Chilean Olives and Olive Oil

In the year of 1560, Don Antonio de Ribera…brought with him from Seville several Olive Plants, which he carefully saved, and put up in two great Jars, and of above a hundred which he had brought, there were but three slips only that were alive, the which he planted in a fruitful Soil and Valley, wherein he having also other fruits, such as Grapes, Figs, Pomegranats and Oranges, Limes and the like…  Don Antonio de Ribera having planted these Olive Trees in his own Land, would not afford so much as one leaf of them to be planted in any other Ground than his own, and for security of them he guarded them with at least one hundred Negros and thirty Dogs, which watched his rich Plantations both by day and night; but it happening out that some persons, more watchful than his Dogs and perhaps by the connivance or consent of the Negros, (as is to be suspected) stole away in the night time one of the three Olive Plants, the which in some time after, was seen to flourish and grow in Chili… and there for the space of three Years afforded many sprouts for divers Plantations, increasing with that prosperous success, that not the least twig was put into the ground but which took and in a short time became a fair Olive Tree.  “The Inca” Garcilaso de la Vega 1609[1]

Thus olives arrived in Chile, assuming that “The Inca” Garcilaso got the story right.  He was writing 30 years later, and the story surely had been told many times as the punch line, below, makes it a great tale: 

 at the end of three years… the same tree was again restored and replanted in the very same place from whence it had been taken, with that secrecy, and with that dexterity returned that the master could never detect the Person who had robbed him of it. 

However olives arrived in Chile, they did well.  Garcilaso reports that by the time of his writing olive oil was already being exported from Chile to Peru, and today, 400 years later, Chile exports over 12 million liters every year, some 35-40% to the United  States.

Chilean olive oil is among the best in the world, 99% is extra virgin, most with a total acidity of .02% or less.  Most is mild, suitable for either salads or for cooking, but more intense varieties are available if you look for them.  In 2011 Chilean olive oil received prizes in 10 international competitions and 13 Chilean olive oil producers received outstanding scores in the 2012 olive oil guide Flos Olei, two of 97/100.[2]  And in contrast to the situation with European olive oils where adulteration, fraud and mislabeling are rampant[3], Chilean oils have been relatively free from scandal.[4]

A bit of history.

Although the Spaniards who conquered Chile had presumably grown up on a diet rich in olive oil, in Chile they turned to a much more available alternative:  beef fat, rendered from cattle that soon roamed the central valley in vast herds. (See Eating Chilean Beef)  Chilean historian Pereira Salas explains that “olive oil had very restricted culinary use in Chile, serving only to dress salads; beef fat was adopted for cooking and is one of the most important characteristics of Creole diet.  What butter is for the French, olive oil is for the Italian or Spaniard, beef fat was for the Chilean”.[5]

But of course there was some production, for both oil and table olives.  Unfortunately, most Chilean olive oil was “fatty, seldom clear and very bad quality, owing to the singular manner in which it is made,” according to French naturalist Caludio Gay, who traveled widely and wrote authoritatively on Chile during the 1830s and 40s. 

In June or July they knock the olives to the ground with poles and then they gather them into piles for five or six days, and sometimes as much as a month, and after crushing with stones they put them a portion at a time in a bag and rub them with their hands against a sloping board with water so hot as to be very painful. The liquid is gathered in a tray or other vessel and after it has cooled the oil that floats on the water is removed with a spoon and clarified over a fire. The remaining pulp is thrown away as useless or is used as fuel for ovens, still containing a great deal of oil from the depraved way they have operated.

But there was some good oil. Using mills like those used in Europe the Villuco hacienda, in Santiago province, produced the best oil in Chile

…five days after being harvested the olives are ground in a horse powered mill.  The resulting paste is placed in sacks for pressing, first moderately in order to obtain first class oil, and later after mixing with hot water, it is given another much stronger pressing in order to obtain all the oil content, and which is sold as second and third quality.

  

 

Moroccan olive mill (photo Jerzy Strzelecki ) & 19^th Century French olive press (photo: Bid or Buy) similar those used in Chile.

