Miguel-Ángel Motis Dolader
Among the most obvious distinguishing traits of medieval Jewish communities in the West was their continuing adherence to biblically inspired culinary and dietary tradition and practices. Despite their essential culinary otherness, the Jews were not impervious to neighboring Mediterranean cultures, though the core of their distinctive culinary taboos and imperatives remained intact.
This essay traces the main currents of Hebrew dietary practices, with particular emphasis on Spain, the epicenter of High Jewish culture through 1492. Food, its interdicts and exhortations, informed the daily life and special holy days and festivals of the Jews, revealing much about the cultural uniqueness of this embattled minority as a religious, even racial, island within a sea of Christian political, economic, and doctrinal power.
The partaking of food is, in large measure, a socializing practice, not a mere act of subsistence. So, in such a dispersed and endangered species as the Hebrews of the Diaspora, food codicils, even for the conversos (Jews in Spain converted to Christianity) became a means, at times clandestine, of strengthening ties of solidarity.
Religious Festivals of the Jews
The Sabbath, commemorating the Lord’s day of rest after creating man in His own likeness, is one of Judaism’s most important institutions. Its observance is codified in the Pentateuch. To symbolize physically the impending spiritual renewal, special dishes and tablecloths were used and attention paid to rituals illuminating the home. The lighting of candles, a task performed exclusively by women, could not take place until a white cloth had been placed on the table. Once lit, with a pinch of salt applied to the wick to keep the flame burning longer, the candles were allowed to burn down until they burned out.
The Mishnah lists thirty-nine activities prohibited on the Sabbath, including cooking food, butchering and salting animals, kneading flour, and lighting a fire. Strict observance would prevent preparation of the Sabbath meal, hence the de apparatio, the preparation of food the evening before. The typical dish for this holy day was hamín, or Jewish stew, also called adafina (“something hot”). The basic ingredients, hard-boiled eggs, chickpeas, and meat, were often accompanied by cabbage and other pungent vegetables, hence the need to mask the special odors emanating from the hamín by burning wool or heads of garlic at the door of the house; a grilled sardine or two also proved helpful at times in this thankless task.
ROSH HASHANAH In the Hebrew lunar calendar, Rosh Hashanah is observed on the first day of the new moon in the seventh month, Tishri (hence usually in September). Known as the Feast of the Horn, the sounding of the shofar (ram’s horn) within the precincts of the synagogue symbolizes the descent of Moses from Mount Sinai, where he received the Tables of the Law. Rosh Hashanah marked the beginning of the new year.
For Rosh Hashanah Jews ate apples covered with honey (to symbolize a “sweet year”), accompanied by comestible symbols of fertility: dates, pomegranates, nougat, leeks, and other vegetables.
YOM KIPPUR This highest of holy days, the culmination of the ten penitential days that began with Rosh Hashanah, was observed with rigorous fasting as a sign of expiation and reconciliation. Known under various names as Feast of the Great Pardon, Fast of the Good Day, Greater Fast, Fast of Pardon, the Good Day, and the Great Smoked Kipper, Yom Kippur commemorates the Jewish people’s identification with God and their calling as His chosen people. It usually coincides with September or early October (the tenth day of Tishri), the time of the grape harvest.
Houses were decorated with tovajas (new tablecloths) and additional illumination. Among the numerous prohibitions, regulated by the books of Leviticus and Numbers, was the ingestion of food.
The celebration began with supper the evening before, which had to take place before dusk and after careful religious preparation. Foods had to be easy to digest (hence poultry was preferred, mainly hens and chickens), and alcoholic drinks and spices such as saffron or pepper were not served because of their caloric content and their tendency to cause dryness of mouth. During this meal bread was usually spread with honey to symbolize the wish to begin a happy year.
The supper that broke the fast, after stars appeared in the firmament, tended to be succulent. Meats figured as a central dish, though poultry was prominent, and more rarely fish (a casserole of tuna or perhaps hake with eggplant). Grapes, figs, almonds, and eggs were also served.
