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Pastramă is a popular delicatessen meat traditionally in Romania made from lamb and also from pork and mutton.

Pastramă was originally created as a way to preserve meat before modern refrigeration. For pastrami, the raw meat is brined, partly dried, seasoned with various herbs and spices, then smoked and steamed. In the beginning, pastramă was a specialty from Wallachia made from young ram's meat.

The word pastramă is etymologically rooted in the Romanian a păstra, which means "to keep" or "to preserve".

Pastramă was introduced by Romans to the city of Caesarea Mazaca in Anatolia, known as pastron.

A wave of Romanian Jewish immigration to the United States in the second half of the 19th century, introduced the Yiddish pastrame, becoming pastrami. The modified "pastrami" spelling likely was introduced to sound related to the Italian salami.

See also

• List of meat dishes
• Pastirma
• Pastrami
• Schwartz's

Notes and references

1. "Definition of pastramă" (in Romanian). DEX on line.
2. "Saveurs roumaines et bulgares". Le Monde (in French). 31 January 2007.
3. "Definition of a pastră" (in Romanian). DEX on line.
4. Irina Petrosian, David Underwood, Armenian food: fact, fiction & folklore, p. 112
5. Popescu, Floriana (2018-11-07). A Paradigm of Comparative Lexicology. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5275-2107-0.
6. Benor, Sarah Bunin (2020). "Chapter 1: Pastrami, Verklempt, and Tshootspa: Non-Jews' Use of Jewish Language in the United States". The American Jewish Year Book. 120: 3–69. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-78706-6_1. ISSN 0065-8987. JSTOR 48742390.
7. Harry G. Levine, "Pastrami Land, the Jewish Deli in New York City", Contexts, Summer 2007 Archived 2009-02-05 at the Wayback Machine, p. 68

• Romanian delicatessen
• Uncooked meat dishes