Why is Mexican candy both sweet and spicy? The answer might surprise you

It is a quintessential Mexican experience to wince at the sweet and fiery flavor of chamoy-flavored candies. From the cradle, we’re taught to sweat through that itchy, hot feeling on the tongue when we’re offered something spicy-sweet — and we grow to love it!

These confections, however, often surprise foreign tongues not used to a bit of fire with their sweets. A very dear Colombian friend of mine once told me, rather angrily: “Mexicans do not know how to make candies! They’re all spicy!” 

I was terribly offended by this, of course. What do you mean, we don’t know how to make candy? But that’s another story.

How do Mexican candies get that iconic spicy-sweet taste?

To understand how this beloved sweet-spicy flavor profile became popular in Mexico, we have to go back to the Spanish colonial era and the Manila galleons, Spanish trading ships that traveled between Manila and Acapulco from 1565 to 1815, exchanging Asian luxury goods for Mexican silver. 

Among the wealth of Asian goods coming into Mexico over the centuries was likely see mui, a sour Chinese fruit from the Prunus mume tree, also called Japanese Apricot, that was salted and dried for preservation and eaten as a snack, according to historian Rachel Laudan in her book, “Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History.” In Japan, this preserved fruit snack became umeboshi, and in Hawaii, it became the salty-sweet fruit snack known as crack seed, or ling hi mui. 

Mexicans are thought to have adapted it further, adding chile and lime to transform it into the uniquely Mexican flavor now known as chamoy. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the original Chinese name in “chamoy.”

The evolution of chamoy

While chamoy started in Mexico as a fruit snack, time and experimentation have expanded its range of uses and the forms that it takes. Nowadays, chamoy is primarily known as a condiment, either in liquid, paste or powdered form — something you sprinkle atop beer or fruit, pour onto your potato chips or, at the manufacturing level, incorporate into candies.

Laudan explains that Chinese immigration to the Americas (and, specifically, to what is now Mexico) began in the 16th century, with the onset of the Manila galleon trade. It took hundreds of years more, however, before this China-derived, Mexico-adapted colonial confection became the trademark flavor for spicy candies in the country. Chamoy’s popularity got a nationwide boost thanks to the Mexican brand Chamoy Miguelito, made by the company Dulces Miguelito, which began mass production of chamoy in 1971.

Mexico has had a love affair with chocolate and chile peppers dating to pre-Hispanic times, but chile flavors have become even more ubiquitous thanks to modern manufacturing and marketing. Neither micheladas nor lemon ice cream escapes the temptation of being savored with chilito, as we affectionately call it. 

And so Mexican children grow up loving everything with that sweet-spicy flavor profile, and even now, in adulthood, our mouths still water when our mothers, grandmothers and aunties bring us spicy-sweet treats.

Thank goodness that China long ago brought us this extra ingredient that we have made our own — and that makes our candies so distinctive!

Andrea Fischer contributes to the Mexico News Daily Features desk. She has edited and written for National Geographic en Español and Muy Interesante México, and continues to be an advocate for anything that screams science. Or yoga. Or both.

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