Cultural and Technological Retrospectives of the Coliva in the Republic of Moldova

Abstract

Food traditions were created and shaped by the contacts between cultures that met, overlapped and mixed in a history made up of habits, knowledge, specificities, shared experiences that build the personal and collective identity of each people and from which it nourishes the feeling of "pride of belonging". Thus, traditional foods play an important role in local identity, consumer behavior, the transfer of cultural heritage for future generations and the interaction of this heritage with the rest of the world. Coliva is a traditional dish based on boiled wheat that is used liturgically in the Eastern Orthodox Church for commemorations of the dead. The purpose of this paper is to capitalize on and promote the coliva as a traditional culinary product of the Republic of Moldova and as a tool for communicating the identity values of a people. Over time, the coliva has become the expression of culture, the object and subject of cultural change, a condensate of social, environmental, historical and religious values.