Pupusa
Pupusa
A pupusa is a thick griddle cake or flatbread from El Salvador and Honduras made with cornmeal or rice flour stuffed with one or more ingredients including cheese, beans, chicharrón, or squash. It can be served with curtido and tomato sauce and is traditionally eaten by hand. Pupusas have origins in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica but were first mentioned in 1837 by Guatemalan poet José Batres Montúfar. In El Salvador, the pupusa is the national dish and has a day to celebrate it.
Etymology
The origin of the term pupusa is unknown. The Dictionary of Americanisms?action=edit&redlink=1), published by the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language, states that pupusa derives from the Nawat word (spoken by the Pipil people) puxahua meaning "fluffy" or "fluffy thing". In Lidia Pérez de Novoa's book Interlude and Other Verses, she believed that pupusa derives from the Nawat word pupusawa meaning "to puff up". Ricardo Ernesto Roque, a professor at the Central American University in San Salvador, supported this etymology.
Etymology
Salvadoran linguist Jorge Lemus argued that the word pupusa does not have Nawat roots, stating that the Pipil people referred to pupusas as kukumuzin. In Santiago Barberena's book Quicheísmos: Contribution to the Study of American Folklore..., he believed that the word pupusa originated from a combination of the K'iche' words pop (meaning "sphere") and utz (meaning "good thing"), forming the word poputz meaning "good sphere"; however, the term poputz does not appear in any K'iche' language dictionaries.
Reading List
Report Issue