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Coptic recipes online: Negotiating community boundaries in diaspora
Abstract
Copts and Egyptian Muslims share for the most part the same food habits and Coptic recipes draw largely on a same culinary “grammar”. However Copts have reinvented their culinary differences since the 1950s by developing narratives of autochthony in relation to their alleged pharaonic roots. This process has always been a mix of Egyptian dynamics and foreign influences, including that of the growing diasporas from the 1960s. The main aspect of Coptic tradition which triggers the publication of online recipes is the very demanding vegan fast imposed to the faithful. Internet is an interesting site for observing Coptic discourses on food and fasting. Fasting becomes one of the distinctive features of Copticness which sometimes can be the object of self-mockery memes displayed on Coptic websites. Coptic recipes can be based on Egyptian dishes but as fasting implies eating no products derived from animals, the growing interest around vegan food offers a great reserve of ideas for Copts who want to stick to their dietary rules and explore other food cultures. The discourses accompanying those recipes can go in different directions, either it can refer to the spiritual role of fasting, or to the role of food in conveying sentiments of nostalgia for the home country. But it can also valorize the feeling of belonging to the lands of emigrations, by presenting for example Coptic food practices as a vegan diet, or by using the new valorization of fasting as a healthy practice. Food is also a site for negotiating gender role in Coptic communities which can sometimes lead to romanticizing cooking, but that can also encourage men to invest themselves in the kitchen. Finally recipes are used to present certain aspects of the community life to the lager society and explain some Coptic religious traditions such as fasting.
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