And there was great potential.  Gay thought Chilean olive trees were greatly superior to the scrawny trees in France, and:

If Chile devoted itself intelligently to this industry it could supply all the oil the countries of the southern ocean consume and now obtain from Europe; but the tree is slow to grow, yielding a fair harvest only after 25 or 30 years, which is too much for Chileans who are always rushed to pick their fruit soon. This is surely the reason that they have planted so few trees, satisfied with those that exist to produce the oil needed for the country.[6]

By 1869 Chile had about 145,000 olive trees which could have provided only about .4 liter of oil (1 ¾ cups) per person per year.[7] Over 75% of the trees were in Ñuble Province, some 400 km south of Santiago. But it was in Santiago that the best oil was produced, “with a perfection that puts to shame any foreign oil.  Almost all is consumed within the country as it is greatly appreciated.”[8]

By the 1930s the Chilean population had grown to about 5 million, but the situation was little changed.  There were some 260,000 trees, perhaps two thousand hectares of olives, enough for only about .3 liters of oil per person—1 ¼ cup—per year.  At the same time, Chile was importing some three million liters of vegetable oils per year—now including soy and cotton seed oil as well as olive. To replace this level of imports, Chile would need some 15,000 hectares of olive trees rather than the 2,000 then planted.[9]

It didn’t happen.  By 1998, Chilean olive plantations had only increased to 4,500 hectares, some 1.2 million liters of olive oil were imported, and annual consumption was down to less that 1/10 of a liter—1/5 cup-- per person.[10]

 

But something else had happened.  Since 1990-91 world olive oil consumption had increased by about 1/3 and in the United States, one of Chile’s most important agricultural export markets, people were now using 50% more olive oil, almost all imported.  The foodie revolution had struck!  “EVOO,” catch phrase of TV foodie Rachael Ray  was in the Oxford American College Dictionary.  Olive oil was hot!

And Chile noticed.

Chileans started planting olive trees:  500 hectares more by 2001, 7,600 more by 2006, 20,000 more by 2011 and a projected 28,000 more by 2020 for a total of 33,000 hectares.  And while domestic olive oil consumption increased to about .6 lt. a year, more than doubling in five years, production increased over 400% and exports increased 1100%, over ten times, to 12.5 million liters a year.[11]

Chilean olive oil today

Olives are grown throughout northern and central Chile from oases in the Atacama Desert to the Bío Bío region, but most are grown in the central region shown on the map.  The dominant variety of olive, comprising just under 50% of trees and 70% of oil production is the Spanish Arbequina, which has one of the highest concentrations of oil (20-22%). Oils made from Arbequina are generally buttery, fruity, and very mild in flavor, and are used as a base for more flavorful blends. The second most common is the Tuscan variety Frantoil, which also yields high percentages of oil, the best of which is highly aromatic and fruity.  Together these two varieties make up approximately 70% of Chilean production.[12]

 

Arvequina olives

Photo:  Willis Orchards

  

Most Chilean olives are picked using hand-held vibrating rake-like devices that shake them from the branches onto cloths spread under the trees, although some groves are densely planted and pruned for machine harvesting.  The photo below is part of an excellent photo essay covering the process from Cachando Chile: “Chilean Olive Oil: A day on the job” by fellow blogger Margaret.

  

The Chile Oliva web site explains the rest of the process: After harvest the olives are washed and then crushed, usually within 24 hours.  The result is a thick paste which is kneaded or beaten to allow the smaller drops of oil to aggregate for easier separation. To extract the oil the paste is spun, or the solids and liquids are separated and spun separately. The resulting oil is centrifuged again to remove the remaining water, and:

At this point the final product is ready for consumption. However, in order to eliminate any remaining solid residues from the previous stages, the oil goes through a filter system; right after that the final product is collected in stainless steel barrels and then packaged to be stored.

The finished product appears on Chilean supermarket shelves, commonly holding a dozen or more brands, at from about 4,000 CLP (US$8.00) per liter for store brands to 7,000 CLP for some of the best known name and organic brands.  Virtually all is marked “extra virgin” and most is fruity and mild.

But if you prefer an oil with a more pronounced flavor, you may have to do some looking.  My favorite for salads is from Bezma, from the valley of Azapa in northern Chile.  It is not extra virgin oil, having acidity up to 1.4%, and is sold as “Sabor Intenso,” intense flavor.  I don’t use it in cooking, but to my taste it is a great oil for salads.

Chilean Olives

While olive oil has only recently become popular, and then with a fairly limited portion of the population, olives themselves were common and widely eaten throughout Chilean history.  Writing in the 1840s Gay explained that:

There are two varieties of olives, a smaller one which provides oil in greater quantity and a larger one, used mainly as food.  The consumption of these is very great, above all in the men’s and women’s convents.  To prepare them they are pricked with a thorn and then put in a vessel of water, which is changed twice a day.  Twelve to fifteen days are enough to remove all their bitterness and foul liquid, and afterwards they are preserved with salt and dry cumin. When they are to be used they are dressed with oil, vinegar, and frequently with whole or minced onion. They are always preserved when ripe and thus are black, but some curious persons also prepare green olives, as in Europe, which is not very common as they are liked by very few.[13]

While this traditional method of preparing olives is no longer practiced in Chile, except perhaps by hobbyists for home consumption, olives continue to be popular, with an annual consumption of 1.8 kg per person, about the same as that of Greece and almost 3 times that of the US (but less that Syria, the world leader at 6 kg per person).

