What are the traditional foods around the world on New Year?

If champagne and canapés aren’t your thing, try some of these traditional dishes from around the world to ring in the New Year. Let’s get started!

Fruits are used to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Filipino culture. How many different types of fruit are there for the New Year? Each month is represented by a number of twelve. Round fruits are particularly popular among Filipinos, but mangoes and watermelon can also be eaten. Grapes are eaten at midnight in Mexico to signify the coming year, while pomegranates, a symbol of fertility and birth, are eaten all over the world during the new year. A refined way to kick off the New Year is with a pomegranate-based drink.

Tamales, those packed masa bundles wrapped in corn husks and steamed, have come to signify family, as generations regularly assemble in the kitchen to prepare the time-consuming delicacy that will be consumed throughout the holiday season. From December 12th, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, until January 6th, Three Kings’ Day, Mexico celebrates the season.

Tamales are believed to have originated in Mesoamerican cultures such as the Mayans and Aztecs, and were first sold by street sellers in the 1870s in U.S. ports of entry such as Los Angeles and San Antonio, according to The New York Times. Migrant Mexican workers assisted in the spread of the dish to other parts of the country.

Although ham is a popular holiday centerpiece, pork is thought to bring good fortune on New Year’s Day. Why is it customary to eat pig on New Year’s Eve? For starters, it has to do with how pigs act in comparison to other animals. While chickens and turkeys scratch backwards, a big buries his snout into the ground and advances forward, according to some theorists—the same way you want to go in the New Year.

Another reason is logistical: pigs are usually slaughtered in the late autumn, making pork a great choice for New Year’s Eve celebrations. The tradition of eating pork (and cabbage) on New Year’s Day originates in Germany and Eastern Europe, and was carried to America by immigrants from those countries. Here’s where you can get some ideas for new pork tenderloin recipes.

Louisianans and Mardis Gras devotees know that the best way to start the year is with a delectable ringed king cake decorated with colorful icing and sprinkles and baked with a trinket hidden inside, such as a plastic baby. For the day, the individual who finds the item is dubbed “king” or “queen.”

Bakeries in New Orleans and across the country begin selling the sweets in early January and continue until Fat Tuesday. On January 6, known as Twelfth Night or Epiphany, the Catholic celebration of the Magi’s gifts to baby Jesus on the 12th night after his birth, they are usually consumed.

The habit of eating simple oval cakes on Twelfth Night dates back to Old World Europe, and it was later transported to America. During Mardi Gras balls in late nineteenth-century New Orleans, revelers began hiding a bean in the cake. Commercial bakeries began mass-producing king cakes in the 1940s, upgrading from beans, pecans, or rings baked within to porcelain dolls, then plastic babies, which are still used today.

Similarly, in Greece and Cyprus, the vasilopita is baked with a coin inside and served on New Year’s Day. Other countries’ variants include Spain (rosca de reyes), Portugal (bola-re), and France (bola-re) (gateau de rois).

Toshikoshi soba, a soup with buckwheat “year-crossing” noodles, is a long-standing New Year’s Eve ritual in Japan that is now now observed in the United States. Toshikoshi means “to climb or jump from the previous year to the next,” according to The Japan Times. The long, thin noodles come from the 13th or 14th centuries, “when either a temple or a wealthy nobleman chose to reward the starving public to soba noodles on the last day of the year.”

Fish for New Year’s is another popular dish that can be found on New Year’s tables all throughout the world, particularly in cultures that live near water. Herring, for example, was once thought to be a sign of good fortune in Scandinavian countries, especially since the silver-scaled fish reminded people of wealthy money.

Herring, which was highly trafficked, was also vital to the country’s prosperity, thus eating herring was a form of hoping for a good catch in the months ahead, as herring migration patterns were unpredictable, and a good year didn’t guarantee a good year the next year. The fish is not complicated, but the history is. It can now be used as a New Year’s snack as well as a symbol of good fortune. On any crostini party platter, pickled herring is a great crostini topper.

Tteokguk, South KoreaTteokguk soup is so important to the South Korean New Year (Seollal, February 16) that if you don’t eat it, you won’t be regarded a year older, as Koreans consider themselves to age on New Year’s Day rather than their birthday. You can even figure out how old a Korean is by asking how many tteokguk they’ve consumed. Tteokguk, which is made out of broth, little disc-shaped rice cakes, pork, and vegetables, is said to bring good luck for the coming year to those who consume it. It’s also wonderful, with eggs, toasted seaweed, and spring onions on top, as well as flavorful, chewy rice cakes.

Finally, on New Year’s Eve, bottles of champagne are popped all over the world, but for some, it’s all about eating grapes. The Spanish custom of las doce uvas de la suerta, or the 12 lucky grapes, states that eating 12 grapes at midnight, one for each chime of the clock, will bring good fortune in the coming year.

Each grape represents a month, and if you don’t eat all 12 in time, you’ll have bad luck in the coming year, according to legend. Newspapers reported Madrid’s bourgeoisie stealing grape and champagne traditions from the French in the 1880s.

Check out my related post: How does the world celebrate the new year?

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Interesting reads:

https://wander-lush.org/food-culture-unesco/

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/new-years-food-traditions/index.html

https://www.joincake.com/blog/mexico-new-years-traditions/

https://www.realsimple.com/holidays-entertaining/traditional-new-years-day-food

https://bestlifeonline.com/global-new-years-eve-traditions/

https://www.allrecipes.com/gallery/new-years-traditions/

https://theculturetrip.com/europe/articles/11-new-years-eve-food-traditions-from-around-the-world-that-will-make-your-mouth-water/

https://www.history.com/news/new-years-food-traditions