I fell upon something curious today.
Primarily I'm a linguist and words and meanings have always interested me, as well as ethnic cuisine. I come from a region (The Balkans) where national identity is very strong, each of our neighbours is proud with its history, traditions and culture, and sometimes declares them as genuinely "theirs", not even mentioning that due to the specific history of the region, a lot of our traditions, music, language, even foods have ended being pretty much similar.
One funny thing I remember was when I was little, I knew that for example moussaka is a Bulgarian dish, something I would identify with me and my nationality. I was very surprised of course unpleasantly to find out that the Greek also have a similar dish called the same way. Well, the recipes vary, but I didn't know this then. It felt like a theft of national identity to me :)
I suppose Greeks have been thinking the same.
The same rule applies to various food and drinks, including not only Bulgaria and Greece, but as well the other countries in the region Romania, Turkey, Serbia and Macedonia.
We're getting closer to the story. In Bulgaria Easter is a big holiday, maybe bigger than Christmas. It is traditionally celebrated with painted boiled eggs (as a difference from the chocolate eggs consumed in the UK), a braided bread that we call kozunak, roasted lamb with rice and fresh onions and herbs.
It's the braided bread that I want to talk about.
Pure logic made me suppose that as we bake a traditional Easter bread, maybe the Greeks make the same too, furthermore we are both on the same side of Christianity.
When I checked this fact, it proved to be right. The Greek Easter bread is almost the same as ours, but it's called tsoureki.
I didn't even suppose, but apparently Turks have the same bread as well, called corek. Interesting.
This year I was planning to bake my own kozunak because I didn't expect I could find it freshly baked in the UK, despite the large number of cultures here.
Well, you can imagine what my surprise was when I found a piece of nicely looking freshly baked braided bread in supermarket. Just poppy seeds sprinkled instead of caster sugar and almonds. Looking just like a decent kozunak has to look like, despite the small differences.
And how surprised I was to know its name -
Cholla. What kind of a name that could be? I was wondering the whole way home. Needless to say a sample of this cholla thing was taken to be investigated.
It sounded somehow Irish to me but this was too far from the truth. A quick search showed that
Cholla/Challah is a Hebrew word for traditional breaded bread, which is eaten on Jewish Sabbat and holidays, one of them being Pesach. Yes. Pesach (Passover). Pascha. The same word used to note Easter in Christianity.
Could this be a coincidence? Apparently Pesach is celebrated on the 15th day of the month of Nisan, which is equivalent to March and April in Gregorian calendar. Near the time when Easter is celebrated.
Apparently Jews are eating the same kind of festive braided bread in this period, which corresponds to Easter for the Christian world.
Really curious.
It is clear that Christianity and Judaism share some common beliefs and parables, as well as historical routes, although they differ in many other things.
It is also clear that Christianity stated spreading largely across Europe mainly under Greek influence, after Byzantine emperor Constantine I declared it official religion somewhere around year 300.
Could adopting a religion that initially started in a region close to Byzantium/Greece mean borrowing some specific food practices as well?
I wish I knew the answer.
:)
From nutritional point of view challah and the orthodox Easter bread differ in recipes. For example challah is considered neutral food in Jewish tradition and is made without milk compared to European Easter bread recipes.
Another difference is challah's four or six-strand braids, compared to the three-strand braids of the Balkan Easter breads.