For more than two hundred years after Spanish pioneers arrived in New Mexico, the frontier colony was the most remote European settlement in the Americas. Even the capital of New Spain, Mexico City, took about six months to reach by wagon caravan, the only semi-safe way to travel the dangerous route. New Mexico cooking developed in isolation, an amalgam of Spanish and Pueblo traditions.
The first colonists brought Aztec chiles from Mexico and Spanish onions, garlic, and coriander, but lacked local sources for any other seasonings except salt. Columbus and his crews had already mistaken chile for a kind of pepper plant, like the ones that produce black peppercorns, so New Mexico cooks experimented with using it in a similar way. With experience, they perfected the idea and came to rely on it much more heavily than their counterparts in Mexico and other areas of the Americas, where different seasoning options usually existed. By at least the eighteenth century, chile was firmly established as the distinguishing feature of most traditional New Mexico main dishes.