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- Title:
- When Bread Meant Rice Cake
- Description:
- Tinapay, today’s Filipino word for wheat bread, originally meant “a certain kind of rice cake.” We owe that fact to Pigafetta who in 1521 listed words in the Cebuano area and their meanings. He did not describe tinapay so no one knows what it really was. Did he not encounter other rice cakes, what we call kakanin now? Missionaries of the later 1500s used tinapay as the word for host when explaining it to new native converts. In the 1800s, tinapay was described by the Recollect priest Juan Felix De Encarnación as a flour circle with a sweet filling that was folded in half to resemble the moon. Perhaps because it resembled the circular host, tinapay was selected by pioneering missionaries. They also used tinapay for wheat bread when referring to miracles of Jesus Christ such as feeding a multitude with just a few fish and bread loaves. Filipinos did not know wheat or wheat bread at the time. They were brought by the Spanish. Later “hostia” was introduced as the word for host; tinapay stayed as generic for wheat bread. Many words around the world change meanings in small and big ways.
- Subjects:
- Bread Pan
- Exhibition:
- Magellan Menu
- Type:
- Image;Still Image
- Format:
- image/jpeg
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- "When Bread Meant Rice Cake", Philippine Food History, Felice P. Sta. Maria
- Reference Link:
- felicepstamaria.net/items/coll015.html