What Queso Oaxaca means
Queso Oaxaca is a Mexican ingredient name of Nahuatl origin meaning "cheese from Oaxaca". It comes from Huāxyacac: huāxin (leadtree) + yacatl (nose, tip) + -c (at). It is pronounced KEH-soh wah-HAH-kah, and it is most associated with Oaxaca.
The state name means at the tip of the leadtrees. The cheese is a stretched curd wound into a ball, called quesillo at home and queso Oaxaca everywhere else.
Queso Oaxaca is one of the many Mexican food words formed in Nahuatl. Spanish borrowed it, and in several cases English borrowed it again from Spanish. See how Nahuatl builds words and the full list of Mexican food names.
This is a site about what Mexican words mean, so there is no recipe here. For the name itself: The words that appear inside dish names: the chiles (ancho, guajillo, pasilla, chipotle), the corn words (nixtamal, masa, tortilla, elote), and the tools (comal, molcajete, metate). Learn these and most menu items decode themselves.
