Mole poblano – far more than the convent’s chocolate sauce

First comes the scent of warm chillies: dark fruit, dry hay, something reminiscent of raisins. Then the sesame seeds begin to crackle in the pan. As the spices warm, the air changes again. Cinnamon softens, cloves come to the fore, and somewhere further along in the process, chocolate awaits. It is not there to take over. It is there to bring everything together.

This is one way to approach a kitchen in colonial Puebla, without pretending to know what happened on a particular evening behind a particular convent wall. Dried chillies, bread, seeds and spices lie on the work surface. A metate, the sloping grinding stone, turns the ingredients into a paste through hands, weight and persistence. Stock waits in the pot. What will become a sauce is still a collection of separate aromas.

Mole poblano is one of Mexico’s best-known celebration dishes: a deep brown, complex sauce often served over turkey or chicken and finished with sesame seeds. But describing it as “chicken in chocolate sauce” gives the wrong impression. Chillies are its backbone. Chocolate is one of several voices in a much larger conversation.

There is a rhythm to the work here, too, quite unlike a quick everyday dinner. Ingredients are heated separately, ground together, then transformed once more as the paste is fried and thinned. No single action is particularly remarkable. What makes the difference is the care taken between stages: stopping at just the right degree of toasting, scraping along the bottom of the pot, tasting before the next addition.

The sauce takes its name from Puebla, the city south-east of Mexico City founded by the Spanish in 1531. During the colonial period, it became an important centre for trade, crafts and religious institutions. Its food tells of ingredients and people travelling great distances – but also of knowledge already rooted there, which did not begin with the Europeans’ arrival.

The most widespread origin legend places mole poblano at the Dominican convent of Santa Rosa in Puebla. In its various versions, the nuns are said to have needed to prepare an exceptional meal for a high-ranking church or colonial visitor. They gather what the kitchen has to offer, toast and grind it, and create a sauce so magnificent that it becomes famous.

It is an alluring story. An enclosed kitchen opens out into the world; hands usually working beyond history’s spotlight become its creative protagonists. In some accounts, the invention is the result of inspiration; in others, almost a happy accident. The stories also vary in their names, dates and the identity of the guest.

That very variation is reason for caution. There is not enough evidence to treat a particular nun’s cooking for a particular visit as the certain moment of mole poblano’s birth. Santa Rosa is central to the dish’s cultural history, but the legend is not the same as a documented original recipe. Other convent and kitchen stories have also been linked to the sauce’s creation.

Puebla’s convents did, however, have genuine significance as culinary settings. Food supplies, gifts, religious festivals and extensive domestic labour could converge there. Such kitchens offered scope for elaborate confectionery and festive food, although resources and conditions varied. The fact that convents contributed to the city’s culinary reputation does not mean that every famous dish was invented there from scratch.

We should also look beyond the legend’s named nun. Colonial households and institutions depended on growing, deliveries, grinding, tending fires, washing up and cooking. Indigenous knowledge of chillies, maize, seeds and grinding stones was fundamental to what these kitchens could achieve. A story that credits only the Spanish convent risks making the people who held that knowledge invisible.

The historically plausible picture is therefore less dramatic but richer: mole poblano emerged through the long development of sauces, techniques and celebratory meals. Convents may have played an important part in that development. They were not a world cut off from markets, agriculture or the people whose work made those meals possible.

The word mole derives from the Nahuatl molli, often rendered as mulli, meaning sauce or cooked mixture. It is not the name of a single original recipe. Rather, the word opens the door to a whole family of ways of cooking and eating.

The Florentine Codex, compiled during the 16th century by Bernardino de Sahagún with Nahuatl-speaking collaborators, describes, among other things, foods and sauces in which chillies play a prominent role. The source was written after the conquest and must be read with that circumstance in mind. Even so, it clearly shows that complex chilli preparations did not begin in Puebla’s colonial convent kitchens.

Pre-Hispanic kitchens had a wide variety of chillies, as well as maize, tomatoes, tomatillos, pumpkin seeds and turkey. Cacao also had a long history, particularly in drinks and in social and ritual settings. But we cannot conclude from this that today’s mole poblano already existed as an unchanged dish. The presence of an ingredient does not prove that it was used in the particular combination we know now.

After the Spanish conquest, conditions changed. European colonial networks introduced wheat, almonds, raisins and new domesticated animals, among other things. Sesame and spices originating in other parts of the world reached New Spain and became established in its cooking. Cinnamon and cloves, in turn, speak of trade routes stretching beyond both Mexico and Europe.

It is tempting to call this a meeting of two worlds. The phrase is useful, but it simplifies matters. Many societies and traditions of knowledge met here, and they did so on unequal terms: conquest, coercion and immense social upheaval. At the same time, people continued to cook, adapt their methods and create something that cannot easily be divided into a European and an Indigenous half.

In mole poblano, this history becomes tangible. An Indigenous foundation of chillies and grinding can be combined with wheat bread, almonds, sesame and imported spices. The recipes eventually documented and circulated are not all alike, either. In later centuries, printed cookbooks, restaurants, migration and the construction of national identity helped make certain versions particularly well known.

It is therefore more accurate to think of mole as a living family than as a single invented object. Mole poblano is one famous branch. Oaxaca’s various moles, green sauces and seed-based preparations show how much larger the family is. Not all contain chocolate, and not all are brown.

Ancho, mulato and pasilla recur in many mole poblano recipes. They offer not three versions of the same heat, but different aromatic building blocks. Their names are therefore worth getting to know before worrying about how many ingredients need to be lined up on the kitchen counter.

Ancho is dried poblano chilli. Broad and often reddish-brown, it brings a sweet fruitiness that can recall raisins and plums. Mulato is closely related to ancho but usually darker, with notes often described as cocoa, liquorice or dried fruit. Pasilla is the dried chilaca chilli: long, slender, dark and often earthier, with a fruitiness of its own.

Heat varies between harvests and products. It is therefore wiser to taste than to assume a variety is always mild. The seeds and, above all, the pale membranes are usually removed here to create a pleasant texture and control the heat. Consider wearing gloves, and avoid touching your eyes as you work.

Dried chillies should smell fragrant when you open the packet. Ideally, they will be leathery and slightly pliable rather than so old that they crumble to dust. In Sweden, these varieties are available from Latin American food shops and online retailers. They are worth seeking out: ordinary chilli powder can provide heat, but it cannot reproduce the depth of this combination.