[Sca-cooks] Pre-Columbian Foods

[Christine Seelye-King]

Alegria is an amaranth candy.  The amaranth is new world, but I doubt
it would be made into candy.  I have not found any references to
sugar used before Columbus, except for maple syrup.


This is very interesting, I'd never heard of Alegria before (except as a
Circe du Soliel performance) and since I have a  bunch of amananth on hand I
looked it up.  This website: http://www.dolfzine.com/page401.htm describes
both the popping technique and a recipe for Alegria.
On a couple of sites (here's another one: http://chetday.com/amaranth.html)
they describe a product made for 'communion' by the Aztecs as mixing popped
amaranth with the sacrificial human's blood (one site says with honey -
maybe wild wasp honey since it is a religious food?) and eating it as part
of the ceremony.  They both say the Spaniards were so appalled that they
banned the use of amaranth totally.
I'm short of sacrificial victims, but I do have lots of amaranth handy (and
no Spaniards),
hmm, I may be popping little grains this afternoon...
Christianna