Southwestern Regional Cookery

New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona share a culinary heritage based on the foods that indigenous peoples in Mexico and the Southwest exchanged with Spanish settlers. The three states also share a common history rooted in Spanish colonization, Mexican independence, and American Manifest Destiny. Yet the foodways of these states are not identical; New Mexico’s are the oldest and most deeply rooted of the regional cuisines, and Texas, as befits its great size, boasts not one but several culinary traditions. Arizona’s foodways, of more recent origin, are closely linked to the cookery of the northern Mexican state of Sonora.