ENGLISH

The Making of Mămăligă: Transimperial Recipes for a Romanian National Dish

By Alex Drace-Francis

Book information

Publisher
Central European University Press
Year
2022
ISBN
9789633865842
DOI
10.1515/9789633865842
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
5 MB (5289438 bytes)
Pages
226\226
Library
degruyter.com
Time added
2023-08-23 06:10:53

Description

Mămăligă, maize porridge or polenta, is a universally consumed dish in Romania and a prominent national symbol. But its unusual history has rarely been told. Alex Drace-Francis surveys the arrival and spread of maize cultivation in Romanian lands from Ottoman times to the eve of the First World War, and also the image of mămăligă in art and popular culture. Drawing on a rich array of sources and with many new findings, Drace-Francis shows how the making of mămăligă has been shaped by global economic forces and overlapping imperial systems of war and trade. The story of maize and mămăligă provides an accessible way to revisit many key questions of Romanian and broader regional history. More generally, the book links the history of production, consumption, and representation. Analyses of recipes, literary and popular depictions, and key vocabulary complete the work.

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