Describe some food

• Taco

A Mexican dish consisting of a small folded corn or flour tortilla filled with beef, pork, chicken, chorizo and/or refried beans and garnished with tomatoes, lettuce, cheeses, onions, guacamole, sour cream, and/or salsa ; can be crisp (deep fried) or soft.

The tacos predates the arrival of Europeans in Mexico. There is anthropological evidence that the indigenous people living in the lake region of the Valley of Mexico traditionally ate tacos filled with small fish. Writting at the time of Spanish conquistadors, Bernal Diaz Castillo documented the first taco feast enjoyed by Europeans, a meal which Hernan Cortes arranged for his captains in Coyoacan. It's not clear why Spanish used the word "taco" to describe this indigenous food.

Sources :

Webster's New World Dictionary of Culinary Arts by Steven Labensky, Gaye R. Ingram, Sarah R. Labensky

http://tacospedia.wikia.com/wiki/Tacos

• Tortila

 

Tortilla A round, thin, unleavened Mexican bread made from masa or wheat flour and baked on a griddle, eaten plain or wrapped around various fillings.

In Northern Mexico and mmuch of the United States, Tortilla means the flour version. Flour tortilla are the foundation of Mexican bordr coking and a relatively recent import. Their popularity was driven by the low cost of inferior grades of flour provided to border markets and by thei ability to keep and ship well. 

3000 B.C Excavations in the valleyof "Valle de Tehuac", in the stae of Puebla, revealed the use, for more than 7000 years, of the basic cereal by excellence of the Mesoamerican diet, a little wild cob that along with roots and fruit as a complement for hunting. According to Agust Gayt, chef and Mexican cuisine historian, in a Greeley Tribune newspaper article : 

By the time Spaniards reached the shores of what is now Mexico in the 1400s, indigenous Mesoamericans had a sophisticated and flavorful cuisine based on native frutis, game, cultivated beans and corn and domesticated turkeys.

1519 When Hern Corn (1485-1547), also known as Hernando Cortez, and his conquistadores arrived in the New World on Aprill 22, 1519, they discovered that the inhabitants (Aztecs Mexicas) made flat corn breads. The native Nahuatl name for these was tlaxcalli. The Spanish gave them the name tortilla. In Cort' 1920 second letter to King Charles V of Spain, he describes the public markets and the selling of maize or Indian corn, in the grain and in the form of bread, preferred in the grain for its flavor to that of the other islands and terrafirma.

Sources :

https://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Tortilla_Taco_history.htm
Webster's New World Dictionary of Culinary Arts by Steven Labensky, Gaye G. Ingram, Sarah R. Labensky