Skip to content

Chicken Tamales

A historical recipe from California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book, by Bertha Haffner-Ginger.

A historical recipe

California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book: Selected Mexican and Spanish Recipes, by Bertha Haffner-Ginger. Project Gutenberg eBook #39586.

From an old book: a historical recipe, not current advice. Its methods, additives and storage may be unsafe by today's standards.

Source and licence

From California Mexican-Spanish Cook Book, by Bertha Haffner-Ginger. Digitised by Project Gutenberg, eBook #39586 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39586). Public domain in the USA; its status may differ elsewhere.

Read the original Public domain in the USA

What was changed: As printed, from the book's text; Project Gutenberg's header and licence removed. Ingredient lines were read out of the text by a program. A historical recipe, not current advice.

Mexico. Associated with Mexico by the book is about Mexican cookery (Cooking, Mexican); the recipe itself names no place (confidence 0.4). "Associated with" means only that the evidence named here links this recipe to that place. A recipe isn't labelled as representing an entire country because a source associates it with one, and regional origins are kept where the source gives them.

Create an image with FoodStudio Made by our AI generator from your own prepaid SecondMem credits. We keep no picture from the source.

Ingredients

Method

  1. Soak some trimmed corn husk (bought in Mexican stores) for several hours in cold water, then boil until soft, remove;
  2. dry on cloth, and rub with lard.
  3. Cut up a fat chicken, cook until very tender in just enough water to leave about four cups.
  4. Chop up cooked chicken, add corn meal or masa to boiling hot chicken broth until a thick dough;
  5. add salt to taste, one tablespoon chile powder, or chile sauce No.
  6. 1;
  7. add tablespoon of lard and knead all together until light and smooth.
  8. Now to all the chicken add enough chile sauce No.
  9. 1 to mix thickly together;
  10. add about one-fourth cup of sliced olives and a few whole ones and one-fourth cup seedless raisins, and a few whole ones, salt to taste and cook together for five minutes;
  11. spread corn dough evenly over shuck or husk about one-eighth inch thick.
  12. In center of one larger husk place a large kitchen spoonful of chicken;
  13. spread over this one tablespoonful of dough;
  14. place another husk spread with dough;
  15. continue placing husk around on all sides until about ten are used.
  16. Tie ends together with a strip of husk and place on end in a colander over boiling water for two or three hours, or place some corn husk in bottom of vessel, pile tamales on top, pour in about a quart of water, bring to a boil and steam slowly for three or four hours.