Пътят на боба до българско национално ястие (XVIII–XX век)
The Beans’ Path to Becoming a Bulgarian National Dish (18th – 20th C)

Summary/Abstract: The study traces the history of beans on our lands, its gradual dissemination since the second half of 18th century onwards, its transformation into the majority of the population’s food during the last decades of 19th century, its adoption as a ‘people’s dish’ or ‘national dish’, which gets integrated during the between-wars period into a great narrative about ‘Turkish yoke’ and the strength of the resistant, heroic and brave Bulgarian people. A vast source material has been used, which includes travelogues, government documents, information from materials in the press, specialized agronomic literature, numerous cookbooks, a huge number of different works of the popular culture, fiction works, poetry, and last, but not least, archive materials preserved in the Central State Archive, Sofia City Archive, as well as the Regional Archives in Pleven and Blagoevgrad (where all the documents of the state enterprises „Balkanturist“, „Zdrava hrana“, „Obshtestveno hranene“ etc., are preserved). A special attention was paid to the difficult Europeanization and modernization of the diet during the communist rule and socialist planned economy, which gets visibly expressed in the crisis with beans production at the end of T. Zhivkov’s regime and in the inability to ignore this food in the diet at the same time. The marked presence of beans in the diet of the Bulgarians is treated both as an expression of the people’s sustainable taste and nutritional preferences and as a regime’s failure to marginalize this historic food, associated with the times of penury and limited nutrition options.The study clearly highlights the moment of revaluation of beans in the 1970s, when the idea of ‘Bulgarian National Cuisine’ is formed, which is accompanied by the appearance of many up to then completely unknown dishes with beans. Last, but not least, the study highlights that beans had the difficult task to survive and get revalued as a representative national dish in the years after 1989, and that this was a competition, which it definitely didn’t win compared to other traditional dishes. The study outlines the tendencies after 1989 – the ongoing mass consumption of beans in the years of crisis and penury; the gradual reduction (compared to the past) of offering it in the catering establishments; its ongoing revaluation as a plain national cuisine; the ongoing boom of regionalism in offering different kinds of beans; the disappearing of the dish from the list of national dishes; the sustainable consumption in times of crisis, leading again to the pragmatic and strange scientific observations.

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