« An Ethnological Study of the Paella in the Valencia area of Spain and Abroad Uses and Representations of a Mediterranean Dish. », P. Lysaght (ed.), Mediterranean Food. Concepts and trends, Zagreb, Biblioteka Nova Etnografija, 2006, pp. 121-131
Creators: name: Duhart, Frédéric
name: Medina, Xavier
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2006
Subjects: Anthropology of food
Food and Gender
Rice history
Cuisine
Paella
Valencia
Spain
Algérie
Cooking Technics
Oryza sativa

description: Paella (a rice dish garnished with vegetables and sometimes various meats, fishes or shellfishes) appears very likely in the early nineteenth-century in the Valencia area. In this area, paella becomes precociously the basis of strong local identification processes. Paella appears in Spanish cookbooks as a regional recipe since the end of the nineteenth-century. However, the diffusion of the paella occurs lately in certain provinces. Paella, as Spanish national culinary symbol, is therefore built on cultural cross-purposes. For the foreigners, the paella is a Spanish monument that they have to visit with their fork and that they can find it on postcards; for the inhabitants of certain parts of Spain, the paella is a dish they know, but it is certainly not a national dish. Out of Spain, paella participates in the building of identities in various European or Colonial contexts. Classically, men, in the countryside, make paella far away from the (feminine) kitchen. Cooking paella outside between men is still honoured in certain regions, but the groups who prepare this dish can also be mixed and the making of paella in some communities is totally integrated in the woman domestic cookery. Commensality stays very important in the consumption of paella, even if individualised ways of eating it appear with its introduction in the fast food's system. Nowadays, in some situations, the paella is creolized, by the incorporation of few local ingredients, but in others, this dish conserves a classical aspect. Paella is both an international and a regional dish, which is strongly associated with local identities. It is a "chameleon dish": a preparation which have a strong power of adaptation and which takes the cultural colours of numerous places in the world.

Une étude ethnologique de la paella dans la région de Valence et ailleurs: usages et représentations d'un plat méditerranéen.

La paella est réellement ‘bonne à penser’ d'un point de vue ethnologique. Dans la région de Valence, où elle est née, c'est un plat aux usages précis et elle intervient dans la construction de l'identité locale. Mais qu'en est-il hors de cette aire première? La paella devient un plat emblématique de l'ensemble de l'Espagne, au terme d'un processus historique complexe, dans lequel interviennent notamment la diffusion internationale de certaines de ses recettes et le développement touristique du pays. La paella s'est aussi implantée dans certaines régions plus ou moins éloignées de la péninsule ibérique (Sud de la France; colonies). Aujourd'hui la paella joue un rôle dans d'autres cuisines occidentales, en raison de la mode pour l'alimentation méditerranéenne: elle apparaît saine et conviviale. La paella participe également aux formes les plus complexes de la cuisine globalisée.