This foreigner made adobo from 1529 and it looks very different from today's adobo

There are many variations of Filipino adobo, which has evolved through the centuries. One particular recipe from 1529 does not look like anything similar to today’s adobo, which is usually dark brown.

Max Miller of Tasting History got a hold of a Filipino adobo recipe from Libro de Cocina (1529) by Ruperto Nola. The cookbook was published in Catalonia. One of the very old recipes in the book is called something called "Potaje de Adobado de Gallina" or Chicken Adobo Recipe.

Here is the recipe for adobo from the 1500s translated by Miller.

Filipino Chicken Adobo Recipe from 1529 Based on Libro de Cocina by Ruperto Nola

• Take a hen and cut it up into portions.
• Take good fatty bacon and gently fry it with a little onion, then gently fry the cut-up hen with it, and take toasted almonds, grind them, and mix with quinces or pears conserved in honey. Take the livers of hens and roast them on the coals.
• When the livers are roasted, put them in the mortar with almonds and grind everything together.
• Take a piece of crustless bread toasted and soaked in white vinegar, and grind it in the mortar with the other things. When it is well-ground, mix it with salted hen’s broth and strain it through a sieve and cast it in a pot.
• Cast the hen in also, and cast all fine spices and a good quantity of sugar. This sauce must be a little sour.
• When the sauce is cooked, cast in a little finely chopped parsley, and prepare your dishes, and upon them, sugar and cinnamon.

Here is what adobo from the 1500s looked like.

PHOTO: Max Miller

As you will notice, the 1529 recipe is nothing like how Filipino adobo is cooked today. But the most important element that makes the dish a true adobo is there: white vinegar, which is historically the key to making adobo. Soy sauce, which was introduced by the Chinese to the Philippines, was a later addition to adobo. In a 2019 interview with Spanish chef and culinary scientist Borja Sanchez, he explains that vinegar is the real base ingredient of adobo, based on historical and modern definitions.

The original purpose of adodo

"Really, there are many kinds of adobos, and their mixture of vinegar and spices depend on the geographic region," said Sanchez, "but they all have one thing in common, which is vinegar," Sanchez told SPIN.ph’s Abo Limos back in 2019.

"Adobo, in regional gastronomy, becomes more important in humid environments because vinegar is an important preservative ingredient in coasts and regions surrounding bay areas. Historically, vinegar was used more as a preservative than an ingredient for flavor, because it prevents the growth of bacteria. That’s the original purpose of adobo, especially in places with high humidity, like in coastal and bay area regions in Spain, much more in the Philippines which is an archipelago."

Watch Max Miller cook the 1529 adobo recipe below.