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Volume 21, Number 1
CUISINE AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN BALKANS
Cristina Bradatan, Pennsylvania State University
© 2003 Cristina Bradatan All Rights Reserved
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During the last decade or so, the existence of a
Balkan cultural identity has been hotly debated
in books, articles, conferences, and other
scholarly practices. It has been argued that the
cuisine, supposedly common throughout the
Balkan Peninsula, might be a form through
which this cultural identity manifests itself.
Using statistical data regarding the diet
components over the last 20 years, this paper
attempts to evaluate how valid the notion of a
common Balkan cuisine is. There are two
hypotheses I am trying to test: 1) there is a
commonly shared diet structure in Balkan area,
and 2) people consume similar quantities of
basic food. Although these hypotheses are
considerably weaker than that of the existence of
a “Balkan cuisine”, it seems to me that they are
the means of doing the most of the available
data. The conclusions will point to the fact that,
if “Balkan cuisine” means what people eat in this
region on a daily basis, then there is a very
limited specificity and coherence of food
consumption in Balkan countries.
Is there such a thing as a “Balkan” region?
There is a generally human, permanent
need for grouping things together in order to
understand them. It is a truism to say that this
need manifests itself in the study of Eastern
Europe, too. The 1990’s political changes in the
communist block ruled out the nicely packed
idea of a world divided into East and West,
communist and capitalist, centralized and free-
market economies. There is no longer a clear-cut
manner of grouping together the former
communist countries: some of them are now rich
and became part of the European Union, whereas
others are still poor and hardly surviving the
transition to a free-market system. So some other
ways of grouping these countries were to be
employed. This must be one of the reasons why
former “Eastern Europe” was replaced by
“Central Europe” and “Balkan region” or
“Southeastern Europe”. The idea of Central
Europe, directly related to the former Habsburg
Empire, is relatively old, but was resurrected in
the 1970s (among others, by Czeslaw Milosz and
Milan Kundera) in an attempt to make people
aware of the significant differences between
Eastern Europe, on one hand, and USSR, on the
other hand. The “Balkan” nations seem to share
only the fate of having been, for some hundred
years, vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and
renown as a “barbarous” region especially during
the Balkan war at the beginning of the 20th
century.
Although it is not always obvious which
nations are belonging to which region, and most
of the Balkan countries refuse to be considered
Balkan, there is an almost generally accepted
idea that Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria,
Romania and Greece belong to the Balkan
region. Some studies have also included
Hungary in this region (Todorova, 1997),
although in the case of Hungary there are good
reasons to consider it as part of Central Europe.
The inclusion of Greece in the same
group with some former communist countries
makes the discussion about the Balkans
particularly interesting: Greece was never part of
the communist block, so, its “likeness” to the
other countries from the region could only be a
result of having been part of the Ottoman
Empire. On the other hand, it would be
problematic to affirm that fifty years of
completely different historical courses did not
affect the alleged resemblance between Greece
and the former communist countries from Balkan
Peninsula.
How can one argue for the existence of
a Balkan identity? Kiossev (2002) claims that
there are at least two ways to prove that there is
still a strong identity of the Balkan region: racial
traits and cuisine. A Balkan person traveling
abroad, Kiossev said, knows that he/she can
relatively easy recognize another Balkan person
in the street precisely because of the facial traits
and body movements, commonly shared by most
Balkan people. Cuisine is another shared
characteristic in the Balkans: dinning in a Greek
restaurant means dinning “at home”, only there
you will get the food that are used to, if
sometimes under a different name (Kiossev:
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167). According to Kiossev, the Balkan cuisine
descends from an Ottomanized Persian cuisine.
“Its ‘natural’ borders (which coincide neither
with the former empires not with the
contemporary nation states) can be drawn
somewhere around Zagreb, where it abuts the
mid-European front of chocolate cakes, sugary
salads, and milky potages, while to the South, at
Rijeka, it shades into the
Dalmatian/Mediterranean cuisine of frutti di
mare, pizzas, and spaghetti” (Kiossev: 172). One
of the cooking specialties pointing to a
relationship between Balkan and Persian cuisine
is, to give only one example, the use of yogurt in
meat-based meals in both cuisines, meat
marinated in yogurt being one of the famous
meals in the ancient Persian cuisine (Goody:
127) and minced meat wrapped in cabbage
(sarmale or sarmi) with yogurt is one of the
favorite Christmas meals in Balkan area.