  

 

Olives from major commercial processors are available in supermarkets’, in jars, plastic and in bulk, and in bulk from small producers at neighborhood ferias, street fairs, small shops and at La Vega, Santiago’s large public market.  The most common varieties are the green, purple and black types in the photo below. Their colors indicate how ripe they were when picked, and while the green and black are mild, smooth and buttery; the purples (our favorites) always have a trace of bitterness.  All commonly sell for 4000 CLP a kg (US$3.60/lb.) at ferias; more in supermarkets.

Olives at the feria where I buy mine, along with pickled chilies, onions and mixed vegetables.  In the back are dried peaches, walnuts, garbanzo beans, and fresh chilies.

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[1] Vega, Garcilasso de la. 1688. The Royal Commentaries of Peru... Illustrated with sculptures. Written originally in Spanish, by the Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, and rendered into English, by Sir Paul Rycaut, Kt. London: Miles Flesher for Jacob Tonson, 1688. p. 391.

[2] Sudy Bustamante, Ana X and Pablo Cortéz Tirado.  2012.  Aceite de oliva. Oficina de estudios y políticas Agrarias, Odepa, Governero de Chile.  On line at http://www.odepa.gob.cl/odepaweb/publicaciones/doc/4878.pdf

But note that Chile’s exports are only about 1% of the world total.

[3] see Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

[4] In July 2913 the Chilean TV program Contacto, known for its exposés, reported that one Chilean “extra virgin” olive oil (and one Italian and one Spanish oil) should actually be categorized as “Lampante oil” and were not suitable for human consumption, while two other Chilean brands (and one Italian brand) were found to have been made from olives that had fermented.  The makers disputed these claims as did the Chilean minister of health who said the program “lied.” See http://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2013/07/10/organizacion-de-consumidores-exige-que-se-retire-del-mercado-los-productos-denunciados-por-contacto/  and

http://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2013/07/10/organizacion-de-consumidores-exige-que-se-retire-del-mercado-los-productos-denunciados-por-contacto/

[5] Pereira Salas, Eugenio.  1977. Apuntes para la historia de la cocina chilena.  Santiago: Universitaria. p. 20  On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0006512  all translations mine unless otherwise noted.

[6] Gay, Claudio. 1862-1865.  Agricultura, Tomo 2. París: En casa del autor; Chile: Museo de Historia Natural de Santiago, p. 149-50. On line at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0002688

[7] Assuming 25-30 kg of olives per tree with and a yield of 20% of that weight in oil.   See. Correa Vergara, Luis, below.

[8] Tornero, Recaredo S.  1872 Chile ilustrado: Guía descriptivo del territorio de Chile.  Valpariso:  Librerias I Ajencias del Mercurio. p. 404. On line athttp://www.memoriachilena.cl/temas/documentodetalle.asp?id=MC0012105

[9] Correa Vergara, Luis. 1938. Agricultura Chilena, tomo II. Santiago:  Imprenta Nascimenta. p. 306

[10] Sudy Bustamante, Ana X and Pablo Cortés Tirado. 2012. Aceite de oliva.  Oficina de Estudios y Políticas Agrarias, Ministerio de Agricultura, Gobierno de Chile.  On line at http://www.odepa.gob.cl/odepaweb/publicaciones/doc/4878.pdf

[11] International Olive Oil Council (November 2012) PDF charts on line at http://www.internationaloliveoil.org/estaticos/view/131-world-olive-oil-figures

[12] Chile Olive Oil, Extra Virgin Journey, on line at http://www.chileoliveoil.cl/extra-virgin-journey/

[13] Gay, Claudio. Op cit.

Eating Chilean Pantrucas—noodles

If you, by some old man’s whim, should decide to go to a “creole” restaurant or to one that is “Chilenized” to ask for pancuritas in tongue broth, or pancuritas by themselves, it is very possible that they would kick you out, or at the least, look discourteously down their noses while the “chef” grumbles something like “What kind of restaurant does this guy take us for?
 Never the less …. pancurtas or panturcas, perfectly made, are as good as the best Italian raviolis and are one of the foundations of our cuisine. (Enrique Lafourcade,  La Cocina Erótica del Conde de Lafourchette, Lom Ediciones, 1997  p. 22, all translations are mine)

Pantrucas,  pancurtas or pancuritas, as Lafourcade’s fictional count calls them (making them even more homey in the diminutive), are simple noodles of flour, water, salt and fat—and sometimes an egg—rolled out thin, cut into squares and added to soup. 

Pantrucas in broth                  
photo: Cuisine with a Chilean flavor

Among the more humble of Chilean dishes, they still have a place in Chileans’ hearts, and are such an icon of home cooking that one of the US’s few Chilean restaurants took Pantrucas for its name--though they don’t appear on the menu.