SUKKOTH Sukkoth began five days after Yom Kippur and was popularly known as Passover of the Huts (Sukkah) or Feast of Tabernacles. This celebration, which took the name of the huts made with boughs or foliage like those that, for forty years, the Israelites built in the desert after the flight from Egypt, commemorated Yahweh’s protection of his people. Thanksgiving was offered with the fruits of the earth because it was the period of harvest.
The streets and plazas of the Jewish quarters formed a very adequate backdrop for the huts’ construction; if this was not possible, some families chose the dining room or interior courtyards of their houses, setting up large tables with food and sweetmeats for seven days. All visitors were invited to partake of them. As at Passover, they ate cakes, nougats, dried fruits, and drank white or red kosher wine.
An Inquisition prosecutor described the ceremony as follows: “The said accused person was accustomed to observing and solemnizing the Passover, popularly known as ‘the huts,’ in which he caused to be made huts of fennel and other green things in his house, within which he ate in the Jewish fashion and his household with him, and if he could not make the said huts secretly, he went to the houses of relatives and friends of his who were converts and sometimes to the Jewish quarter, to make the said huts with them…to observe the said feast he ate on new plates and platters, in the Jewish fashion.”
PURIM Purim, or the feast of Queen Esther, was celebrated in the month of Adar, and its genesis went back to the freedom that King Ahasuerus granted to the Jewish people against the wishes of his minister Haman. The reading of the Megillah gave rise to several local traditions. In the Sephardic communities of Turkey, Greece, and Morocco, an effigy of Haman, made of wood or stuffed with rags and straw, was dragged through the streets and then hanged or burned. Anthropologists have seen certain resemblances with Judas Iscariot or other scapegoat icons.
The fast was broken, as usual, at dusk; a very common dish was one made of chicken and hard-boiled eggs with parsley. Wine was consumed in large quantities, sometimes to the point of intoxication. Games of chance were played and masks—like those of Carnival—were worn. It was the customary moment to exchange gifts of pastry or sweets (miskloaj manot).
PASSOVER (PESSACH) The feast, which began on the fifteenth day of Nisan—usually in March or April—and lasted a week, celebrated liberation from the Pharaoh’s yoke and the ten plagues that fell upon Egypt.
Typical foods for this occasion were “unleavened” or “thin” bread—made without yeast—and macaroons, toasted chickpeas, and various pastries. Abstention from leavened bread commemorated those loaves that the Children of Israel carried on their shoulders when they crossed the Red Sea. Dietary laws banned possession of yeast in homes, even in tiny amounts.
Preparation of the house was carried out by women, and it consisted of arranging the platters, plates, and new dishes the night before as well as placing lamps for their illumination.
While unleavened bread and celery were eaten as a sign of sadness, lettuces were a symbol of joy. Hence, after Passover came to an end, the Jews gave their families and friends—especially converts—unleavened bread, pastries, “tipsy” cakes, and celery, receiving in return cheese, eggs, sweets, lettuces, yeast, radishes, green onions, almonds, and other foods.
The Passover banquet began on the first night with a supper composed of a salad of celery and lettuce with vinegar, or, in Spain, vegetable dishes like the one customarily eaten in the Kingdom of Aragon, composed of chickpeas, bread with sauces, eggs, and honey.
Life’s Journey: Ars viviendi atque ars moriendi
For the Jewish people, life’s major rites of passage were invariably accompanied and consecrated by communal dietary traditions and restrictions.
BIRTH INTO LIFE AND SOCIETY: SWEETS One of the most joyous events was the birth of a child, particularly if the child was a male, which ensured perpetuation of the race. In Spain, the new mother was regaled with little gifts (albricias), such as capons, money, kerchiefs, rings, pattens, swaddling cloths, sashes, cradles, nursing bottles, and diapers. Special foods were prepared. For example, in Catalonia “they eat wafers and doughnuts, and rice with oil and honey, and then they welcome the child.” In the Jewish quarters of the Near East, women who had just given birth were served “new mother’s toast” or fritters.
