A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect the dead, from interment, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour. Customs vary between cultures and religious groups. Funerals have both normative and legal components. Common secular motivations for funerals include mourning the deceased, celebrating their life, and offering support and sympathy to the bereaved; additionally, funerals may have religious aspects that are intended to help the soul of the deceased reach the afterlife, resurrection or reincarnation.
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objects in it, and covering it over. A funeral is a ceremony that accompanies the final disposition. Evidence suggests that some archaic and early modern humans buried their dead. Burial is often seen as indicating respect for the dead. It has been used to prevent the odor of decay, to give family members closure and prevent them from witnessing the decomposition of their loved ones, and in many cultures it has been seen as a necessary step for the deceased to enter the afterlife or to give back to the cycle of life.
A sin-eater is a person who consumes a ritual meal in order to spiritually take on the sins of a deceased person. The food was believed to absorb the sins of a recently dead person, thus absolving the soul of the person.
A morgue or mortuary is a place used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification (ID), removal for autopsy, respectful burial, cremation or other methods of disposal. In modern times, corpses have customarily been refrigerated to delay decomposition.
Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar, or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a moist loaf cake to forms nearly as crisp as a ginger snap.
A death mask is a likeness of a person's face after their death, usually made by taking a cast or impression from the corpse. Death masks may be mementos of the dead or be used for creation of portraits.
Flattened rice is a preparation of rice made from raw, toasted, or parboiled rice grains pounded into flat flakes. It is traditional to many rice-cultivating cultures in Southeast Asia and South Asia. It is also known as rice flakes, beaten rice, pounded rice, pressed rice or chipped rice.
Tasso ham is a smoked, spiced, and cured meat, a specialty of south Louisiana cuisine. In this case "ham" is a misnomer since tasso is not made from the hind leg of a hog, but rather the hog's shoulder. This cut is typically fatty, and because the muscle is constantly used by the animal, has a great deal of flavor. The shoulder, which will weigh 7 to 8 pounds, is sliced across the grain into pieces about 3 in thick. These are dredged in a salt cure, which usually includes sodium nitrite and sugar. The meat is left to cure briefly, only three or four hours, then rinsed, rubbed with a spice mixture containing cayenne pepper and garlic, and hot-smoked until cooked through.
A rice cake may be any kind of food item made from rice that has been shaped, condensed, or otherwise combined into a single object. A wide variety of rice cakes exist in many different cultures in which rice is eaten. Common variations include cakes made with rice flour, those made from ground rice, and those made from whole grains of rice compressed together or combined with some other binding substance.
A fishcake is a culinary dish consisting of filleted fish or other seafood minced or ground, mixed with a starchy ingredient, and fried until golden.
Qīngtuán, also written as Tsingtuan, is a green-colored dumpling originating from Jiangnan and common throughout China. It is made of glutinous rice mixed with Chinese mugwort or barley grass. It is usually filled with sweet red or black bean paste. The exact technique for making qingtuan is quite complicated and the grass involved is only edible in the early spring, so it is typically only available around the time of the Qingming Festival (April 4 or 5), with which the rice cake has become associated. Nowadays, qingtuan sold in most convenience stores in China are made of glutinous rice mixed with matcha. Modern versions use a wider variety of fillings, such as rousong or salted egg yolk.
The Ordnance BL 12-pounder 6 cwt was a lighter version of the British 12-pounder 7 cwt gun, used by the Royal Horse Artillery in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Lekach is a honey-sweetened cake made by Jews, especially for the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. Known in Hebrew as ugat dvash, the word lekach is Yiddish. Lekach is one of the symbolically significant foods traditionally eaten by Ashkenazi Jews at Rosh Hashanah in hopes of ensuring a sweet New Year.
Belizean cuisine is an amalgamation of all ethnicities in the nation of Belize and their respectively wide variety of foods. Breakfast often consists of sides of bread, flour tortillas, or fry jacks that are often homemade and eaten with various cheeses. All are often accompanied with refried beans, cheeses, and various forms of eggs, etc. Inclusive is also cereal along with milk, coffee, or tea.
During the Pre-Hispanic period the early Filipinos believed in a concept of life after death. This belief, which stemmed from indigenous ancestral veneration and was strengthened by strong family and community relations within tribes, prompted the Filipinos to create burial customs to honor the dead through prayers and rituals. Due to different cultures from various regions of the Philippines, many different burial practices have emerged. For example, the Manobos buried their dead in trees, the Ifugaos seated the corpse on a chari before it was brought to a cave and buried elsewhere. The most common forms of traditional burials are supine pits, earthenware jars, and log coffins, and have been a topic of interest among Philippine archaeologists since the early 20th century.
Jewish apple cake is a dense cake made with apples which originated in Poland, but is now sold mostly in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Apples are common in Jewish Ashkenazi cooking and are a part of the traditional food served during the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. Jewish apple cake is traditionally made without dairy products, and may, therefore, be eaten with meals containing meat, in accordance with Jewish dietary laws of kashrut, which forbid the mixing of meat and milk products in the same meal. The use of oil instead of butter also makes this cake a popular choice during Hanukkah, when it is traditional to eat fried or oily foods in remembrance of the miracle of the oil.
Binakle is a type of steamed rice cake originating from the Ifugao province of the Philippines. It is made from glutinous rice (diket) that is pounded into a paste, wrapped in banana or rattan leaves, and steamed. Variants may also add sesame seeds or sweet potato. They are popularly eaten on special occasions or as a snack. Uncooked binakle, along with rice wine (baya), are common offerings to the bulul ancestor spirits in Ifugao rituals.
Formerly in Spain, the pan de ánimas, pan de difunto or pan de muerto were breads that were prepared, blessed and offered to deceased loved ones during All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.
