Horchata and I share a heritage

Writer, culinary historian, and educator Michael W. Twitty shares some of the global history of rice and how it has been enjoyed, from the exotic rice puddings of Shakespeare’s England to the refreshing drink horchata de arroz in the New World, which holds deep personal connections for him.

Join Michael for Cocktails and Conversation at the Folger on July 26. He’ll talk about the  complex history of rice cultivation, the early modern American South, and the enduring connection between foodways and culture.

In Tudor England, rice was not a commonplace food. To some, it was a spice, in the sense that it was a treat sparingly eaten. To English royalty and elites, it was something of a culinary exotic wallpaper on which to display fruits from the hedgerow and the spices of India, Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), the West African coast, and the Moluccas, also known as the Spice Islands. In true British style, rice was transformed by British cooks into, of course, a pudding. Rice had to be imported into the country, much like raisins and dates, by boat. For everyday people, barley, wheat, and oats provided the main support for their daily porridge, bread, and puddings.

In Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Act 4, scene 3, the Shepherd’s Son recites a shopping list reflecting this history. Many of the items reflect an odoriferous (I love using that word—sparingly) resplendent opulence in a world where saffron, mace, nutmeg, and ginger were magical, rare, and medicinal in addition to being a way to savor a planet most would never get to see. There are dates here, and currants, warden pears, and prunes closer to home. Sugar tops the list, already being produced by enslaved Africans in the Caribbean, and it’s followed by another crop that had not yet made its New World plantation debut: rice. “Rice—what will this sister of mine do with rice?…” Spoiler: She probably made an elaborate rice pudding with all those goodies, but she could have made horchata.

Let’s go further back in time for a moment. Rice may have been new to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, but it didn’t appear ex nihilo, out of nowhere. Many of the civilizations that would indeed educate, inspire, and enrich the West, and by extension, the coming British Empire, were involved in the journey of rice, including China, India, the Islamic world, as well as West and East Africa. Oryza sativa, also commonly known as Asian rice, originated from O. rufipogon, where the domestication process began over 9,000 years ago. Asian rice spread from East Asia to India and on through the Silk Road into the Islamic world. When Asian rice was introduced to the African coast by the Portuguese, it was met by Oryza glaberrima, a native African rice species. This indigenous African rice was domesticated over 3,500 years ago along the river basins at the heart of the region. O. glaberimma and its native growers would later introduce the cultivation, preparation, and consumption of the crop to the Western hemisphere, thus being the foremothers of rice in the Americas.

Long before the enslavement of Indigenous people and Africans in mainland British North America began in earnest, the Spanish and Portuguese made their colonial empires on this exploitation, drawing heavily on the cultures of the people they held in bondage to forge new civilizations in early Latin America and the Caribbean. It wasn’t just the case that people and new ingredients, such as maize and rice, were thrown together in colonial crucibles; so were ideas about those ingredients, recipes, mythologies, and folk knowledge. The people of the Iberian Peninsula had long been a melting pot of Europe. The Moorish conquest brought influences from the Islamic World, from Baghdad to North Africa to the Mali Empire. Spaniards, Sephardic Jews, Amazigh, Tuaregs, Egyptians, Iraqis, Moors, Mandinkas, Hausas, Portuguese speakers, and Fulanis all shared the same world for almost a millennium before those worlds and many others would cross the ocean by force or freedom. In several turns of fortune, these cultures would mix and blend with the peoples of the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan civilizations, as well as the Tupi, Taino, and Carib, further enriching the culinary and medicinal heritage that would come to be known as The New World.

Out of this mix comes the delicious horchata—and by extension, me. Food and drink are rarely marked by precise introductions from one place to another and from one culture to another. It’s primarily a game of substitution and telephone. Horchata’s roots began with drinks made from ground rice (think ancient rice milk) and extracted juices from chufa or tiger nuts, very popular in North and West Africa, sweetened and drank as a form of throat soothing, cooling refreshment born among traders in Africa’s Sahel region like the Hausa, who called their favorite version kunu aya. Horchata de chufa, made with tiger nuts, gained popularity in Spain under the Moors, drawing on African roots and absorbing Silk Road spices before spreading to Mexico, where Africans and indigenous people further transformed the drink.

In Mexico, one of the places where rice made its debut in the Americas, it was the center of horchata de arroz, made with soaked ground rice, strained, sweetened, and spiced, representing the culmination of all these separate stories. However, varieties with chufa did persist in other locations. Much like many manifold drinks, including those made from tamarind, hibiscus flowers, mangoes, bananas, and others, owe their existence to West Africa and its influence, horchata de arroz has enjoyed increased interest and resurgence as the influence of Afro-Latin cuisine and culture has expanded on the global stage.

In many ways, horchata and I have a lot in common. I come from rice people, the very same who brought African rice into the world thousands of years ago and were brought to Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1760s, long after The Bard last drew breath. I have Hausa, Fulani, Mandinka, Mende, Native American, Iberian, and North African ancestors, all the great peoples who made this sensational beverage possible. My own genetic inheritance and family tree represent the merging of many ingredients, recipes, narratives, and histories filtered through pain, persistence, and moments of sustaining joy, which is why drinks like horchata and its cousins have become our inheritance. We should enjoy our heritage foods and beverages with respect, appreciation, and marvel.