47 Fun Facts About Peruvian Food

What do Andean farmers use to turn potatoes into chuño, which keeps for years?

Night frosts freeze the potatoes, the morning sun thaws them and farmers squeeze out the water; what is left is light, keeps for years and once fed Inca armies on the march.

Which Lima chef founded the La Mar cebichería chain?

Gastón Acurio trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris before opening Astrid & Gastón in Lima; with Ferran Adrià he made a documentary on cooking as social change that had its US premiere at the United Nations.

Which Peruvian dish of thin-sliced raw fish in a spicy sauce is ceviche's lighter cousin?

Tiradito is sliced thin like sashimi rather than cubed, sauced only at the last moment and usually made without raw onion, so it tastes milder than ceviche.

What is lomo saltado?

A beef stir-fry with fries is the legacy of Peru's Chinese cooks: strips of beef are tossed over fierce heat with onion and tomato, then served with fries and rice.

Tacu-tacu, introduced by enslaved Africans, is a fried mix of what?

Rice and beans left over from earlier meals are fried and pressed into a cake, then served with breaded steak, a fried egg and salsa criolla.

Which pre-Columbian culture is thought to have marinated seafood in fermented banana passionfruit juice?

The Moche, who flourished on Peru's north coast almost 2,000 years ago, are said to have used the juice of the tumbo fruit; limes and onions came only with the Spanish.

What is the Peruvian name for the marinade left over from ceviche?

Leche de tigre, 'tiger's milk', is the juice left in the bowl once the fish is eaten; cevicherías serve it by the glass, and Peruvians swear by it the morning after a heavy night.

Which ingredient, used in Mexican and Ecuadorian ceviche, is left out of the classic Peruvian version?

Tomatoes are diced into Mexican ceviche and go into the sauce of Ecuador's; Peru leaves them out and balances the lime's sharpness with slices of sweet potato on the side.

Chupe de camarones is a thick soup made from what?

Freshwater shrimp from the rivers, not the sea, go into the pot: the soup's home city lies far inland, and cooks there prize the river catch for its size.

What is the Peruvian term for Chinese-Peruvian fusion food?

Chifa is traced to a Cantonese call to the table meaning 'eat rice', which Limeños are said to have picked up in the Chinese-run eating houses of the 1930s.

What is arroz chaufa?

Peruvian fried rice grew out of Lima's Chinese restaurants: cold cooked rice is tossed in a hot wok with egg, spring onion and whatever meat or seafood is to hand.

Anticuchos are grilled skewers traditionally made from what?

Beef heart has been the classic cut since colonial times; women known as anticucheras grill the skewers on the street in clouds of smoke and serve them with boiled potatoes.

Papa a la huancaína takes its name from which city?

Huancayo, high in the central Andes, gave the dish its name, yet it is eaten all over Peru: boiled yellow potatoes under a spicy, creamy cheese sauce with egg and black olives.

Pollo a la brasa and its rotisserie were devised in the 1950s by two immigrants of what nationality?

Swiss immigrant Roger Schuler, faced with a large catering order, asked his countryman Franz Ulrich to build an oven that could turn many chickens over the coals at once.

Causa is a cold dish built on what base?

Mashed yellow potato is seasoned with lime and chilli and layered cold with tuna, chicken or avocado; the name is most often traced to kawsay, a Quechua word for sustenance.

Which dish is a stew of pork, chicken, dried potatoes, peanuts and red chillies?

Carapulcra goes back to the Andes before the Spanish: its name comes from an Aymara phrase for a stew cooked with hot stones, and its base is potatoes dried to keep.

Ají de gallina is chicken in a creamy sauce coloured by which chilli?

Ají amarillo is thought to have turned a sweet Spanish dish savoury: historians trace the stew to a cousin of blancmange, a thick cream of chicken breast, rice, almonds and sugar.

Cau cau is a stew based on what?

Tripe is cut small and stewed with diced potatoes, onion, garlic and chilli; cooks often simmer it first with a little milk to tame its strong taste.

Seco de cabrito, a kid goat stew, is flavoured above all with which herb?

Cilantro is its main flavour: the kid goat is steeped in chicha, then stewed with the herb and garlic, and cooks make the same seco with lamb, chicken or beef.

Cebiche de conchas negras from Piura and Tumbes uses which shellfish?

Black clams are plentiful along the border with Ecuador, and northerners prize them as much for their reputation as an aphrodisiac as for their taste.

Pachamanca is cooked how?

Underground on heated stones is just what the name says: in Quechua pacha is earth and manka is pot, so the covered pit is the cooking vessel for the meat, tubers and vegetables.

What animal is cuy?

Guinea pig was first tamed in the Andes for its meat, and it runs so deep in Peruvian life that colonial paintings of the Last Supper in Cusco show one on the table.

The English word "jerky" derives from which Andean word for cured meat?

Charqui, from the Quechua ch'arki, is meat salted and dried in the mountain air; Spanish speakers carried the word north, where American English had turned it into jerky by 1850.

Which Andean tuber is shredded and stewed with dried meat in a classic highland dish?

Olluco gives its name to the stew, olluquito: the tubers are cut into fine strips and simmered with the meat, staying firm rather than turning floury.