A “national cuisine” is, strictly speaking, a self-
contradiction: people’s ways of cooking
transgress borders and are not limited by the
language or extended to an entire country. There
are only “regional cuisines” (Mintz: 114), and a
region might be part of a certain country or, on
the contrary, might include territories belonging
to more than one country. This seems to be the
case with the Balkan cuisine.
The persistence of similar cooking tastes all over
Balkan Peninsula, despite the existence of very
different political regimes and levels of
development, with low contacts among people
from different countries of the region, could be a
result of the particular conservative
characteristics of eating habits and of a low
pressure toward change.
A “cuisine” is determined by the type of
ingredients used, the order of the meals and the
etiquette of eating (Goody: 151), so it is a social
institution that does not change easily. The
components of a cuisine are learnt of very early
in life, through direct experience, and this is why
our eating habits are conservative parts of our
personality. Some new things might be added,
some of the existing things might be changed by
interaction with people having other habits
(etiquette of eating, for example), but our tastes
will always define a “good” or “bad” meal in
terms of what we learnt early in our lives.
On the other hand, the society’s pressure toward
changing food habits is low in regions where the
population is homogeneous and the majority of
people eat at home. This was the case with the
Communist countries from Balkan area until ’90.
Nowadays such a thing might seem somehow
strange, but before the 1990s even such
renowned tourist destinations as Prague and
Budapest exhibited a very small number of
restaurants. “Dinning out” was an almost
unknown experience to most of the Eastern
Europeans. Although some of the communist
leaders thought that dining out would have had
beneficial effects as the national expenses on
food would have gone down1, people continued
to eat home-cooked food. And at home women
(because domestic cooking in Europe was
historically woman’s job, she is in charge with
preparing the food) cooked what they learnt from
their mothers and, in their turn, their mothers
cooked what they learned from their mothers and
so on.
Data and methods
It appears that the idea of a common
Balkan cuisine makes sense from several points
of view. However, it is hard to really test such a
hypothesis: namely, that people from a certain
region share in a similar cuisine. In Eastern
Europe there have been few surveys focusing
only on the diet, although the surveys attempting
to estimate the income usually have a section
containing questions dedicated to the food
consumption. “Cuisine” is a complex concept
that includes not only ingredients used in
cooking, along with ways of cooking, but also
“etiquettes of eating”. For simplicity reasons, I
will in the following consider the ingredients as
the most important determinants of a cuisine
without taking into account the other
components. There are two hypotheses I am
trying to test: 1) there is a commonly shared diet
structure in Balkan area, and 2) people consume
similar quantities of basic food. Although these
hypotheses are considerably weaker than that of
the existence of a “Balkan cuisine”, it seems to
me that they are the means of doing the most of
the available data.
The data are provided by the FAO (Food and
Agriculture organization for United States) for
1980-2000. I will focus here on meat, vegetables
and sugar consumption, as well on the number of
calories consumed daily. In the group of Balkan
countries I included: Bulgaria, Greece, Albania,
Romania, and Yugoslavia. I have compared this
group of countries with Hungary and with the
Europe’s average. I have chosen Hungary in an
attempt to highlight that the similarities in food
consumption in Balkan peninsula are not only
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Volume21, Number 1
the result of a geographic proximity: Hungary is
also close to two of the Balkan countries
(Romania and Yugoslavia) and still it has a very
different cuisine.
For all the analyses I have used two distinct
spans of time: 1980-1989 and 1990-2000. These
periods of time are socially and politically very
different for most of the countries from the
region. On the other hand, if the political
changes in the 1990s affected strongly the diet of
the people living in the region (because either of
the poverty, or of the increasing opportunities of
being in contact with people with other tastes)
the comparison (1990-2000 as against 1980-
1989) would express these changes. However,
one problem remains unsolved: the composition
of Yugoslavia is different during the two periods
of time.2 I used data for all countries from
Europe, without USSR and former USSR
republics. I also excluded Czechoslovakia (and,
for 1990-2000, Slovakia and Czech Republic)
because the country disappeared after 1992 and I
could not take into account these political
changes by using the 1989 as the split point.
As far as the methods are concerned, I used
hierarchical cluster analysis, which permits to
cluster the cases by using one or more variables
as grouping variables. Basically, this method
measures how large is the distance between each
two cases (I used the Euclidean distance as a
measure for distance). Then, it groups together
within a cluster those cases for which the
distance is the smallest, measuring then the
distance between these first level clusters
(groups). Finally, it groups together the clusters
that are the closest. These are the second level
groups. The method continues until all groups
are linked.
