Mexican Americans may serve Thanksgiving turkey with mole, a richly spiced Mexican sauce.
Mole is not one single recipe but a family of sauces whose ingredients can include chiles, spices, nuts, seeds, herbs, fruit, and sometimes chocolate. Mole poblano, associated especially with Puebla, is commonly served with poultry, including turkey, known in Spanish as guajolote.
Mexican-American Thanksgiving meals often combine familiar U.S. holiday foods with regional or family traditions. Mole can replace ordinary gravy or accompany turkey alongside dishes such as roasted corn, tamales, rice, or beans. The practice is not universal, however; Mexican-American families have highly varied menus.
A common mix-up is treating mole as merely a chocolate sauce. Chocolate may add depth to some versions, but chiles and spices provide much of the sauce’s savory complexity. The word is also related to the Nahuatl term molli, meaning sauce or concoction.