About Dish
Casseroles layered with corn tortillas go back to Mesoamerica, but the Fritos pie (or, if you wish, Frito pie) cannot, by definition, predate 1932. That is when Fritos were patented by Elmer Doolin, who got the recipe from a streetcorner vendor and started selling them at his lunch counter in San Antonio. (Doolin subsequently invented the Cheeto.) Long before Fritos, Mexicans had enjoyed eating fritos (small f), which simply means “little fried things,” but it was Doolin who figured out how to mass-produce the curly little corn chips and it has been reported that it was his mother, Daisy Dean Doolin, who first put them into a baked casserole with chili and cheese. Like Fritos themselves, Fritos pie is no longer strictly regional, but it is especially popular across a wide swath of the Southwest from Arkansas through Texas and Oklahoma and into New Mexico.