UNESCO Names Peru’s Ceviche As Intangible Cultural Heritage

22.02.2024 - 23:09 / forbes.com

While ceviche is seen as a local dish in many countries from Chile to Mexico, Peruvians call this famous concoction of raw fish marinated in lime juice Peru’s national dish. UNESCO recently added Peru’s ceviche—and the cultural surrounding it—to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) names heritage elements to its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity every year with the goal of raising awareness of the importance of the historical practices and to help keep the traditions alive.

At its most recent annual meeting, the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage added Peruvian ceviche culture to its list. UNESCO’s previous honors for culinary traditions have gone to, for example, Ukraine’s culture of borscht cooking, France’s baguettes, Singapore’s hawker stall dining, and the Turkish coffee traditions of Türkiye.

In awarding the honor to Peru’s ceviche, UNESCO highlighted the role of the dish in Peru’s cultural identity, the importance of artisanal sustainable fishers and traditional female ceviche cooks in cevicherías, regional variations of the dish, and how the knowledge of ingredients and techniques are passed down through families in Peru.

Ceviche (also spelled as “cebiche” and “seviche”) is so beloved in Peru that the South American country celebrates it annually on the 28th day of June, called Dia del Cebiche. Ceviche is eaten daily throughout Peru, in coastal cities like Lima, in the Amazonian jungle, and in the Andean highlands near the country’s most famous tourist site, Machu Picchu.

Though the word is also linked to the Spanish “cebo” and “escabeche” (words for fish and pickled food), historians say “cebiche” comes from the Quechua word “siwichi,” which means fresh or tender fish. Indigenous peoples who speak Quechua languages live throughout South America today though it’s thought that the language first developed in pre-Incan Peru.

National Geographic describes how ceviche likely originated 3,000 years ago on the northern coast of what is now Peru, near a town called Huanchaco. The original recipes of the pre-Incan Moche people were likely quite different from today’s. A key ceviche ingredient—limes—only arrived in South America about 500 years ago, brought from Asia by the Spanish and Portuguese. In the absence of lime, there’s debate whether the fish in the original dish was combined with seaweed and chili peppers or perhaps with the juice of the passionfruit-like tumbo. The first published ceviche recipe might be from Lima writer Manuel Atanasio Fuentes in 1866.

Japan’s significant influence on Peruvian cuisine, beginning in the late 19th century, brought