Food Rules and Rituals - Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2023 - Mark McWilliams
Eating and Feeding Rituals and Edicts in Persianate Societies: From Sofreh to Tārof, Nazri, and Beyond
Food Rules and Rituals - Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2023 - Mark McWilliams
Nader Mehravari [+]
University of California, Davis
Description
Persians love their food. They also have a great respect for the complex set of rituals, habits, and rules developed over millennia that govern their culinary practices. Such practices are deeply rooted in Iranian culture, associated not only to the country that today is known as Iran, but also to the Persian empire from which it is evolved. The goal of this paper is twofold. First, I explore an overarching, and as complete as possible, range of behavioral constraints (habits, rituals, protocols, guidelines, unspoken rules, explicit edicts) along with associated culinary practices (preparation, eating, feeding) in Persians societies. The second goal of this work is to present a generic categorization framework that is applicable not only to the study of the subject in Persianate societies but also in other food cultures around the world.