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Mexican Tortillas

A thin cornmeal flatbread made by mixing cornmeal with water, seasoning, and cooking on a hot griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Mexican Tortillas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mush

  1. Mix the cornmeal with enough boiling water to barely wet it.

  2. Add cold water to make a thin mush consistency.

  3. Stir in the salt.

Cook the cakes

  1. Drop large spoonfuls onto a hot griddle and spread them out to form thin cakes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

White corn meal
Its starch forms the body of the dough, setting into flat, sturdy cakes when cooked.
Boiling water
Hydrates the cornmeal and gelatinizes its starch, so the meal becomes pliable and binds together.
Cold water
Thins the mixture to a mush that spreads easily into thin cakes.

The step that matters

Add cold water to make a thin mush consistency. Cornmeal absorbs water as it sits, and the right fluidity lets the mixture spread into thin cakes on the griddle. Too thick, the cakes stay lumpy and cook unevenly; too thin, they cannot hold their shape.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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