Origins of mojo

Where does mojo come from? From many places at once: it is the child of the crossing of worlds that the Canary Islands were for centuries. Even its name is borrowed —“mojo” is thought to come from the Portuguese molho, which means, quite simply, “sauce”. To these islands, a crossroads of routes between Europe, Africa and America, came the spices of the Atlantic trade and, after contact with America, new ingredients such as peppers, which red mojo made its hallmark. Onto that blend was layered an older sediment too, that of the islands' ancient inhabitants, whose cooking from the products of the land forms part of the substratum on which everything else settled.

By the 19th century mojo was already an everyday thing in Canarian homes, and when the islanders emigrated to America they took it with them, inspiring sister sauces on the other side of the Atlantic. A humble sauce, made from ordinary ingredients, ended up an ambassador for a whole people.