The ceremonial of hadas was a party (besorah, or “glad tidings”) in honor of newborns on the seventh night after birth; for males, it preceded circumcision. Young women and relatives gathered in the new mother’s room to partake of celebratory cakes, sweetmeats, and slices of bread with honey. The infant was placed in a basin, and gold, silver, and various grains were tossed in. While the baby was being washed, chants were sung to frighten off the evil eye and attract the “good star.” Often (especially in Castile) the baby’s palms, armpits, and soles of the feet were anointed with myrrh. Male circumcision took place on the eighth day, consecrating the newborn to the God of Israel. It also marked the child’s incorporation into the community. It was performed in the synagogue or at home and was the occasion for a meal.
THE NUPTIAL BANQUET: FISH AND FERTILITY Jews were endogamic, tending to marry among blood relatives whenever the family’s circle of friends permitted it. Otherwise, it was necessary to call on the good offices of marriage brokers (shadkan). Once each member of the couple had been accepted by the respective parents, the dowry and trousseau were agreed upon and the marriage agreement signed some three or four years before the wedding. Arrangements were completed before the girl came of age, at around thirteen or fourteen. Her husband was usually about eighteen, although in second marriages the difference in age was more obvious, generally in favor of the masculine partner.
The festivities began in the bride’s house with the almosama (as it was known among the Sephardic Jews of Salonika), which took place on the Saturday afternoon preceding the week of the wedding. On this happy occasion, in which the feminine presence predominated, drinks and sweets were distributed.
The future husband had the task of finding a place to celebrate the religious ceremony (kiddushim), hiring the musicians, and arranging for the banquet. Among the lower classes, it was customary for the bridegroom’s family to send small loaves of sesame bread to their relatives and to the bride’s family prior to the wedding. The purpose of this gift, known as the gorban (sacrifice), was to free the groom from the evil eye.
The nuptial banquet took place at nightfall with friends and relatives and those who had presented gifts, even though large quantities of sweets such as doughnuts and cakes had already been served. Music and dancing seemed indissolubly linked to eating and drinking. After partaking of the meal, the bride and groom retired to their bedroom, where, before retiring, they received the paternal blessing, exhorting the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to give them happiness, peace, wealth, and many descendants. A custom still preserved among the Sephardim is to have the mothers of the bride and groom place pastries and candies under the pillow of the bridal bed to “sweeten” the spouses’ mouths.
After the wedding, the week of nuptial rejoicings began. The husband offered the stream of visitors doughnuts and tarales—large bracelet-shaped biscuits made of flour, oil, and sugar that had been prepared days before by the bridegroom’s mother. Some communities celebrated the “day of the fish” as a conclusion to this week of festivities. The husband went to the market very early in the morning to buy a fine string of fish. This was placed on a tray that was set on the floor. The bride stepped over it three times in the presence of her family and neighbors, who wished her the same degree of fertility as the fish. Before the tray was carried away, those present put money on it for the cook who had been in charge of providing dishes for the couple and the wedding party.
It was the bride’s filial duty to maintain her ties with her mother’s house. According to an ancient ritual, the mother placed sugar or a sweetmeat on her daughter’s tongue before the bride crossed the threshold.
FUNERALS: THE EGG, SYMBOL OF ETERNITY After a death in the family, the water jars and pitchers in the house were emptied in the belief that, if this was not done, the soul would bathe in this water during the first seven days or the Angel of Death would clean his sword there. In some areas, a glass of water was placed on the windowsill on the ninth day and on the Sabbath and during the mourning period so the soul could take refreshment. In any case, water jars turned upside down in the street were an external sign of grief.
Mourning, strictly observed by the nearest relatives, was reflected in food. During the first week, the diet was very restricted, consisting of fish, hard-boiled eggs, greens, fruit, olives, and vegetables (cohuerzo). Among orthodox Jews, only milk and eggs were consumed. Meat was strictly prohibited. Meals were served on the floor, with or without tablecloths, or on low stools. As for beverages, only water was drunk, and it had to be brought from the fountain or from other houses at least seven blocks away.
