torta

The tradition & historical record

Torta is a culinary term that can, depending on the cuisine, refer to cakes, pies, flatbreads, sandwiches, or omelettes. Usually, it refers to: ¹

a cake or pie in most of Europe, most of Latin America, and southern Philippines; a flatbread in Spain; a type of sandwich in Mexico; a type of omelette in northern Tagalog-speaking areas of the Philippines. ¹

The word comes from Late Latin torta, an abbreviation of torta panis ("twisted bread"). Other related terms are English tart and Welsh torth ("loaf"). In US English, it is generally understood to be a loanword of Spanish torta (Spanish: [ˈtoɾta]). ¹

In some countries of Latin America, the word torta, in a very common usage, is for sweet cakes (tortes), such as a wedding or birthday cake. This meaning is also present in other European languages. For example, the Italian torta, German Torte or French tarte. In Mexico, "torta" refers to a sandwich and the sweet cake is normally referred to as pastel, which is also used in other parts of Latin America with this meaning. Huevo en torta (not to be confused with torta de huevo) is a typical pastry from Sobrarbe, Aragon, Spain. ¹

In the southern Philippines, in the Visayas and Mindanao islands, torta is generally used to refer to small cakes. It usually refers to mamón or torta mamón, a native porous sponge cake delicacy (traditionally made with lard and palm wine) that resembles a large cupcake with butter, sugar, and/or cheese on top, traditionally served with sikwate (a thick, hot drink made of ground roasted cacao seeds) for afternoon snack or merienda. ¹

In Hungarian, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Swedish, Italian, Macedonian and Bulgarian, it is a word for cake, typically made with layered sponge and cream, chocolate or fruit filling. In Portugal, it designates specifically a Swiss roll. ¹

Sweet tarts in Arabic are called تورتَه (transliterated: twrtah) ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Torta”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

torta is umbrella term for cakes, pies, flatbreads, sandwiches and omelettes, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 3 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²