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Cinco de Mayo and mole poblano
Puebla's victory day, remembered with mole poblano, a sauce of more than twenty ingredients.
Spices for Cinco de Mayo and mole poblano
The holiday recalls the 1862 victory at Puebla, and the city's famous dish is mole poblano, a dark sauce of dried ancho, mulato and pasilla chillies, nuts, seeds, plantain, a little chocolate and spices including cinnamon, clove, black pepper, anise and coriander seed. Every family has its version, and the paste is made in large batches. It is a lesson in how chillies are used for depth more than heat.
The spices
Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Cinco de Mayo" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Chili pepper: Takeaway, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Sesame: Anna Frodesiak, CC0, source
- Cinnamon: Luc Viatour, CC BY-SA 3.0, source