Ceviche, seviche, or “cebiche,” a popular Peruvian dish, brings a different image to mind depending on who you ask. Yet, this recipe and the many ways anyone can prepare it have solidified itself as the national food of Peru, representative of its environment, culture, and growth. Allison Krögel, historian and author of Food, Power, and Resistance in the Andes, presents to us that societies and cultures attach symbolic meaning to how food is acquired, prepared, and consumed “… so that its function always extends beyond the purely nutritional.”[1] This symbolic meaning, reflective of national and cultural identity, adapted and changed as the Andean culture faced outside pressures and influences. The Andean roots of Peru have evolved continuously due to the outside pressures of Spanish colonizers, immigrants, and modern global interdependence, and these changes can be seen in miniature with the development and fusion of ceviche.
From Ancient Times to Spanish Limes
The roots of ceviche seem enigmatic at best, though historians can trace the fish-preserving practices to that of the Incas and the Moche in northern Peru from the early second century to the eighth century.[2] Indicative of the coastal environment, the Moche likely preserved the raw fish with the fermented juice of the passion fruit known as “tumbo.”[3][4] When the Moche passed, the dish endured to become a meal enjoyed and adopted by the Inca, instead marinating the fish in fermented corn.[5] The Inca referred to this dish as “siwichi,” which some Peruvian locals speak and call it to this day.[6]
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, colonizing efforts changed ceviche and recipe into something a bit closer to what we see today due to the Spanish importing of Mediterranean ingredients.[7] The Spanish lime became a natural replacement for the properties of tumbo, with limes eventually becoming cultivated in Peru long enough to develop an entirely different variety. As chef and food historian Maricel Presilla, author of Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America points out, “Unlike the Persian limes we mostly use in Europe, Peruvian limes are small and sharp.”[8] The lime, with its acidic properties, replaced the tumbo or chicha as the method of curing the preserved fish.[9] To this day, any diner can taste the Spanish influence through Peruvian limes used in countless dishes across both Peru and the world.
(As a side note, the Spanish also developed the entomology, as “Ceviche is often spelled ‘cebiche,’ or ‘seviche,’ which could easily be a mash-up of the medieval Spanish ‘cebo,’ a word that described both fish bait and fish eaten as food, and ‘escabeche,’ which some historians think may have travelled to South America with Moorish cooks accompanying Spanish conquistadores, often as their slaves.”[10])
From Citrus Cure to Sashimi Pure and Beyond!
Ceviche, and Peru underwent another developmental period in the late nineteenth century, with Japanese immigrants inhabiting Peru as one of today’s largest Japanese populations in South America.[11] Known as “Nikkei” (Japanese for emigrant), these immigrants brought their own culinary practices that shaped the makeup of the dish into how it is known as across the world today.[12] As explained by Mitsuharu Tsumura, chef-owner of Lima’s renowned Maido restaurant, “… because the Japanese have sashimi, they appreciate all the properties of raw fish. They started mixing and serving it straightaway…”[13] Ceviche prepared in this manner caused the dish to explode in popularity, with the opening of some of the first cevicherias in Lima by the Nikkei people sixty years ago.[14]
However, this popularity extended well beyond Peru’s own borders, with Japanese cuisine already setting the stage for ceviche’s global fame. With the popularity of sushi across the world, Western and European palates became much more receptive to the dish than when the Spanish originally tried to recreate it.[15] Along the Pacific coast to the north of Peru, ceviche and its variants dot coastal town restaurants. In Los Angeles, Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s own restaurant in 1987 “… [became] one of the first to serve ceviche and its delicately sliced and sauced cousin, tiradito, which he’d learned to make while cheffing in Peru in his early 20s.”[16] In Ecuador, the dish features tomato and peanuts, and in Mexico ceviche served on tacos with avocado or as a seafood cocktail.[17]
In Peru today, restaurants and cevicherias line the streets and shores, often with ceviche or cebiche “… painted on a sign-out front of a little seaside cafe.,” as pictured by Ricardo Zarate, chef and author of The Fire of Peru.[18] The latter spelling, explained by Zarate, “locals say the version with a “b” evolved from English speakers who asked for the “sea-beach” dish served on the beach that they’d heard was so good.”[19] Now a national staple, ceviche’s growth mirrors Peru’s own history of adapting and fusing cultures as a dish that seems “more than a recipe. It’s a way of life”. Highlighted by the Krögel quote at the beginning of this blog, this commonality of change within Andean culture is due to the fact that food and culture are intrinsically linked, as evidenced by the adapting of Spanish crops and the importance of the Japanese’s own culinary customs.
1. Alison Krögel and Alison Gel, Food, Power, and Resistance in the Andes: Exploring Quechua Verbal and Visual Narratives, (Lexington: Lexington Books, 2010), 3.
2. Ricardo Zarate and Jenn Garbee. The Fire of Peru, Ceviches, Tiraditos y Causas: Peruvian Sushi Bar, The Folklore of Ceviche, Tiraditos & Causas, paragraph 3, line 1, (New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Schuster Paperbacks, 2015), RedShelfeReader.
3. Ibid, line 2.
4. Gina Cronin, “Ceviche: The National Dish of Peru,” Peru For Less, June 16, 2021, https://www.peruforless.com/blog/ceviche/ .
5. Ibid.
6. Zarate, The Folklore of Ceviche, Tiraditos & Causas, paragraph 2, line 2.
7. Cronin, “Ceviche: The National Dish of Peru”.
8. Rebecca Seal, “Ceviche: The Surprising History behind Peru’s Raw Fish Dish,” National Geographic, June 15, 2021, https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2021/05/ceviche-the-surprising-history-behind-perus-raw-fish-dish .
9. Cronin, “Ceviche: The National Dish of Peru”.
10. Seal, “Ceviche: The Surprising History behind Peru’s Raw Fish Dish.”
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Zarate, The Folklore of Ceviche, Tiraditos & Causas, paragraph 2, line 1.
19. Ibid.