The Food Pantry
There were extremely detailed rules about foods that were prohibited and those suitable for consumption.
MEAT AND FISH In a Europe that was essentially carnivorous, where meat was eaten daily and abundantly and wine was consumed like water, Jews had to deal with intrinsic problems that were sometimes hard to solve in view of the strictness of their dietary rules. Indeed, there was a wide range of prohibitions about animal food. Certain flesh was considered abominable because of “impure” genetic origins; however, poultry and such animal parts as blood and abdominal fats could, by rabbinical law, be bought and sold despite impurities of origin. Among invertebrates there were no exceptions, with all reptiles excluded. The classification of mammals was rigid, according to their zoological taxonomy: only cud-chewing animals with cloven hooves could be eaten.
There were also laws relating to certain animal parts that could not be eaten. In the case of poultry and mammals, the blood had to be drained before it was eaten (Deuteronomy stated that “blood is life” because it contained the soul). Nor was consumption permitted of the suet and lard (heleb) of sheep, cattle, and other bovines, not to mention wild birds and game or the tendon of the thigh (guid hanashé). These prohibitions were associated with sacrificial laws: because these animal parts were destined for the altar, they could not be eaten.
Such extensive restrictions on the consumption of meat meant that sources of energy and proteins had to be derived from fresh or salt fish, even on the Sabbath. Fish could be eaten if it had scales and two fins, according to a biological classification into creatures with bones and with cartilage.
CEREALS AND VEGETABLES Cereals and vegetables formed a very important part of the diet: bread was one of the fundamental foods, and vegetables and greens, often cooked together in the form of soups, were widely eaten, as were fruits.
On medieval Jewish tables the cereals most often eaten were wheat, barley, oats, and rye, consumed not only in the form of bread but also as noodles. In times of scarcity bread compensated for the lack of meat in the diet. The importance of bread can be seen in the fact that, for ordinary people with limited economic resources, the daily ration in the early Middle Ages was about four pounds. As a point of comparison, an average family of converts sent about a bushel and a half to the Jewish quarter to provide unleavened bread baked for Passover.
The kind of bread depended on the type of flour used. The bread was mostly wheaten, and two kinds were distinguished for ritual reasons: unleavened bread (which some converts used quite assiduously and which was often employed as liturgical bread) and bread made with yeast.
At the end of the fifteenth century, the expression “fine bread” was a common way of referring to ordinary bread as opposed to the unleavened kind used at Passover. According to Hebrew tradition, there were three kinds of unleavened bread: torta, which was round; laganum, a very light bread of ancient origin; and crustulum, a crusty bread that was very thin and baked on a plate or grill. Thin loaves with a hole in the center were called pan cenceño (flatbread), described as “a thin loaf, white, like paper, all painted and decorated with a thimble.”
As a caloric supplement to cereals there were dry legumes, and it was not uncommon to use them in making bread. Those consumed most often by Mediterranean Jews were chickpeas, lentils, broad beans, and white beans. These legumes played an important role in providing seasonal variety and in the preparation of vegetable stews.
Eating fruits and vegetables was, of course, essential for maintaining a balanced diet. Among kitchen-garden vegetables we can name several kinds of cabbage, chard, spinach, eggplant, and celery. Fruits varied with the seasons and local production.
Dried fruits were very nutritious, which gave them a certain importance. The following description of a dish made in Zaragoza, Spain, to celebrate the end of Yom Kippur gives some idea of the typical ways in which dried fruits were used: “Last night they boiled two dozen eggs in water until they were hard, then they chopped up part of them and then chopped the others all together and mixed them with honey, almonds, raisins, pinenuts, dried chestnuts, and sauces that had been ground up, with oil and other things, and caused all this to boil in a kettle for two or three hours.”
BEVERAGES Among beverages, in Spain at least, wine held undisputed first place. The wines that were drunk reflected regional differences, depending on raw materials and cultural biotypes. Consumption of wine was two or three times that of bread, for wine was drunk at any hour of the day, while bread was reserved for mealtimes.
