak, but then follows with a metaphor: yotoot u-k’inil, “it is the dwelling/home of his warmth.” In Ch’orti’, the language closest to that of the glyphs, k’ihnir [k’inil in ancestral form] refers to “steam, vapor, heat, warmth” (Hull 2016:234). There could be some unexplained metaphor at play, but this may be an overt cue to warm foods in such plates. That one such text is on a vase—the example at the Fralin Museum in Charlottesville—keys into the warm drinks, served at dawn, that were known among the Maya (Tozzer 1941:91). Figure 7. Dwellings of “heat” or “warmth”(?), from top to bottom (Houston 1998:fig. 13, Dumbarton Oaks Hellmuth Archive, dr. 13-LC-p2-162; Dumbarton Oaks Hellmuth Archive, PC.M.LC.p2.213.4; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, M.2010.115.5, K7185, photograph by Justin Kerr; Fralin Museum of Art, University of Virginia, 1982.12.33, photograph by Yuriy Polyukhovych [Looper and Polyukhovych 2015:17]). Maya foods have their journeys, their synergies and wrestling bouts with humans, a give-andtake by means of many hands, especially in elite kitchens (Morell-Hart 2020). A grain, a maize kernel, might pass from field to processing, to heated tamale, then on in formal service to tables with fancy pots…eventually, after digestion and defecation, collection and mulching, to the nightsoil that fertilized seeds (Keenan et al. 2021). But there was also change and the culinary equipment to take new directions: bowls that retained heat, or even caused foods to steam in their own juices, or warming stations brought right to the royal table. At the level of elite rhetoric there seemed to be, in final reflection, a curious blending of exaltation and anomaly. Repasts that highlighted gods, mythic beasts, and dead lords built on everyday needs, and the figured bodies of the inedible stepped up to house delicious things. Acknowledgments Arlen Chase was helpful with bibliographic references, and useful comments came from Harper Dine, Shanti Morell-Hart, Esteban Herrera-Parra, and Andrew Scherer. David Stuart gave good feedback on the Yaxchilan-area lintel; James Doyle supplied a crucial image. Dmitri Beliaev tells me that, in this powerpoint, worth a close look, he and colleagues came independently to the same conclusion about the k’inil reading. 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