Abstract
Cooking, a transformative process, holds profound cultural significance worldwide, with food serving as identity markers for each community. As a girl coming from rural Assam, India, I have observed how Assamese cuisine is predominantly upheld by the female members. Despite men generally handling cooking during festivities and ceremonies, daily culinary responsibilities involve active participation from women. Girls undergo comprehensive practical and mental training in culinary arts from a young age and are expected to acquire essential cooking skills before marriage. There is a saying that offering delightful meals is a powerful method to secure a husband’s affection. Consequently, a girl’s family often prioritizes her culinary skills. The inherited cooking process demands precision in serving delicious dishes, requiring cooks to perform intricate mental calculations throughout. This involves considerations like ingredient quantities for a specific number of people, choosing appropriate utensil sizes, estimating cooking times, and determining the sequence of ingredient additions. Viewing food items and the cooking process as culturally significant, interdisciplinary research explores their connection to mathematical concepts through ethnomathematics, shedding light on the intersection of culture and mathematics. Using Assamese cuisine as a case study, this research utilizes an autoethnographic method to delve into the mathematical underpinnings of the cooking process. It also explores how certain food items derive their names from geometric shapes that they resemble and investigates how girls in Assamese society acquire cooking skills and values, techniques, and knowledge from older female members, utilizing their culinary skills to carry on the semblance of culture and heritage.
Presenters
Parishmita KakatiPh. D. Scholar, Special Centre for the Study of North East India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Heritage, Culture, Culinary, Assamese, Ethnomathematics
