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Sorbian Foodways

Serbska kuchnja

Ethnolinguistic

The food of the Sorbs, a West Slavic people in Lusatia: rye and buckwheat, potatoes above all since the eighteenth century, cabbage and cucumbers, freshwater fish from the Spree and the ponds, forest mushrooms and berries, pork from the house pig, quark and sour milk, yeast cakes, and a festival calendar of Catholic and Protestant communities that do not keep the same one.

Atlas โ€” where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Sorbian community documented
  • Sorbs community documented

Languages: Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian

What is recorded

  • Sorbian foodways is recorded as a West Slavic minority system in Lusatia, not as a branch of German, Polish or Czech cooking and not as "generic East German food". Those are relationships. documented
  • Upper and Lower Sorbian are two languages with two communities, two confessions in the main, and two festival calendars. Copying Upper Sorbian traditions into Lower Lusatia because the data is thinner there would manufacture a uniformity that does not exist. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to Czech Foodways possible

    Upper Lusatia belonged to the Bohemian Crown for centuries and the languages are close; the culinary exchange is real but thinly documented.

  • related to German Foodways documented

    The Sorbs have lived inside German states for centuries; the shared ingredients, baking and sausage-making are real, and neither absorbs the other.

  • related to Kashubian Foodways possible

    Two Slavic minority-language food cultures inside larger states, comparable in situation rather than in contact.

  • related to Lusatian Foodways documented
  • related to Polish Foodways documented

    West Slavic kin and an eastern neighbour across the Neisse: shared sour rye, cabbage, mushrooms and much vocabulary.

  • related to Slovak Foodways possible

    A West Slavic parallel rather than a contact relationship.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

  • related to Silesian Foodways possible

    Two Slavic communities inside German states, historically adjacent in Lusatia and Lower Silesia; comparable rather than in close contact.

Regional cuisines

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.