Chilean food blogs’ recipes for pantrucas are fairly common; often with comments that they are an old family dish, usually cooked in the broth from a holiday turkey carcass.  Here’s a typical recipe from “Recetas chilenas de cocina” (Chilean kitchen recipes):

Pantrucas 

The first thing is to prepare a substantial “full bodied” broth. The old timers used the carcass of a roast turkey, boiled until it had contributed all of its substance, or water where pork hocks, or pigs feet, or pork-rolls (arrollado huaso) had been cooked.

If you don’t have one of these, make broth by boiling beef shanks with onion, carrot and green pepper for a couple of hours; strain this soup and use the meat for another dish, or add it, finely chopped, to the pantrucas.

6 cups broth 

2 egg yokes 

2 tablespoons of minced parsley 

1 tablespoon minced chives

2 cups flour 

1 egg 

1 tablespoon vegetable oil 

salt and warm water 

Make a soft dough with flour, egg, oil and warm salt water.  Roll out, cut into 1 ¼ inch squares and add to the boiling broth.  Once they are cooked remove the soup from the fire and add one or two egg yokes beaten with two tablespoons of water.  Sprinkle with minced parsley and/or chives.

One community that continues to eat patrucas regularly is that of Chile’s indigenous people, the Mapuche.  In a recent food satisfaction survey of 400 Mapuches living in Santiago, pantrucas were the “traditional Mapuche food” eaten by most respondents (92.5%) as well as the most frequently consumed traditional food among 62% of respondents.[1]  A survey by the same authors in Temuco, a city in the Mapuche heartland, also found pantrucas the most commonly eaten traditional food.[2]

Origins

Maybe Marco Polo brought noodles to Europe from China or maybe they had been there since Etruscan times, but by the 16^th century they were “widely accepted in Spain”[3], and soon, whether remembered or re-invented, they were in Chile.  Chilean historian Eugenio Pereira Salas tells us that by independence:

   

Chilean cuisine had assimilated the succulent menu their ancestors tested over the aromatic wood fires of the colonial period …[including] refalosas (“slipperies”) or pancutras of wheat flour, fat, egg, and grated cheese; all in broth.

But foods, especially humble ones, are not a frequent topic for writers, so the earliest mention of pantrucas I’ve found in Chilean sources comes from considerably later.  It is in Claudio Gay’s “Journey to Araucanía in 1863.”  There he found pantrucas to be common among the Mapuche, made with “wheat kneaded with salt as in making bread” and “torn into pieces by hand and boiled in water with fat, the water serving as broth, and the dough is fried in a pan with a little fat and chili for color.”[4]

So by mid 19^th century we have (at least) two ways of making pantrucas, each slightly different from current recipes:  the rural Mapuche used a simple flour, water and salt dough, and if we can accepts Gay’s description, fried them in fat as well as boiling; while in the city the dough included fat, an egg and grated cheese and was served in broth.

And what of the name, “are they called: pantrucas or pancutras?” The Chilean Linguistic Academy answers:

It is certain that both words can name this dish of indigenous origins that has come to form a part of our national cuisine. Never the less, there are differences in the use between the two forms.  The first, “pantruca,” predominates among persons of urban culture; the second, “pancurta,” is the common form in rural areas.  So it seems that there are two coexistent terms to designate the same reality.[5]

Thus the Linguistic Academy tells us that the two terms are equally valid, representing differing urban and rural dialects, and notes in passing that they are “a dish of indigenous origins.”   Chilean Anthropologist Sonia Montecino Aguirre agrees:  “Pantrucas or pancutras: a dish made with pieces of dough boiled in water or in broth.  The word is derived from the Mapuche.”[6]

And to ice the cake, Arturo Hernández Sallés’ Mapudungun, Spanish, and English dictionary gives us the original Mapuche word: Pangkutra.[7]

It all makes perfect sense: inventive Mapuche housewives, needing simple ways to feed their families on wheat flour, adopted as a staple food during the wars with the Spanish invaders (see Mapuche Wheat), mixed flour, water and salt and reinvented the noodle, naming the finished product “pangkutras,” which became pancurtas in Chile’s rural dialect and panturcas in the city.

Or so it seemed. 

Then one day I was watching the Spanish language TV foodies on ElGourmet.com when I heard a familiar word on a program abut the food of Asturias, Spain:  Mikel Alonso’s  “El camino del cantábrico.”  He said:  “pantruques.”

And what the accompanying picture showed were large lumpy dumplings floating in a bowl of bean, pork and blood sausage stew called “fabada”. 

