Items12The creator’s order
  1. 1Pan de muertoPan de muertoThe one food nearly every ofrenda shares. The soft, round loaf is often perfumed with orange blossom, a scent tied to remembering the dead, and topped with strips of dough called canillas, which are most often read as the bones of the dead; another popular telling makes them tears. The little ball…0
  2. 2CalaveraCalaveraSugar skulls (calaveras de azúcar) These are offerings first and candy second. Some carry the name of the person being remembered, and others are given as gifts with the names of the living, which turns a skull into an affectionate joke rather than a scare. A common belief holds that the souls…0
  3. 3TamaleTamaleTamales are what the effort of the season looks like. Making them is a ceremony of its own in many communities, with the whole family spreading masa and folding husks or leaves for a batch big enough to feed both the altar and the house. Mexico City's own description of the ofrenda names chile…0
  4. 4Mole (sauce)Mole (sauce)Mole is the feast-day dish, and that is exactly why it goes on the altar. A proper mole asks for a long list of chiles, spices and seeds and hours at the stove, so setting a plate of it out for the dead is a generous tribute: festive, demanding and clearly made with care. It usually arrives over…0
  5. 5MucbipolloMucbipolloYucatán's answer to the question of what to cook. During Hanal Pixán, the Maya observance of the dead, families make pib: a huge tamal of masa and lard colored with achiote, filled with chicken and sometimes pork, wrapped in banana leaves and buried to bake in a pit of hot stones in the yard. It…0
  6. 6AtoleAtoleAtole and champurrado A warm cup set out to comfort the souls of the dead. Atole is a drink older than the Spanish arrival, made from corn, water and a sweetener such as piloncillo, and that corn is the point: maize was sacred to the Mexica and the Maya, so offering atole means offering the very…0
  7. 7Hot ChocolateHot ChocolateThe other warm drink of the altar, and a natural partner for a piece of pan de muerto. A cup of hot chocolate is a traditional altar offering, set out to remember and honor the dead with something comforting. A tablet of Mexican table chocolate melted into water or milk and whisked until it foams…0
  8. 8Calabaza en tachaCalabaza en tachaIf the season has one dessert, it is this. A major Mexican food dictionary calls candied pumpkin perhaps the most important sweet of the Día de Muertos festivities, and it is often read as the sweetness of life and a thank-you for the harvest. The method is forgiving: pumpkin or winter squash…0
  9. 9Seasonal Fruit and Fruit SweetsSeasonal Fruit and Fruit SweetsOranges, sugarcane and apples are the fruits Mexico City names for the ofrenda, and their job is plain: whatever the season brings at the end of October is shared with the visiting dead. Fruit also turns into the season's smaller sweets. Tejocotes, a tart little golden fruit, are peeled and cooked…0
  10. 10Tequila, Mezcal and PulqueTequila, Mezcal and PulqueA drink for the grown-ups among the dead. Tequila and mezcal, both distilled from agave, are set on the altar so the family can raise a glass with the departed, and other agave drinks such as pulque, raicilla and sotol appear too. Pour what the person actually drank: if your grandfather was a…0