Peasant foods

Peasant foods are dishes specific to a particular culture, made from accessible and inexpensive ingredients, and usually prepared and spiced to make them more palatable. They often form a significant part of the diets of people who live in poverty, or have a lower income compared to the average for their society or country.

Peasant foods have been described as being the diet of peasants, that is, tenant or poorer farmers and their farm workers,[1] and by extension, of other cash-poor people. They may use ingredients, such as offal and less-tender cuts of meat, which are not as marketable as a cash crop. Characteristic recipes often consist of hearty one-dish meals, in which chunks of meat and various vegetables are eaten in a savory broth, with bread or other staple food. Sausages are also amenable to varied readily available ingredients, and they themselves tend to contain offal and grains.

Peasant foods often involve skilled preparation by knowledgeable cooks using inventiveness and skills passed down from earlier generations. Such dishes are often prized as ethnic foods by other cultures and by descendants of the native culture who still desire these traditional dishes even when their incomes rise to the point where they can purchase any food they like.

Common types of foods

Meat-and-grain sausages or mushes

Ground meat or meat scraps mixed with grain in approximately equal proportions, then often formed into a loaf, sliced, and fried.

Meatloaves

Ground meat or meat scraps extended with crackers or bread and vegetables, then formed into balls, patties, or loaves and baked.

Pasta

Sauces

Fried cauliflower with agliata sauce (right)

Soups and stews

List of foods

Bowl of hominy, a form of treated corn
Pot-au-feu, the basic French stew, a dish popular with both the poor and the rich alike

See also

References

  1. Albala, Ken (2002). Eating Right in the Renaissance. University of California Press. p. 190. ISBN 0520927281.
  2. Viaggio in Toscana. Alla scoperta dei prodotti tipici. Ediz. inglese. Progetti educativi. Giunti Editore. 2001. p. 41. ISBN 978-88-09-02453-3.
  3. Capatti, A.; Montanari, M.; O'Healy, A. (2003). Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History. Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspe (in Italian). Columbia University Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-231-50904-6.
  4. Daly, Gavin (2013). The British Soldier in the Peninsular War: Encounters with Spain and Portugal, 1808-1814. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 100. ISBN 1137323833.
  5. 1 2 Ciezadlo, Annia (2012). Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War. Simon and Schuster. p. 217. ISBN 1416583947.

Further reading

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