  

Fabada from Restaurante Sidreria Casa El Rubiu, Llanes, Asturias, Spain

 (Photo TripAdvisor)

A coincidence?  Seems unlikely, although about the only thing that Chile’s pantrucas and Asturias’ pantruques have in common is that both are dough cooked in broth. 

But it’s not surprising; I don’t imagine many of those Spanish conquistadores knew much about cooking and dumpling are dumplings, pantruques are pantrucas. And they still may have been reinvented by the Mapuche, even if a lost Asturian named them.

***************

Having followed my story this far, I can hardly leave you without recipes for pantruques and fabada.   These are from Mariadelas, an Astorian who writes a food blog called “Se me quema la comida:”

She says:

The pantruque is a roll that we make here in Asturias to eat with any kind of stew, fabada, pote asturiano (white bean and pork soup/stew)… along with the cured meats (compangu: blood sausage, chorizo, bacon, cured pork shoulder).

2 ounces bacon, finely minced

½ minced onion 

½ teaspoon paprika (pimentón) 

1 egg 

Salt 

Yellow corn meal[8] 

Mix the bacon with the onion, salt and paprika.  Add the egg and mix well.  Add corn meal a little at a time until you can form it into a roll.  Not too much, it’s better if it’s a little sticky.  It helps to wet your hands in water.   Once you have made the roll, fry it in oil until it is brown.  When the fabada or stew is ready, add the pantruque and cook for another 15 minutes.  Serve in slices.

In Mariadelas’ recipe for fabada she says:

Here in Asturias, we call beans “fabes”(singular faba).  Fabada is a typical regional dish; the best known one. It is a substantial dish but here we eat it as a first course.  At fiestas we usually eat it before the meat… and finish with rice pudding.  The first photo is what we call compangu.  The bacon we use is the kind we call “streaky,” mixed fat and lean, and the lacón is cured pork shoulder.

2 lbs of large white beans (fabes de la granja) 

3 blood sausages 

3 chorizos 

1 lb of lacón 

3 oz of bacon 

Garlic 

1 onion 

1 tablespoon of oil 

A stem of parsley 

Saffron 

Singe the lacón to remove any hairs and soak overnight.  Soak the beans overnight too.  Put the beans, lacón, blood sausages, bacon, minced garlic, the onion cut into four pieces, the parsley and the oil in a large pot, and cover with cold water and bring to a boil, skimming off the foam.  Once it has boiled, lower the heat and cook for a while without a lit.  The beans need to remain completely covered in water or their skins will come loose.  Once and a while you should “scare them,” by adding a half glass of cold water.  Do this two or three times. Stir from time to time to keep from sticking.  Add crumbled saffron.  When the beans are done add salt and remove the onion and parsley.  If the broth is very thin, mash some beans and return to the pot.  It’s better the next day.  Serve with a piece of blood sausage, chorizo, bacon and lacón or what ever you like from the compangu.

And of course, with panturques.

Mariadelas’ Fabada

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[1]  Schnettler, Berta, et. al. 2011. Satisfacción con la alimentación en personas Mapuche en la Región Metropolitana de Santiago, Chile. Arch Latinoam Nutr. 61(2): 172-182  on line at http://www.alanrevista.org/ediciones/2011/2/?i=art9

[2]  Schnettler, Berta, et. al. 2009. Diferencias etnicas y de aculturacion

en el consumo de alimentos en la Region Metropolitana de Santiago, Chile. Arch Latinoam Nutr. 59(4): 407-418. On line at http://www.scielo.cl/pdf/rchnut/v39n1/art02.pdf

[3] International Pasta Organization, History of Pasta.

http://www.internationalpasta.org/index.php?cat=21&item=6&lang=2

[4] Gay, Claudio. “Viaje de la Araucanía en 1863,” as quoted in Ricardo Couyoymdjian,  “Comiendo con los Indios Testimonios de viajeros en la Araucana en el siglo XIX. In Carolina Sciolla, Ed., 2010, Historia y cultura de la alimentación in Chile.  Santiuago: Catalonia. P. 202.

[5] Notas Idiomáticas, Academia Chilena De La Lengua, Correspondiente de la Real Academia Española, , Director: Aifredo Matus Olivkr N9i4 ABRIL 2000  on line at http://www.institutodechile.cl/lengua/notas/NI-14.pdf

[6] Montecino Aguirre, Sonia. 2006.  Identidades, mestizajes y diferencias sociales en Osorno, Chile: Lecturas desde la antropología de la alimentación. PhD thesis, Leiden University. p. 186 on line at https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/4864

[7] Hernández Sallés, Andres. 2003.  Mapuche Lengua y Cultura (Mapudungun, Español, Inglés). Pehuen, p 27

[8] Corn did not arrive in Asturias until early in the 17^th century, so the pantruques that early Spanish colonists in Chile knew were different from today’s, perhaps made with chestnut flour, an important dietary staple in pre-Columbian Asturias.  Various European cuisines make chestnut dumplings, but the only Spanish chestnut dumplings I found are sweet. 

