All living things in nature must shelter and feed in order to survive. Like all living things, human beings have struggled to obtain food, waged wars, and sought large and fertile lands where they can obtain more abundant crops and graze their herds. Over time, unlike other living things, human beings have developed their own nutritional methods and various techniques. After discovering fire, he learned to cook and began to produce and consume the food he obtained in various forms: raw, cooked, salted and dried. Thus, human beings, who discovered how to consume foods obtained from both animals and plants in different ways, created a nutritional and culinary culture with the lifestyle they shaped depending on the climate and geographies in which they lived. It is thought that this process, in which the cultural transformation of the necessity of nutrition is witnessed in parallel with the progress of time, is important for Altai communities in terms of providing data on common identity, like other cultural elements. In Turkish culture, ceremonies not only ensure the unity of the society, but also contribute greatly to the formation of common memory in many aspects, functionally in terms of performing traditional practices in the sociocultural context. In the study, ceremonial meals will be discussed as one of the practices that make this contribution. What kind of a course did the culinary culture, which differed according to the climate and geography, follow in Anatolia after the migrations from Turkestan to Anatolia, and how the similarities and differences were kept alive in the ritual dimension with the meals prepared in the ceremonies performed during transition periods (birth, marriage, death) in the Altai communities. By examining the position of ceremonial meals in the historical course of cultural unity, it was evaluated.

Culinary culture, ceremonial foods, transition periods, ritual, cultural memory.