Fais-Leutskaia O. “Tits of St. Agatha” as an Example of a “Food Journey”

Oxana Fais-Leutskaia
Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Moscow, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0002-2757-2434
E-mail: oxana-fais@yandex.ru

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ABSTRACT. In this article, the author, referring to the example of two little-studied dishes — archaic sweets in the shape of a woman’s breast, historically found in various parts of Europe (Sicily, Spain, England), focuses on the phenomenon of “wandering recipes” and the prerequisites for the existence of the same food artifact in different regions. This problem actualizes the question of the origin and “primogeniture” of a particular dish and becomes increasingly popular both in historical and alimentary anthropology. In the course of the study an attempt is made to reconstruct the “biography” of each of these dishes, to determine the area of its appearance, to track the routes of “food journeys” in medieval Europe, the mechanism of action of alimentary interchange, the historical, cultural, confessional processes and phenomena behind it, international cross-cultural contacts of that era. In one case, the analysis of historical events allows you to build a chain of successive transfers “from hand to hand” of a specific alimentary artifact, as it “progresses” from Sicily to Britain, preserving the recipe and appearance unchanged, but changing the social environment of existence, functionality and the specifics of consumption. The survey of the second dessert confirms the fact of alimentary borrowing, but does not make it possible to get unambiguous answers to questions about its origin and the point of outcome.

KEYWORDS: sweets and cookies, “Tits of St. Agatha”, “food journey”, Sicily, Spain, England, the Cult of St. Agatha, the Middle Ages, cultural contacts

DOI 10.31250/2618-8619-2022-2(16)-195-208
УДК 39+664.68

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