Adobo is ‘paksiw,’ and other terms in Filipino food history

The great historian and anthropologist of Filipino food, Doreen Fernandez, wrote many classics in her quest to promote the idea of Filipino food as a cuisine, rather than the simple food of a backwater country in Southeast Asia. In a sense, her work was in line with the work of the indigenization movements elsewhere in Philippine academia. Her influence on the transformation in Filipinos’ eyes of their own cuisine into something worthy of reverence cannot be overstated.

However, her discussion of adobo in the hugely important book “Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture,” betrays a common belief that seems to be based on language, and something that she avoided in all other cases. In fact, while the book itself is largely about native cuisine, the book takes great care in one of its chapters to show how certain foods and food terms from Mexico came to be in the Philippines. Which makes the entry on adobo rather curious to me.

Fernandez says that adobo seems to have been indigenized from Mexican adobo, but her only real rationale is the word “adobo” itself, after noting how divergent the actual foods are: one is pickled with spices, lemon juice, and condiments, while the other is pickled with vinegar and spices. There does not seem to be a clear relationship in a culinary sense. She also notes that the American food historian Raymond Sokolov thinks the term “adobo” was applied to a native Filipino cooking style by Spanish colonizers.

But we already know that preserving food in “suka” is common throughout the Philippines, for example with “kinilaw.” Kinilaw was actually indigenized by Mexicans as ceviche, when Filipinos were brought as enslaved shipbuilders to Mexico. Vinegar is a staple of food preparation throughout Southeast Asia, supporting the idea that adobo is indigenous.

But aside from this we can also consult the linguist Carl Rubino, an expert on Philippine languages who has done extensive dictionaries for Tagalog, Ilokano, and an entire academic study of Tausug grammar. It is in Rubino’s work on Tagalog that we can piece together some interesting history. Rubino gathers a definition of “paksiw” as: “n. fish or meat cooked in vinegar, garlic, and salt.” This simple, anthropologically gathered definition explains a lot about precolonial food and the origins of adobo. Paksiw is a class of food in modern Tagalog. Kinilaw, for example, would also be a type of paksiw in this sense. Of course there are well-known dishes such as paksiw na isda, even today.

Many sources, including Fernandez, say that (assuming Sokolov is correct) the indigenous word for adobo is lost and only the imported word from Mexico is used today. However, the answer to this modern question about adobo’s origins or naming history has actually been in everyone’s faces for many decades, if not at least a century. It is that adobo is paksiw, and that paksiw is the original native term for adobo. This makes a lot of sense once someone considers a dish such as adobong puti. Adobong puti is often considered the original, precolonial adobo, since “toyo” seems to have been added as a variation by Chinese migrants during the colonial period. Adobong puti is literally the textbook definition of what paksiw is in its bare bones form.

Some implications from this: Adobo is indigenous with an indigenous name that is still in usage, such as in paksiw na isda or paksiw na baboy. Also, as Fernandez discussed in her overarching argument for that section of her book, indigenization and term swapping was common in the Philippines. Menudo has very little in common with Mexican menudo (i.e., the “original,” which is a spicy soup made with tripe).

In my opinion, menudo as a word could be similar to adobo, since there is a precolonial word still used today that also describes what menudo is: “kare.” Kare comes from the Tamil word, “kari,” which is also where the English word “curry” originates.

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It also reflects the relationship between “lugaw,” “goto,” and “arroz caldo,” and “champurrado.” From the names of arroz caldo and champurrado, one would think they are Spanish or Mexican dishes, but they are both ultimately variations of lugaw or goto, which are Tagalog terms for rice porridge. “Inihaw” and “lechon” have a similar relationship.

My conclusion is that the influence of Spain on Filipino cuisine is actually not particularly exceptional when compared to other Asian countries. They seem to be mere names added by the Spaniards, rather than actual food additions. Filipino foods and flavors are certainly “Asian” in character.

Sterling V. Herrera Shaw received his master’s degree in Philippine Studies from the University of the Philippines Diliman, where his focus is on sociocultural and development studies.