Remembering Cyprus: ‘Traditional’ Cypriot Cooking and Food Preparation Practices in the Memories of Greek Cypriot Emigrants

Abstract

In recent decades there has been much interest in food as an important marker of self and identity for various cultural groups, and especially migrants.1 For those who live in countries other than their homelands, associations with sensual experiences of taste, flavours, smell and embodied repetitive tasks are central to a remembered self and the shaping of individual and community identities. This chapter explores food as a remembered experience among some who emigrated from Cyprus in the post-World War Two period, based on a series of oral history interviews about their food cultures more generally.2 The emphasis is on their status as Greek Cypriot emigrants, whose memories are located within a broader context of economic, social and political changes in Cyprus during the time of their emigration.3 Their descriptions of their food cultures were — and are — often tied to a series of memories and emotions which arise from their understandings of themselves as Cypriot emigrants, and how they lived their lives in the Cyprus they left behind.