The meaning of circles on your plate

Have you ever noticed how many foods are round? Why do so many cultures serve circular foods? Across cultures, with French galette des rois, Chinese tang yuan, or Eastern European blinis, circular foods appear repeatedly. Perhaps it's just how they are made, the tins or pans they are cooked in, or maybe there's another reason for these circles. 

Food anthropologist and founder and director of Ethos Food Research, Florencia Alvarado, explains that this pattern is not accidental. In many societies, she says, “life and time are represented in circles.” Alvarado points to a classic anthropological idea: “There is an obligation to receive, the obligation to give, and the obligation to repay, which is a circular logic that sustains social life.” Food, she adds, is therefore never only practical: “Food is a total social fact.”

 One of the most visible ways this symbolism appears is through sharing. Circular foods are designed to be shared. Heather Sharkey, a professor in the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that the shape itself makes this possible: “Roundness makes something divisible for sharing.”  

Daryna Korostii, the president of Goldsmiths University’s Ukrainian Society, describes how communal eating remains central to many traditional dishes. Speaking about borscht (a sour soup traditionally made with beetroot, vegetables and meat stock), she explains, “You can eat it alone, but it’s not that nice – it’s nicer with someone.” With borscht, people often eat pampushky, which are small, round garlic bread rolls.

The same is true for circular, small pancakes – blinis – eaten during Maslenitsa, a spring festival. Fedor Mikhailov, the UCL Russian society welfare officer, says “people eat blinis for many occasions,” but mostly during this week of Maslenitsa, where a straw statue is burned at the end, symbolising the transition from winter into spring.

In Egypt, circular biscuits called kahk (made with flour and sugar) serve a social and religious purpose. They are eaten during the first of two Eids after Ramadan. Shahd Soltan, an Egyptian university student living in London, describes how baking them becomes a community ritual. “All the neighbours start knocking on people’s doors and cook in each other’s kitchens… they put their trays in the oven together and start talking. It’s a bonding moment.”

Beyond sharing, circular foods are also associated with deeper historical and spiritual meanings. Alvarado notes that many cultures historically understood existence itself as cyclical: “In many ancient cultures, life and time are represented in circles. Everything repeats.” For Sharkey, circular foods can also “be a sign of perfection, recalling divinity… symbolising the world in its wholeness and holiness.”

In France, circular foods carry layers of historical and religious meaning. Agathe Grandval, a long-time collector of 341 fèves (small porcelain figurines hidden inside the traditional galette des rois cake, made with almond cream), explains that the dessert comes from two distinct traditions that later merged. “On one side, there was the Christian celebration of Epiphany,” she says, “but in Roman times there was also a festival called Saturnalia, when people shared a cake with a bean hidden inside.” During Saturnalia, she explains, the person who found the bean (often a slave) could become “king for a day” and ask for whatever they wanted. In the Middle Ages, another custom emerged: the winner had to buy drinks for everyone, which led to people swallowing the bean to avoid paying. “That’s why it was replaced with a porcelain figurine, so no one could cheat,” she says. Today, the tradition is secular but still centred on sharing. “It has become more about conviviality,” Grandval explains. “People don’t always know the meaning anymore, but the idea of sharing remains.”

The circular shape itself also carries symbols: “The galette is round like a crown,” she says, adding that whoever receives the piece of galette with the fève must wear a cardboard crown and “pick their king or queen.”

In some religious traditions, however, circular foods still hold explicit theological symbolism. In Orthodox Christianity, the link between circular food and religion is clear. Serafim Williams, a committee member of the Liverpool Orthodox Christian Society, describes the prosphora, which is a small circular loaf used in the Eucharist (a central Christian sacrament and act of worship commemorating the Last Supper). It is stamped with the phrase “ICXC NIKA”, meaning “Jesus Christ conquers”, and is offered during the Divine Liturgy, the central act of worship. For Orthodox believers, the circular shape carries deep theological meaning. “The circle represents the eternal nature of God. He who is without beginning, the Alpha and Omega,” Williams explains. During the preparation of the Eucharist, particles are removed from the same round loaf to represent Christ, the Mother of God, the saints, and the living and the departed. “All come from one bread, showing that heaven and earth are united in and around Christ.” For Williams, the symbolism is deeply personal. He recalls his first time serving in church after being ordained as a reader: “I thought I had done everything wrong. But at the end, the bishop placed the largest, most ornate prosphora I’d ever seen in my hands and congratulated me on my perseverance.” He ends by saying that without this circular bread, “we couldn’t have Christ living in us.”

Circular foods can also symbolise unity and reunion in everyday cultural traditions. In Chinese culture, circular foods can represent social harmony. Rena Wang, a student originally from Ningbo in China, explains the meaning behind tang yuan, sweet glutinous rice balls eaten during the Lunar New Year: “From September to February, people are separated by work or school, and the Chinese New Year is a symbol of reunion for families.” 

Interestingly, Wang mentioned the similarity of this word, which sounds like ‘tuan yuan’, which means gathering as a family. In Ningbo, tang yuan is usually made with red beans or osmanthus and eggs. Living abroad, she says, the dessert makes her homesick, because people might not have these ingredients in their local culture, and therefore relate. Additionally, she recalls many memories linked to this food, which she grew up eating in Ningbo. 

Daryna also explains that she now feels a stronger desire to cook traditional dishes to stay connected to home. Through the Ukrainian Society, she helped organise a bake sale in which students made approximately 90 mlyntsi (pancakes typically filled with jam, cherries, or cottage cheese).

Food also often reminds one of personal memories. For Shahd Soltan, kahk is inseparable from a childhood moment with her grandmother: “She gave me a small gift of money, while I was eating kahk, and it just felt special.” Similarly, Mikhailov associates blini with his great-grandmother, saying, “She used to make them almost every time we visited her.” This is what anthropologists call food’s emotional function. As Alvarado explains, “Food represents love and care.” 

Despite recurring symbolic themes, Alvarado warns that one should not oversimplify the meaning of circles. In general, “We create food to represent our social rules and cultural meanings.” In other words, circular foods are not inherently meaningful, but they become meaningful through the ways people use them to share, to celebrate and to remember. As Sharkey puts it simply, “Roundness in food often makes good sense.”