The tamale is far more than a holiday dish. This episode follows the corn dough, filling, and leaf wrapper back to Mesoamerica between 8,000 and 5,000 BC, explaining how nixtamalization, cooking corn in an alkaline solution of wood ash or lime, released niacin and protected whole civilizations from pellagra.

We look at Maya travel tamales hardened with extra ash to last weeks on the march, the Aztec festival that gave the corn a rest with plain water tamales, and evidence that tamales came before tortillas. Then the story spreads across Latin America, into Native American and Mississippi Delta traditions, and across the Pacific to the Philippines through the Spanish galleon trade.

• Why the English word tamale is a back-formation from the Spanish tamales
• Archaeological clues from Teotihuacan, the San Bartolo murals, and the Fenton Vase
• Regional versions including Mexico’s giant zacahuil, Guatemalan potato paches, and Nicaraguan nacatamales
• Cherokee bean bread, Choctaw and Chickasaw banaha, and how the Delta hot tamale was born
• Filipino rice-based tamales made with coconut milk and peanut, and versions filled only with tiny fish