Taco | Definition, Origins, Ingredients, & Types (2024)

taco, an internationally popular hand-sized food item of Mexican origin combining seasoned meat, vegetables, and other fillings and served inside a folded or rolled corn or flour tortilla.

Maize has been domesticated in Mexico for at least 9,000 years, and one of the first uses of ground maize was very likely the tortilla, a flatbread made of maize, ground lime, and water. The name taco may come from the Spanish word for dowel, as in a plug to fill a hungry stomach, or, perhaps likelier, from the Nahuatl word tlacoyo, the name of a related foodstuff. The taco is made of that bread base, but its ingredients thereafter can be various. In Mexican cuisine, tacos can contain beef, chicken, pork, fish, and shellfish as well as vegetables such as lettuce, cabbage, radishes, chiles, and tomatoes. Tacos can also be vegetarian, filled with refried beans, avocado, potatoes, and cheese.

Britannica Quiz

What’s on the Menu? Vocabulary Quiz

Before the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico, the meats eaten in tacos were likely reptiles such as snakes and iguanas, as well as native mammals and birds such as armadillos and turkeys; insects such as grasshoppers were (and are) eaten in tacos as well. With the arrival of Eurasian livestock, tacos acquired a yet more diverse protein base. The Spanish also introduced cheese, lettuce and cabbage, and other foodstuffs, adding to foods of South American origin such as tomatoes, potatoes, and chiles. It is said that if the typical taco were to visit the origins of each of its ingredients, it would have to travel some 64,000 miles.

The taco remains a staple of Mexican cuisine, sold in fine restaurants and street stalls alike. It has also enjoyed international success, embraced everywhere it has landed. In the United States, where “taco Tuesday” has become common nationwide, it is estimated that there are some 50,000 Mexican restaurants, nearly all of them offering tacos; the thousands of Taco Bells, one of the most accessible and unique fast-food restaurant chains in the country, has also helped to mainstream this common Mexican food item. Mexican restaurants abound in major cities in Europe, Oceania, and East Asia, and local variations have been recorded. In South Korea, for example, diners enjoy tacos with the customary ingredients and also with the addition of the spicy fermented pickle called kimchi.