The smell of hot chili would fill your nostrils as soon as you set foot on the market square, along with hints of frying meat, beans, tamales, and coffee. Lively voices echoed from every direction, around tables laden with Mexican dishes. Their setup was an art unto itself, each decorated with “ribbons, papier-mâché, and red-and-white oilcloths” and lit by “handcrafted lanterns on the tables, little farolitos.”

This is how Felix Almaraz, professor of history at the University of Texas, describes a typical Saturday morning in the plazas of San Antonio in the 1870s. One of the nation’s leading experts on this slice of Mexican culinary history, he chronicles the era when the so-called Chili Queens reigned over the…