Results and interpretations
I have token into account five basic
components of the diet: average annual
consumption of meat, pork meat, vegetables,
animal fat and sweeteners. The proportion of
animal fat and sweeteners in daily diet are good
indicators of the diet profile, so populations with
a similar diet have to exhibit similar proportions
of these two components. I have compared all
the countries in Europe using these two variables
in order to see whether the Balkan countries are
somehow different. The results are presented in
Figure 1 and Figure 2.3
Looking at the Figure 1 (1980-1989) and
Figure 2 (1990-2000), the Balkan countries
(Greece, Romania, Albania, Bulgaria,
Yugoslavia) are grouped of the left side of the
“Europe” point (average consumption in
Europe), which shows that there are strong
similarities between the diets in these countries
in comparison with other parts of Europe.
Hungary is located very far away (especially
because of the high consumption of animal fat),
but the Mediterranean countries (Spain, Portugal
and Italy) are in the same part of the graph with
the Balkan countries. This is an indication that,
at least from the point of view of the animal fat
and sweeteners used in cooking, the Balkan
cuisine is not far away from the Mediterranean
one.
There are no significant changes between
1980-1989 and 1990-2000 in terms of average
diet composition of Balkan countries relative to
other European countries, although the political
and social situation changed dramatically
between these two decades. The Balkan
countries still group together in the left low side
of the average European consumption of animal
fat and sweeteners during 1980-1989 as well as
after 1990. Only Yugoslavia decreased strongly
the consumption of sweeteners, but this might be
a result of the changing territory after 1990. At
least from a visual inspection of the graphs, it
seems that there is a certain consistency in the
consumption of animal fat and sweeteners
consumption among the Balkan countries,
although there are no signs that the Balkan diet is
radically different than the Mediterranean one.
The hierarchical cluster analysis4 shows
similar results (Appendix 1), although the first
level clusters are not connecting Balkan
countries together, but Balkan and
Mediterranean countries. For example, based
upon this analysis, it seems that Romania,
Greece and Spain are close to each other in terms
of animal fat and sweeteners consumption (this
is a level 1 cluster and only a third level cluster
group together all Balkan and Mediterranean
countries). This result reinforces the idea that
Balkan and Mediterranean diet cannot be
distinguished from each other by only taking into
account the consumption of animal fat and
sweets.
The consumption of meat is important
in European diet, although the non-animal food
historically dominated the European cooking:
Until the middle decades of the nineteenth
century, grains continued to dominate the
European diet (except in the case of a small
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Volume21, Number 1
privileged elite). Economically, they might
absorb as much as 90 per cent of a family’s
food budget; calorically their role was
decisive as well, normally accounting for
between two-thirds and three-quarters of
the total, and in any case no less than half.
(Montanari: 152).
Nowadays, the non-animal consumption is still
the most important source of the daily calories in
any world population. The consumption of
vegetarian food might be measured either as
proportion of average daily calories intake
(calories from vegetables versus calories from
animal products) or as a total average
consumption per year.
Figure 3 uses the first way of measuring
(% calories from non animal food) for Balkan
countries in comparison with the average
European and Hungary consumption5.
Yugoslavia has a pattern of consumption more
similar with Hungary than with the other Balkan
countries, with more than 40% of the calories
provided by animal products. On the other hand,
Greece has a much higher average daily calorie
intake than the other countries, which might be
an indication of the relatively richness of the
country in comparison with the other Balkan
countries.
An analysis carried out with
hierarchical cluster method (with grouping
variables being the number of calories from
animal products 1980-1989 and 1990-2000)
shows that Bulgaria, Romania and Greece
belongs to the same first level cluster, but they
are relatively distant from Albania and
Yugoslavia (Appendix 2).
In the interpretation of these results it
should take into account that the data are
aggregated at a national level and, sometimes,
the average might have a very different meaning
from one country to another because of the
inequalities within the countries compared. For
example, in a country with strong inequalities,
where most of the people are extremely poor,
and some of them are very rich, with no “middle
class”, the term “average person” does not have a
precise meaning. In these cases (and most of the
former Eastern countries are in this category), it
is preferable to compare the extremes – the
richest 10% from one country with the richest
10% from another country and, similarly, the
poorest 10%. Unfortunately, there are no data
available for such a comparison.
