Sigmund Freud once said, “Jews and food; food and Jews—that’s all there is.”
OK, not exactly. But after putting together this unfathomably rich collection—the salty, the sweet, the dense, the light, the beautiful, and the undeniably brown, stretching back over thousands of years of civilization and from nearly every region of the planet—we believe the great neurologist and father of psychoanalysis would agree with us: It is quite possible to view all of human history as unfolding between these two poles.
This is not a list of today’s most popular Jewish foods, or someone’s idea of the tastiest, or even the most enduring. In fact, a number of the dishes on this list are no longer cooked or served with any regularity—at least not in the home kitchens or communal spaces where they originated—and the edibility of many others is . . . well, let’s say it’s up for debate.
What’s here, instead, are the foods that contain the deepest Jewish significance—the ones that, through the history of our people (however you date it), have been most profoundly inspired by the rhythms of the Jewish calendar and the contingencies of the Jewish experience. That many of them are also delicious is obvious, and Darwinian: It’s how they’ve survived as long as they have.
Most of the items on this list will be immediately recognizable: No one was going to leave out chicken soup or babka or shakshuka or . . . matzo. But there are also dishes here that, for many, won’t be familiar at all: unhatched chicken eggs and jellied calves’ feet, as well as recipes from around the globe and ones nearly lost to history. These are foods that were generated by a people that became many peoples; a tribe at once bound together by a shared tradition and separated by radically different host countries, cultures, politics, and influences. We found inspiration in this tension between what is shared and what is not.
When a version of this list appeared on Tablet’s website in early 2018, we were excited and moved by the overwhelming response. In this book, we’ve incorporated the energy of the conversation that followed, as well as taken on the one challenge posed to us by more readers than we could count: adding recipes. (It was a stressful undertaking: You try implying there is only one “right” way to make matzo brei.) We’re proud to present this near encyclopedic collection of Jewish foods, with the hope that you’ll not only reminisce about the various items on the list but also feel empowered to weave some new ones into your own traditions.
In addition to Tablet writers and editors, contributors include leading chefs and food writers: Éric Ripert on gefilte fish (“It’s not as bad as it’s made out to be!”); Gail Simmons on full-sour dill pickles (“the single most important food in my life”); Marcus Samuelsson’s meditation on growing up eating lox in Sweden; Tom Colicchio on whitefish (“the redheaded stepchild of lox”); Melissa Clark on the primacy of the black-and-white cookie in New York City’s robust Jewish cookie scene; and more.
Joan Nathan declares, “No Jewish dish is as comforting or iconic as the matzo ball”; Michael Solomonov calls traditional American noodle kugel “a shitty representation of Jewish food”; Dan Barber inhabits the perspective of the apple, from its exile from the Garden of Eden to our Rosh Hashanah tables; Yotam Ottolenghi bemoans the Hanukkah jelly doughnut, filled with a “gummy red jam that hasn’t seen a single berry in its life”; and Food52’s Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs lament that WASPs like them grow up eating pot roast instead of brisket.
Also featured in these pages are writers and artists and thinkers. Maira Kalman calls herring the ultimate Jewish fish, Joshua Malina composes an ode to gribenes (“the kosher version of pork rinds”), and Action Bronson pays tribute to the Jewish affinity for Chinese food. Daphne Merkin praises Sweet’N Low, Shalom Auslander is traumatized by cholent, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer explains why pomegranates are sexy.
We aren’t all food experts or cooks, and we aren’t even all people who love the dishes we’re writing about. It’s an unexpected collection of contributors, and sometimes the people are even more interesting than the subjects themselves. By which we mean: The list is a lot like Jewish life.
With that, there’s only one thing left to say: Enjoy.
Alana Newhouse
Founder and editor in chief, Tablet