Blue-Egg Mapuche Chickens

The old stories speak of a pact between the hens and the people of the land [the Mapuche].  The hens would give the people blue eggs and the people of the land would care for them and honor them in ceremonies of thanks and prayer. The bodies of the colloncas and ketros [chicken varieties] remember the pact and pass on the message of the blue eggs when the pact is respected.  Agélica Celis Salamero[1] 

Photo: Lanalhue Noticias

Blue-egg chickens, gallinas Mapuches, or “Araucanas” to poultry enthusiasts, first came to outside attention in 1921 when Spanish poultry specialist Professor Salvador Castelló, announced their existence at the first international poultry conference in The Hague. 

Castelló explained that on 6 August 1914, he had landed at the Chilean port of Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan and had immediately noticed several hampers of blue-shelled eggs.  His first thought was that they were ducks’ eggs. But the local people assured him that they were, indeed, hens’ eggs and that many hens in southern Chile laid eggs of the same color.  This utterly astonished him, because as he said ‘neither in Europe not in North America had he seen eggs of this colour.’  Later in the company of Chilean poultry breeders, Castelló toured a region of Chile where blue-egg chickens were especially common. This was the rugged lake district of the south-central part of the country, the homeland of the warlike Araucanian or Mapuche Indians.[2]

What was their origin?  The chickens’ wild ancestor, the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus gallus), was found from northeasterner India east to Indonesia, and seems to have been domesticated by 4,000 years ago.  In the ensuing centuries it spread west to Europe and Africa and east to the Oceania.  By 1492 domesticated chickens (G. g. domesticus) had been introduced from Iceland, the westernmost outpost of European society, to Easter Island, the eastern most landfall of the Polynesians.[3] 

And perhaps they were in South America too. In1532, when Spanish conquistador Pizarro reached Peru, “he found that chickens were already an integral part of Incan economy and culture, suggesting at least some history of chickens in the region.”[4]  In 1590 Jesuit Fr. José de Acosta, in The Natural & Moral History of the Indies, wrote:

….let us now speake of tame fowle; I wondered that hennes, seeing there were some in the Indes before the Spanish came there, the which is well approved for they have a proper name of the country, and they call a henne a Hualpa, and the egge Ronto…[5].

Others disagreed.  “El Inca,” Garcilaso de la Vega, son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca noblewoman, whose accounts of Inca history, culture and society are widely accepted, contradicted de Acosta’s arguments and concluded “I have clearly proved that there were no Cocks or Hens in Peru before the conquest…”[6]  And when authoritative German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt agreed in 1811that there were no pre-Colombian chickens in the Americas, that put an end to the debate for a hundred years or so.[7]

But not forever.  In 1888, a newly graduated English engineer, 19 year old Richard (Ricardo) Latcham arrived in Chile to build roads in the recently pacified Mapuche homeland near today’s city of Temuco.  He lived there among the Mapuche for the next five years, making many friends, learning the language and developing a fascination and respect for Mapuche culture.  Moving to Santiago, he began to read anthropology, develop his anthropological library and to publish technical articles on the Mapuche and on Chilean archaeology—while still working as an engineer and teacher of English.[8]

In 1921, while finishing his Domesticated Animals of Pre-Columbian America he learned of Castelló’s report, which coincided with his view that there were chickens in South America before the conquest:

It is thought that in [pre-Colombian] America there were no true chickens, but this is only partially true.  It may be that in North America there were none, but in South America there were several species, distinct from those of the old world.  Not all these species have been classified, but in Chile, Bolivia and Peru [there are] no fewer than three indigenous varieties or species, domesticated by the native people…

 Photo: Juan Osvaldo

In Chile these are called the trintri, with “curly feathers as thought they were put on in reverse,”

…the collonca, which are small and tailless;

Photo: Asociación Argentina de Productores de Granja 

…and the francolina [or ketro], which Lacham thought to be a variety of the collonanas, “that carry a tuft of feathers on their heads that fall on all sides to the level of their eyes.  The country people call them ‘hens with ear rings.’ Like those above they lay blue eggs.”[9]

Photo: Kollonca de Aretes

So if chickens were in Chile before the Spanish, where might they have come from? 

Europe?

Maybe. The earliest recorded introduction of Chickens to the Americas was in 1500, when Pedro Álvares Cabral gave a single hen to a Brazilian Indian.  But whether her offspring could have been carried to Argentina, where they were reported by 1515[10] or to Peru by 1532, when Pizarro arrived and they were already supposed “an integral part of Incan economy and culture,” seems unlikely.

Polynesia?

