MAMALIGA

Mămăligă is a porridge made out of yellow maize flour, traditional in Romania and Moldova. Historically a peasant food, it was often used as a substitute for bread or even as a staple food in the poor rural areas.

Before the introduction of maize in Europe in the 16th century, mămăligă had been made with millet flour, known to the Romans as pulmentum. Moreover, the Romans ate so much of it that the Greeks called them pultiphagonides (porridge eaters).

A Hungarian scholar documented the arrival of corn in Timişoara, Banat region, 1692. Some assume it was either Şerban Cantacuzino  or Constantin Mavrocordat who introduced corn in Wallachia, Maria Theresa in Transylvania  and Constantine Ducas in Moldavia where it is called păpuşoi.  Mămăligă of millet would have been replaced gradually by mămăligă made of corn. The corn then become an important food, especially in the fight against famine which prevailed in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The existence of corn-based mămăligă is attested since 1873 in the edition of Larousse, a French dictionnary: mamaliga s. f. Boiled corn meal, in the Danubian principalities.

 

1.       Mămăligă is:

 

a.     a porridge made out of yellow maize flour

b.    a traditional cake

c.     a fish

d.    a traditional dance from Romania

 

2.       Mămăliga is historically

a)      a fast food

b)      a peasant food

c)       an epensive food

d)      a spicy food.

 

3.  The existence of corn-based mămăligă is attested in the edition of Larousse since:

a.1421

b. 2011

c. 1873

d. 1920

 

By Prof. Valentina Panzaru