Abstract Pre-Hispanic culinary practices have been little studied until some years ago. Interest in this type of study is focus to research how the population cooked the vegetable foods offered in the funeral rituals with the purpose to understand food selection and the importance of its preparation in specific social contexts related to death. The investigation has as object of study 13 pottery vessels and 29 in miniature associated to four individuals buried in the North Platform of the Huaca Chotuna during its later occupation (circa 900- 1532 AD). The purpose of the investigation was the identification of the remains of food attached to the vessels, for which experimental studies of starch deformation processes and mechanism of transfer of starches to the ceramic substrate and analysis of archaeological starch grains were applied. The archaeometric techniques used were the Scanning E...