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Paper short abstract

The Taste of Home explores how Latvian food traditions are preserved and adapted in the diaspora. Through participatory research and community contributions, the project shows how culinary heritage sustains identity, memory, and belonging across borders.

Paper long abstract

Culinary practices are central to processes of cultural continuity and transformation in migration. For Latvians abroad, foods such as rye bread, sauerkraut, and pīrāgi embody powerful sensory links to home, often persisting as symbolic anchors of identity even after language use and other cultural practices have diminished. In 2025, the “Latvians Abroad – Museum and Research Centre” initiated The Taste of Home, a participatory research project documenting how Latvian food traditions are preserved, adapted, and transmitted across generations and geographies.

Through monthly thematic discussions and community contributions of recipes, photographs, and oral histories, the project collects material on the lived experiences of diaspora communities. Preliminary findings suggest that culinary heritage is not only retained but creatively reinterpreted in response to migration, resource availability, and intercultural exchange.

This paper situates The Taste of Home within broader debates on diaspora heritage, memory, and museum practice, arguing that food constitutes a critical site of identity work and an effective medium for co-creating cultural knowledge with dispersed communities.