Rocoto relleno is a stuffed-chilli speciality of which city?

Arequipa's cooks seed the fiery rocotos and boil them to tame the heat, then stuff them with chopped meat, cheese and onion and bake them under a slice of cheese.

Tocosh is a traditional Quechua food made from what?

Fermented potato pulp comes from potatoes buried in a straw-lined pit with stream water running over them for a month or more; Peruvians call the result the penicillin of the Andes.

Paiche, a staple of Amazonian cooking, is what?

One of the largest freshwater fish on Earth, the paiche grows to three metres and has to surface to breathe air, which is how Amazon fishermen have long harpooned it.

Which herb gives the sauce in ocopa its vivid green colour?

Huacatay is no ordinary kitchen herb but a tall, strongly scented Andean marigold; its leaves are blended with chilli and toasted peanuts and poured over potatoes and boiled eggs.

NASA studied quinoa in the 1990s as a space crop for its balance of what?

Amino acids come in a balance rare among grains, with the lysine most cereals lack, and quinoa is high in protein too; NASA's researchers weighed it as a crop for long space missions.

Tarwi, the Andean lupin, is often likened to which crop for its protein-rich beans?

Soy is the usual comparison: tarwi seeds are rich in both protein and oil, but they must first be soaked to wash out the bitterness that kept them little known outside the Andes.

Which French chemist persuaded his countrymen that the Andean potato was fit to eat?

Antoine-Augustin Parmentier lived on potatoes as a prisoner of the Prussians and came home healthy; he spent the rest of his life promoting the tuber, serving all-potato dinners to high society.

What is the classic filling of Peruvian alfajores?

Manjar blanco is Peru's name for milk and sugar cooked long and slowly until thick and caramel-brown; it took the place of the honey and almonds in the Spanish original.

Turrón de Doña Pepa is traditionally eaten during which October procession?

Señor de los Milagros, Lima's Lord of Miracles, is said to have cured the paralysed arms of Josefa Marmanillo, a former slave, who created the anise-scented sweet in thanks.

Which Andean fruit, with floury orange flesh, is the darling of Peruvian ice creams and milkshakes?

Lúcuma's floury, earthy-sweet pulp is made for blending, and its place in Peruvian life is old: potters on the ancient coast modelled the fruit in clay long before the Spanish arrived.

Mazamorra morada gets its colour from which ingredient?

Purple maize is boiled with spices into a dark liquid that Peruvians drink cold; thicken that same liquid with starch, add dried fruit and sugar, and it sets into this pudding.

Picarones are ring-shaped fritters made from what?

Squash or pumpkin dough, with sweet potato mashed in, is fried in rings and bathed in chancaca syrup; the fritters began in colonial Lima as a local answer to Spanish buñuelos.

King Kong, a layered cookie-and-milk-candy sweet, belongs to which region's culture?

Lambayeque named the sweet in the 1930s, when the film King Kong was showing in town and locals likened the outsized slab to the giant ape.

Which poet is said to have named suspiro a la limeña?

José Gálvez is said to have found the pudding as soft and sweet as the sigh of a woman from Lima; under its port meringue lies a rich custard of caramelised milk.

Which rival agreed in 1999 to buy half of the company behind Inca Kola?

Coca-Cola had found the yellow soda as popular in Peru as its own cola, so it bought half of its leading rival there and took on selling it abroad.

Which hot herbal drink of toasted barley and flaxseed do Peruvians buy from street carts?

Emoliente began in colonial times as a medicinal tisane; in Lima it grew so popular that an emolientero's cart stood on practically every street corner.

Pisco, Peru's national drink, is what type of spirit?

A grape brandy, pisco is distilled from freshly fermented grape must rather than from the leftover skins; it has been made on Peru's southern coast since colonial times.

Which ingredient gives a pisco sour its foam?

Egg white, blended with the pisco, lime juice and syrup, whips into the foam that carries a drop of bitters; most accounts trace the drink to the Morris Bar in Lima, early last century.

Which beer, born in 1863, does its brewer bill as the first produced in Peru?

Pilsen Callao pairs two places: Pilsen is the Czech city that gave pilsner lager its name, and Callao is the port beside Lima where Federico Bindels opened the brewery.

Chicha de jora is a fermented drink made from what?

Corn is first sprouted to make jora, the malt that gives the drink its name, then boiled and left to ferment for days in big earthenware vats.

Which Amazonian vine is brewed in Peru as a medicinal tea and sold abroad as a herbal supplement?

Cat's claw, uña de gato in Spanish, is a woody rainforest vine; Amazon peoples have used it against illness for centuries, though clinical trials have yet to show that it works.

Which cold ocean flow makes Peru's coast so rich in fish?

The Humboldt Current pulls cold, nutrient-rich water up from the deep, feeding plankton and vast shoals of anchovies; the seabirds that eat them left the guano Peru once sold as fertiliser.

In Catalonia a butifarra is a sausage; in Lima it is a crusty roll filled with what?

Country ham, or jamón del país, is a leg of pork rubbed with garlic, cumin and achiote, then cooked; it is sliced into the roll with a tangy onion relish.