In Italy, lentils are traditionally eaten on New Year’s Eve for good luck.
Italian New Year’s Eve, or La Festa di San Silvestro, commonly features lentils served with pork, especially cotechino sausage or zampone. The meal is associated with prosperity because the small, round lentils resemble coins and suggest accumulating wealth in the coming year.
A traditional belief holds that eating lentils around midnight brings good fortune. In some accounts, diners eat a spoonful with each stroke of the midnight clock, though this practice is not universal and modern celebrations vary widely by family and region.
Cotechino is a richly seasoned pork sausage, while zampone is a similar preparation stuffed into a pig’s trotter. Lentils are also eaten at other times, of course, so the New Year custom is symbolic rather than a special variety of legume. Peas, beans and chickpeas may appear in Italian cooking, but they are not the canonical answer to this tradition.