In terms of geography and gastronomy, the area in and around Oaxaca is mole’s molten core. An hour south of that exquisite colonial city is the town of Zimatlán de Álvarez, where you’ll find a high priestess of the dish, Juana Amaya Hernandez. There are seven moles at the heart of Oaxacan traditions — in shades of yellow, green, red and black — and when I visited her restaurant, Mi Tierra Linda, Hernandez seemed determined to introduce me to as many as possible. Fires were lit with crackling tree branches. Sauces, their Rothko-ish hues shifting as the process inched along, bubbled in simmering pots. Banquet tables overflowed with chiles, seeds, nuts and fruit. The black mole, negro, I remember most vividly. Chiles were placed on the comal, the circular tortilla griddle, and left there until they were reduced to ash, essentially, and then folded into the base. The result was almost goth. Imagine eating flakes of night.

Traditional preparations can make this ancestral sauce seem like an inviolable tradition. But young chefs — in Mexico as well as in New York, Los Angeles and Copenhagen — are demonstrating that, like pesto in Italy and curry in India, mole is about the beautiful alchemy that occurs when ordinary ingredients produce a taste that is sui generis. Indeed, these chefs argue that tweaking the old recipes only makes mole stronger. “That’s the beauty — it can be endless possibilities,” says Jorge Vallejo, the chef at the acclaimed Quintonil in Mexico City. “And it’s still evolving.’ ”