If chickens were in western South America before the Spanish, a Pacific origin seems more likely than a European one.  Prehistoric Polynesians spread chickens throughout the Pacific to Easter Island, the eastern most Polynesian outpost, by the 1300s.  Since sweet potatoes – a South American plant domesticated in Peru by around 2,000 BC – were in the central Polynesia by 1000 to 1100 AD it is very likely that there was prehistoric contact between South Americans and Polynesians.[11] And if sweet potatoes went west, chickens could have come east.

The Evidence

Archeological evidence shows domesticated chickens to have been in China before 5000 BC, in India by 2000 BC, and in Polynesia as early as 1000 BC. But of all the thousand’s of archaeological excavations that have taken place in Peru, not one has reported finding a pre-Columbian chicken bone. 

But they found 83 in Chile…. maybe. 

In 2007 archaeologist Alice A. Storey and her colleagues published an article on El Arenal-1, an archaeological site near the central Chilean coast, about 530 Km south of Santiago and 100 Km south of Concepcíon.  There they had found chicken bones radiocarbon dated to between 1321 and 1407 AD, well before Columbus and more than 100 years before chickens came to Chile with Pedro de Valdivia in 1540.  Genetic analysis of the bones “produced an identical [mtDNA] sequence to chicken bones from two prehistoric archaeological sites in the Pacific.”[12]

But of course their conclusions were not universally accepted.  Jaime Gongora and his colleagues responded, arguing that the mtDNA sequence of the Chilean finds also matched chickens from Europe and “all over the world,” contradicting the view that they were of specifically pacific origins. They also questioned the dating, arguing that the site’s location near the coast suggested that the chickens’ diet might have included shells or fish scraps which would have introduced carbon from marine sources into their bones, yielding inaccurately old radiocarbon dates.[13]

Alice Storey and unidentified chicken 

Storey and her colleagues replied, arguing that “Ultimately, the question rests on the antiquity of the El Arenal chickens,” and that chemical analysis of the bones demonstrated that the chickens “did not derive protein from marine sources and thus did not require a marine offset correction to their radiocarbon ages.” Further, they argued that the bone dates were consistent with dates on other material from the site, and that no post Colombian artifacts were found on the site. 

So, what to conclude?  Storey and her colleagues make a good case for pre-Colombian dates on the El Arenal-1 chickens, but if there were chickens in South America before the Spanish, and especially if they were “an integral part of Incan economy and culture,” it is difficult to explain why chicken bones have not been found at any other Peruvian or Chilean sites. 

But perhaps some were.  Storey and her colleagues suggest that archaeologists working along the Pacific coast of South America re-examine the faunal collections from their sites. “Remains such as bones of chickens or pigs which may have been classified as intrusive previously may provide evidence of other points of contact between Polynesia and the Americas.”

And what of the Blue-egg Mapuche Chickens?

As part of their examination of the origins of chickens in South America Storey and her colleagues considered the possibility that the blue-egg chickens are descendants of the El Aremal-1 birds.  They found a complicated story.  Castelló originally described the chickens as being tailless, having ear tufts and laying blue eggs, and these became the defining characteristics of the poultry fanciers’ Araucanas.  He later discovered that the birds he described had been bred recently from a cross between a blue-egg tailess hen and a rooster with ear tufts. Both the tailess trait and the trait for ear tufts are also found in European chickens, and that may be their origin. 

Of the blue egg trait, which seems to be indigenously Chilean[14], they found no mention prior to about 1880. Darwin, who was in Chile in 1834-35 and who wrote extensively about chicken varieties in The Origin made no mention of blue eggs.  As Storey says, “it seems unlikely that if blue eggs had been available in markets as they were in the early 1900s, that Darwin would have missed them.” [15]

So Mapuche blue-egg chickens appear to be a relatively recent development, the result of a mutation sometime back in chicken prehistory before 1880.  But that makes them no less Mapuche chickens, nor does it exclude the possibility that their ancestors included pre-Colombian Chilean chickens--if they existed. 

Mapuche Blue-Egg Chickens today

Beginning in the first years of the 21^st century, the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture and other agencies, governmental and non-governmental, began programs to encourage rural Chileans, Mapuche and mestizo, to raise blue-egg chickens under artisanal and sustainable conditions and to promote their sale in local and perhaps national markets.  In the 20^th century blue-eggs had become increasingly rare as breeding among many chicken varieties had resulted in a highly heterogeneous population of chickens in rural south central Chile, so the project was also designed to restore and improve the genetic characteristics of the earlier blue-egg lineages. 

While the program’s success has not been completely evaluated there seems to have been progress with the sale of 15.6 million blue eggs in the first year of the project. Today you can often find vendors selling blue eggs along with garden produce on the streets of Pucón and Villarica and the market in Temuco.[16]

But if that’s not convenient, here are some Contacts in the Valle del Itata, and Contacts in Villarrica.  Or you can Google “huevos azules en Santiago” if you live in the capitol.

