"If you want to get married, you have to collect virdura": the vanishing custom of gathering and cooking wild food plants on Vulcano, Aeolian Islands, Sicily

• Published in: Food, culture, & society culture, & society, 2018-08, Vol.21 (4), p.539-567
• Main Authors: Cucinotta, Francesco, Pieroni, Andrea
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ascription; Coastal areas; Cooking; Cultural heritage; Diet; Ecotourism; Ethnobotany; Food; Food consumption; Food preparation; Interviews; Islands; Local knowledge; Mediterranean diet; Memories; Older people; Plants; Resilience; Sicily; Social life & customs; Tourism; Vegetables; Vulcano; wild food plants
• ISSN: 1552-8014; 1751-7443
• DOI: 10.1080/15528014.2018.1481263

Despite the comprehensive bio-scientific literature regarding the Mediterranean Diet, in-depth ethnographic studies focusing on wild-food-plant-based folk cuisines are still scarce in Mediterranean coastal areas. This research aimed to analyze the wild and semi-domesticated plant components of the Mediterranean Diet on Vulcano Isle, Sicily, by interviewing thirty elderly people, who were selected among the last remaining traditional environmental and gastronomic knowledge holders. Local food uses of fifty-two plants and one mushroom belonging to twenty-three families were recorded, showing how wild food plant uses are still alive in the folk cuisine of Vulcano among the oldest community members. The resilience of this custom is traceable in the cultural importance ascribed to traditional recipes, to the memories linked to the past agrarian way of life, to the complexity of their tastes, and to their remarkable perception as healthy foods. In the changing environment of Vulcano, however, where consumption of industrialized food has already taken hold also due to seasonal mass tourism, traditional knowledge linked to wild vegetables is under threat, as young and middle generations are detached from it. Wild vegetables-centered traditional knowledge represents, however, one of the fundamental elements of the local heritage that would need to be preserved and re-vitalized via appropriate initiatives of sustainable eco-tourism.