As far as the meat as an animal product
is concerned, this has not been, historically
speaking, an important part of the Mediterranean
cuisine (Montanari: 74). On the other hand, such
countries as Romania with a still large
proportion of religious population, it is expected
to have low levels of meat consumption because
of the long periods of fast. So, I expected the
Balkan as well as Mediterranean countries to
have similar levels of meat consumption.
However, an analysis carried on by using the
yearly consumption of meat and pork meat does
not show the existence of any relationships
between the Balkan countries: they did not
belong to the same group, no matter whether the
grouping variable is meat consumption during
1980-1989 and 1990-2000 or pork meat during
the same periods of time. Pork meat is a popular
option among the Balkan people especially
during holidays (Christmas, New Year), but it
does not seem to be consumed in similar
quantities all over Balkan Peninsula.
Conclusions
So, is there any such thing as a
distinctively Balkan cuisine? If we look at what
people in the Balkan region eat on a daily basis,
things are difficult to interpret. There is, indeed,
a similar pattern as far as the ingredients used
among the people living in Balkan area are
concerned, which pattern is not only a result of
the geographical proximity (because, as we have
seen, Hungarians, for example, do not share the
same diet characteristics with Serbs and
Romanians). However, the Mediterranean
countries diet has a similar structure with the
Balkan ones and it is hard to distinguish between
the two cuisines. On the other hand, calories
intake as well as meat consumption varies
among the Balkan countries, which weakens the
idea of a common and specific cuisine in the
peninsula.
If we talk about “haute cuisine”, the
cuisine to be enjoyed in restaurants, there is
some truth in claiming the existence of a Balkan
cuisine. Sarmale, baklava, musaka, white cheese
(Feta), halva, maybe under different names, but
with similar tastes are some of the Balkan meals
being usually served in a Greek, Romanian or
Bulgarian restaurant, in New York or in any
other big city, and they are recognized6 as parts
of the “Balkan cuisine”. They are rather refined
and sophisticated dishes, not eaten in the Balkans
on an ordinary day, and it is hard to argue that
such special meals, similar indeed all over the
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Volume21, Number 1
Peninsula, can create and are part of a common
cultural identity.
References Cited
Goody, Jack, 1982, Cooking, Cuisine and
Class. A Study in Comparative
Sociology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge.
Kiossev, A., 2002, “The Dark Intimacy:
Maps, Identities, Acts of
Identifications”, in ed. D.I. Bjelić, O.
Savić. Balkan as Metaphor. Between
Globalization and Fragmentation.
Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Mennel, S., Murcott, A., van Otterloo, A.H.,
1993, The Sociology of Food. Eating
Diet and Culture. London: Sage.
Mintz, Sidney W., 1996, Tasting Food,
Tasting Freedom. Boston: Beacon.
Montanari, Massimo, 1994, The Culture of
Food. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Smil, Vaclav, 1989, Coronary Heart Disease,
Diet, and Western Mortality. Population
and Development Review 15(3): 399-
423.
Todorova, Maria, 1997, Imagining the
Balkans. Oxford, UK: Oxford.
Wood, Roy C., 1995, The Sociology of Meal.
Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press
1 At a given moment the Romanian
Communist leader, Ceaucescu, got the idea
of building immense supermarkets – cantinas
– where people were supposed to purchase
prepared food; these places were popularly
called “famine’s circuses” because the food
to be served there would be of a poor quality.
Fortunately enough, he did not have time to
finish his project.
2 Usually, only Serbia is considered part of
the Balkan area. However, some studies
included in Balkan Peninsula Croatia as well
as Bosnia Herzegovina. Unfortunately, there
are no data available for Serbia only, so I
used the data for whole Yugoslavia, even if
this would introduce some bias in results
3 The figures present the average yearly
consumption of animal fat and sweeteners for
1980-1989 and 1990-2000. The yearly trend
brings similar conclusion, but the figure
would look too “busy” if I would picture the
yearly trends.
4 For this analysis, I used as grouping
variables: average animal fat consumption
1980-1989, animal fat consumption 1990-
2000, average sweeteners consumption 1980-
1989 and average sweeteners consumption
1990-2000. The variables were rescaled on a
0-1 scale.
5 The figures in top of the columns represent
the average daily calorie intake.
47