Photo: CETSUR

Photo: Ministerio de Agricultura

 

Mapuche egg recipes

Once you have your blue eggs, you’ll want to prepare them traditionally (unless you plan to incubate them), so here are a few recipes:

“Flour and egg soup for breakfast: This was used long ago to give the men energy before they went to work.  Fry a little onion, garlic and vegtables add potatoes cut into pieces and boil.  Add toasted flour and allow to boil again.  At the end season and add one egg per person.  The eggs should be opened at one end with a fork and then beaten through the opening, then added to the soup in a thin stream.”  Marina Recabarren 

“Here in Tucapel a Chicken cazuela with home made noodles is very typical.  Take one egg per person and add sifted flour and water to make a soft dough and about 10 minutes before serving, drop the dough into the boiling cazuela by pushing through the tines of a fork.  They come out like little noodles, short and very pretty.” Francisca Paredes. 

“They are used a lot in deserts to sweeten the day, like Leche Asada [aka flan]. Boil a liter of milk with cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla.  Beat 6 eggs with a cup of sugar, add the milk, beat again and strain through a colander. Bake until done, about 30 minutes in a wood fired oven. Marina Recabarren.[17]

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[1] Huevos Azules de Gallinas Mapuche, on line at http://huevosazules.wordpress.com/  All translations mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] Langdon, Robert. 1989. When the Blue-Egg Chickens Come Home to Roost: New thoughts on the Prehistory of the Domestic Fowl in Asia, America and the Pacific Islands

The Journal of Pacific History Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 164-192.

[3] Chicken, Wikipedia; Icelandic Chicken, Wikipedia.

[4]  Storey A. A., et al., "Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-Columbian introduction of Polynesian chickens to Chile", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[5] Acosta, José de. 1880. The Natural & Moral History of the Indies. Reprinted from the English Translation of Edward Grimston, 1604. Vol 1.  London: Haklupt Society. p. 276.

[6] Garcilaso De La Vega, El Inca, 1688. The Royal Commentaries of Peru in Two Parts London: Miles Flesher. p. 386.

[7] Langon, op cit.

[8] From 1928 to his death in 1943 Latcham was Director of the Chilean National Museum of Natural History.

[9] Latcham, Ricardo E. 1922 Los animales domésticos de la América precolombiana. Santiago. p. 177.

[10] Ibid, p. 9.

[11] Montenegro, A.,C. Avis and A.J. Weaver, Modeling the pre-historic arrival of the sweet potato in Polynesia, Journal of Archaeological Science,35, 355-367 on line at http://www.climate.uvic.ca/people/alvaro/SPotato.pdf

[12]  A. A. Storey et al., op. cit.

[13] Gongora J, et al. Indo-European and Asian origins for Chilean and Pacific chickens revealed by mtDNA. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2008;105:10308–10313.  On line at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2492461/

[14] There is also a Chinese blue-egg chicken, the Dongxiang blueshelled, which has the same gene for shell color as the Araucana. I found no evidence concerning its relation to the Araucana, if any.  See Zhao, R, et al. 2006. A Study on Eggshell Pigmentation: Biliverdin in Blue-Shelled Chickens. Poultry Science 85:546–549. On line at http://ps.fass.org/content/85/3/546.full.pdf

[15] Storey, A.A., et al  2008. Pre-Columbian chickens, dates, isotopes and mtDNA. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(48): E99., and Storey, A.A, et al  2011. Pre-Columbian chickens of the Americas: a critical review of the hypotheses and evidence for their origins.  Rapa Nui Journal Vol. 25 (2) on line at http://une-au.academia.edu/AliceStorey/Papers

[16] Fundación para la Innovación Agraria, Ministerio de Agricultura. 2009. Resultados y Lecciones en Selección y Manejo de la Gallina Mapuche Productora de  Huevos Azules. Serie Experiencias De Innovación Para El Emprendimiento Agrario. On line at http://bibliotecadigital.innovacionagraria.cl/gsdl/collect/publicac/index/assoc/HASH8d8c.dir/68_Libro_Gallinamapuche.pdf?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=prettyphoto&iframe=true&width=90%&height=90%, and  Moya Azcárate, Rita. 2004 Gallina De Huevos Azules: contribuciones a la elaboración de un protocolo.  Línea Transversal Biodiversidad no cultivada y semidomesticada. América Latina Red CBDC.  On line at  http://www.cetsur.org/wp-content/uploads/gallina-de-huevos-azules-contribuciones-a-la-elaboracion-de-un-protocolo.pdf

[17] Moya A., op cit, p. 20.