Mexican Name Finder
Soup or stewNahuatlVeracruz

Chilpachole

"tangled chile stew"

Say it

cheel·pah·CHOH·leh

Built from

chīllichile+patzollitangled, matted

What Chilpachole means

Chilpachole is a Mexican soup or stew name of Nahuatl origin meaning "tangled chile stew". It is built from chīlli (chile) and patzolli (tangled, matted). It is pronounced cheel-pah-CHOH-leh, and it is most associated with Veracruz.

The chile-plus-patzolli reading comes from Francisco Santamaría's dictionary of Mexicanisms. It is the best-supported analysis rather than a colonial attestation.

Chilpachole is one of the many Mexican food words formed in Nahuatl. Spanish borrowed it, and in several cases English borrowed it again from Spanish. See how Nahuatl builds words and the full list of Mexican food names.

This is a site about what Mexican words mean, so there is no recipe here. For the name itself: Pozole, menudo, birria, caldo. Mexican soup names are blunt and descriptive: menudo means "the small things", the offal that goes in it, and pozole comes from a Nahuatl word for foam, describing how the hominy blooms open as it cooks.

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Chilpachole means tangled chile stew

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