20 Wedding Foods From History And The Hidden Meanings Behind Them

In weddings throughout Greece and Italy, you’ll find little tulle bags filled with koufeta or confetti, sweet, candy-coated almonds. An odd number, typically five, is given to each guest so they cannot divide their share, representing an indivisible union. Each almond represents health, wealth, happiness, fertility, and longevity. And the bitter almond within the hard shell of sugar symbolizes how all hardships in life can be sweetened. The name likely derives from the French word for garden, jardin, rather than from the Jordan River, as is sometimes claimed.

In 1840, Queen Victoria married her future husband, Prince Albert, in London. Her wedding cake was covered in hard white icing, which remains the standard for weddings in the Western world today. Though white icing isn’t particularly old, as bakers have been using it since at least the 1700s, the cost of refined white sugar meant that a pure white cake silently proclaimed a family’s affluence. All Victoria did was make it stylish. It was also a tradition that the couple cut the first piece of the wedding cake together, representing their first action as husband and wife.

The lacquered red skin of Peking duck, a popular choice at Chinese wedding banquets, is served as a main course. The duck is served whole and intact, with the head and feet left on. A whole duck symbolizes a whole marriage without any cracks or breaks. The wild duck pairs for life in nature. Therefore, the dish also signifies loyalty and devotion between husband and wife. The color of the skin signifies joy and happiness at the banquet.

During the time of King Louis XV, French royal courts were famous for their elaborate banquets where champagne, the sparkling wine produced in France’s Champagne region, was a scarce commodity. Only the most opulent feasts could afford the expensive, difficult-to-produce beverage. That made champagne the go-to drink for toasting a couple’s health at elite 18th-century celebrations. By the dawn of the 20th century, the champagne toast had spread far beyond the royal courts, becoming a global wedding tradition.

During the Igbo wine-carrying ceremony called Igba Nkwu, in southeastern Nigeria, the bride’s family offers a kola nut (ọjị), which is a small, bitter, caffeine-filled seed, to symbolize the establishment of a new marriage. It is blessed by an elder who calls upon Chukwu, the supreme god, and then broken by hand because breaking it with a knife would defile the purity of the kola nut. Both families receive pieces, as the saying goes: “He who brings kola brings life.”

During the 1500s and 1600s, the Bride’s Pie was the centerpiece of the wedding feast. It was filled with sweetbreads, pine nuts, dried fruit, mincemeat, and expensive exotic spices. The baker sometimes placed a silver ring or a small glass object within the pie, and the unmarried woman whose portion contained the object was thought to be the next to be married. Refusing a piece of Bride’s Pie was considered an insult to the couple’s future good fortune, and serving such a lavish dish demonstrated the host family’s affluence and generosity.

San-san-kudo means “three-three-nine times.” It is a very serious part of the formal Shinto wedding ceremony that was developed among Japanese samurai families. Each spouse drinks three times from each of three graduated lacquerware cups, for a total of nine times. The three cups represent heaven, earth, and people, and the number nine is very lucky. The number three cannot be divided, which signifies the joining together of the two individuals and their two families as one.

In Bulgaria, before a wedding ceremony, both families prepare a large braided bread, called pitka. During the celebration, both mothers feed the bride and groom a piece dipped in honey, hoping they will have a sweet and joyful life ahead. Then the couple stands back to back, raises the loaf over their heads, and rips it apart. Whoever gets the larger piece supposedly gets to be the boss of the house. This is just a folk custom, a fun little divination, not a mandate.

In traditional Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian weddings, a whole lamb called mechoui is slow-roasted on a spit over pit coals and served as the main dish of the feast. Since animals were a farming family’s most valuable possession, offering an entire roasted lamb to guests and new in-laws was a highly visible sign of wealth and hospitality. By sharing the animal with others, the community pledged their hopes for the couple’s prosperity.

In Chinese weddings, newly married couples share warm, sweet tang yuan, smooth round dumplings made from glutinous rice flour, with their parents. The name sounds similar to tuan yuan, “reunion,” making this food also a wish for family unity. Their round shape represents fullness, and their sticky texture is a metaphor for the joining of two families.

