⚠ Site currently under repair ⚠

Search Issues: Update 2026-08-06

Some of our more complex, multi-field searches (such as the search field on our homepage and Search All Fields) are currently under repair and may not work as expected.

Thank you to all our users who emailed to alert us to the problem! We hope to have it repaired soon.

Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.

cuatecuicuilli.

Headword: 
cuatecuicuilli.
Principal English Translation: 

tamales decorated with beans that form the pattern of a marine shell
Gran Diccionario Náhuatl, citing Wimmer 2004 who draws from the Florentine Codex, https://gdn.iib.unam.mx/diccionario/cuatecuicuilli/46620. Translated here from French to English by Stephanie Wood.

Attestations from sources in English: 

cuatecuicuilli tamalli = "which are white and shaped like a ball but made not completely round or square. They have on top a seashell that is designed out of the beans that go into the mixture." This is in a section about the foods of the kings and lords.
Digital Florentine Codex, translation from the Spanish by León García Garagarza. Book 8, folio 23 recto. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/8/folio/23r?spTexts=&nhTexts=

See the hieroglyph of the name Cuatecuicuil in the Matrícula de Huexotzinco, folio. 745 recto, which is a phonetic rendering.

themes: 
Food, Eating, Cooking