Contesting Gender Rights Over a Bowl of Tripe Soup: The Role ofShkembe Chorba as a Unifier of Classes and a Macho Symbol

It is not your regular soup. It is fiery, it reeks of garlic, and is made of tripe. They say the Bulgarian shkembe chorba is best eaten after heavy drinking: its burning aromas can wake the dead. Borrowed from the urban culture of the Ottoman Empire, the tripe-and-milk soup has been incorporated in the Bulgarian cuisine to symbolize real, rough life, adventure and excess. This article argues that despite of its potential to be seen as ‘manly’ food, shkembe chorba enjoyed relative gender neutrality until the end of communism. Today though a contest grows between sexes over its gender status.The article uses the case study to investigate how the notion of gender food is being constructed. Researching the fluctuations in the cultural framework and their effect on the status of the dish is concludes that the “gender” quality of it is constituted on the cross point of thee elements: the general perception of what constitutes ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, the specific dish’s proximity to these categories, and the sexes’ inclination to be associated with qualities, seen as attributed to the other sex. I also argue that amongst the three, the idea what constitutes ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ is the most conservative and slow to change.

Jaar van publicatie:2018