In Pyebaek, an intimate, traditional family event that was practiced during the Joseon Dynasty, a new bride is brought before her groom’s parents. They throw dates (jujubes) and chestnuts at the pair while they hold up a large piece of silk for them to catch. Dates represent girls and chestnuts represent boys, with the overall wish being for healthy children. How many get caught represents the parents’ wishes for children, family prosperity, and so on.

Another tradition in Islamic and Amazigh weddings in Morocco is to offer guests and the couple dates and glasses of milk at the door when they arrive. Milk symbolizes purity of emotion and good intentions, while dates symbolize the sweetness that should flow through a marriage. As part of this custom, the couple feeds each other a date and milk together as the first thing they do upon entering.

Also known as longevity noodles, uncut noodles are long, unbroken strands of noodles served at Chinese and other East Asian wedding banquets. Examples include Chinese e-fu noodles and Korean janchi guksu, or feast noodles. It is customary for both the cook and diner to avoid breaking the noodles in any way: no cutting, snapping, or biting a strand of noodles. The length is symbolic of a long-lasting marriage.

Bánh phu thê, or husband and wife cake, is a Vietnamese pastry made from a translucent tapioca dough that encases mung bean paste and coconut, wrapped in woven coconut or pandan leaves. The square leaf wrapping symbolizes Earth, while the round golden filling represents Heaven. A well-known tale has it that 12th-century King Lý Anh Tông dubbed the cake after trying one made by a woman for her husband, who was leaving for battle.

In Brazil, Bem Casados (translated as “happily married”) are a classic wedding favor. The two halves of the sweet dessert bound together with caramelized milk symbolize the couple’s sweet, enduring relationship. In the 19th century, Bem Casados evolved from Portuguese colonial casadinhos. Two soft, round sponge cakes are bound by doce de leite, a milk caramel. They are rolled in powdered sugar before being given to the wedding guests as they exit.

Traditionally, British wedding cakes were rich fruitcakes filled with alcohol, dried fruit, candied citrus peel, and imported spices. This type of cake was standard across Britain and the Commonwealth for generations. Expensive imported fruit and spices were a symbol of the family’s prosperity, and the alcohol kept the top tier good for years without spoiling. Many newlyweds saved a portion of it for their first child’s christening, passing down the history of their union to future generations.

A clear chicken soup with pork meatballs, egg custard, asparagus tips, and noodles, Hochzeitsuppe (literally “wedding soup”), was served at the beginning of German wedding feasts. The elaborate garnishes required hours of preparation by female members of the family, which showed that the hosts were devoted and hospitable. In certain areas, the couple shared a single bowl and spoon to symbolize that their home was now one.

In countries across Southeast Asia, you’ll find banana leaf-wrapped sticky rice cakes on menus at wedding receptions: the Filipino kalamay and suman, the Vietnamese xôi and the Malaysian pulut. Short-grain rice’s own adhesive properties make it a natural fit for the concept of marriage. By serving sticky rice, the idea in Filipino culture is that married life will hold tight even when things get tough, and that prosperity will cling to the couple as tightly as the rice itself.

A crunchy Greek treat made from sesame seeds held together by honey, pasteli has been eaten since the days of Homer, the ancient Greek poet. You can find it in Greece’s wedding celebrations. Pasteli has been prepared in this manner in Cyprus and Rhodes, where it’s often served on beds of lemon leaves. The amount of sesame seeds used symbolized fertility and a good future, and the honey symbolized sweetness and warmth of the marriage to come.

The traditional end to an ancient Roman wedding banquet was mustaceum, a sweet, spiced cake baked atop a bed of bay leaves. Around 160 BCE, the Roman statesman Cato the Elder preserved the recipe, which consisted of wheat flour, grape must, anise, cumin, and lard, as a symbol of agricultural plenty and festive generosity. The recipe has no connection to the couple’s marital commitments, which were made earlier in front of an altar and marked off by a simple, unsweetened loaf of bread. This was just dessert.

This content was created with the help of AI.