Culinary culture differs depending on the history that constitutes the social structure, the geographical location, climate, nature, war, migration, religious beliefs, customs and traditions. In this culture, special occasion meals and ceremonial dishes are the days when certain rituals are made, in which important transition periods are made in the life of the society. While certain ceremonies are being held these days, all members of the family, which is the most important unit of the society, participate and support this day. There are certain transitional processes in which life has gained meaning throughout history; birth, marriage and death. From this point of view, the aim of the study is to determine the situation in order to determine the transition periods of the food culture, which has an important place in the life of human beings, and the place and characteristics of the gastronomy practices in these periods, through the articles in the Ethnic Foods journal. The data set of the research consists of studies that include the keywords "special occasion meals" and "ceremonial dishes " in order to define the framework of the study more clearly between the years 2014-2021. Among the 240 articles, 63 studies were published on the theme of special days and ceremonial meals between the years mentioned. A bibliometric analysis was carried out in order to determine which subjects the research focused on, the distribution of subjects by years, the concentration on the basis of countries and universities, and which study subjects the researchers focused on. In studies published in the journal Ethnic foods; food rituals, traditional meals, ethnic foods, symbolic meals, special day meals, ceremonial meals are among the most emphasized topics and themes.