From Kebab to Cevapcici

The history of food or acts of cooking, eating and drinking have gained growing attention in the humanities and social sciences in the last decade, elaborating social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of food and foodways in a global context of consumption. From Kebab to Cevapcici aims at giving disciplinarily inclusive insights into the culinary histories of “Ottoman Europe” – of the European territories and people(s), including Turkey, shaped by or “coping” with an Ottoman heritage. The analysis of foodways, the changing practices related to food production, distribution and consumption, the way food and foodways were imagined and described, serve as a means to better understand the historical entanglement of this area into global flows, the local appropriation of new foodstuffs and recipes, the imagination of exclusive possession, and the negotiation or maintenance of difference. The volume assembles 16 essays, most of which were originally delivered as papers at a conference held at Justus-Liebig-University, Gießen/Germany in fall of 2015. Their authors come from various scholarly traditions touching in one way or another the histories of the people(s) who used to live within or at the borders of the Ottoman sultan’s imperial shade.