The responsa of Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet tell us how impossible it was to preserve the kosher quality of Jewish wine. In a letter written around 1396, Rabbi Amram Efratí ben Meru’am of the Oran community responded that neither the converted Jews of Mallorca nor those of other regions could properly oversee their vineyards and that, furthermore, they could not avoid contact with Christians.
Problems also arose in the importation of wine because of the rights of tax collectors. In Játiva the Jewish governing body forbade the importing of wine unless the right to place it in vats had been guaranteed. The community agreed to drink no other wine, treating it as impure, unless it had been introduced with the consent of the rabbinical court or the members of the council.
Jewish wine, both red and white, was made, we are told, “so as to be good and perfect and better aged” than the other kinds of wine bought and sold in the marketplace; hence it was insisted upon by clergy and chaplains.
We have proof of the serious problems faced by the Jewish communities when the harvest was scarce and wine made in other districts had to be imported, or, on the other hand, when the harvest was excessive. Occasionally conflicts arose between communities. Thus, when in 1288 the community of Monzón passed a law banning the drinking and buying of wine made by the Jews of Barbastro, the decree had to be repealed by the king.
The grape harvest was an annual event that involved that part of the Jewish population who made wine either in their own homes or in houses that possessed a wine vat. It must be remembered that after the grapes were picked, the Jews had to trample them and prepare the wine, put it in vats, and store it in locked wine cellars—all without any Gentile participation in its preparation.
Water’s lack of nutritive value in comparison with wine relegated it to a secondary place, at least during meals. Jewish homes usually got their water from streams or from artesian wells. Wells were closed to Jews at times of strict regulation and during periods of plague and social upheaval. Jews were even accused of poisoning wells. It was not uncommon for Jews to have cisterns of their own, as in Trapani, Termini, or Corleane. Other more privileged Jewish communities, Palma de Mallorca, for example, had a carefully maintained water system.
Dairy products occupied an important place in the diet. Milk and cheese, by Talmudic law, had to have their own receptacles. To judge from comparative studies, dairy products were not stored for any length of time.
There were some very famous and tasty specialties among the Sephardim, such as the pepitada prepared in Smyrna. This was a type of orgeat made with the flesh of melon seeds, resulting in a milky color and texture. Its refreshing character made it very appropriate in the heat of summer.
The Kitchen
The kitchen was situated on the second floor, on the same level as the rooms used for sleeping, and above the area occupied by the “palace” or public rooms (those on either side of the porch where the entrance to the house was located). The kitchen had a separate door and a ceiling in which beams and strips of wood alternated, supported on pillars, while the floor was whitewashed. Its central feature was the hearth or chimney, around which the furniture was placed. A long bench ran along two or three of its sides. It served as a dining room if the house did not have a special room for this purpose.
Utensils are very important in explaining culinary processes and dietary habits. Many utensils were not used exclusively for food preparation. Numerous inventories, which form the basis for documentary investigation of domestic culture, do not mention even the simplest of the instruments necessary for preparing, cooking, and serving dishes.
Preparing food for cooking began with washing the raw materials. In Sicily, where every household had large basins, there were numerous ceramic, wooden, or metal plates (bremi, laviczi) while in Provence bowls or other types of dishes (grazali, gravede) were used. The absence of sinks indicates that dishes were washed in earthenware or copper basins.
Kitchen knives are mentioned from time to time, and the mortar seems to be a basic utensil. Most utensils were made of wood, horn, or stone. Indispensable pieces of kitchen equipment included the grill and the frying pan, which were used for cooking directly over the fire and for broiling, along with the cooking pot, employed for cooking over an indirect flame.
The Universe of the Table
The table is one of the ultimate expressions of ritual practice, and the settings required careful preparation for holy day special occasions and ancestral celebrations.
As for table service, inventories mention the dishes, the cutlery, and the dining furniture. Cloths and napkins (both collective and individual) existed in abundance, along with perhaps one or several longerie (long tablecloths measuring more than two meters), which may have served for two or more diners. In the dining rooms of Aragonese Jews we find numerous tablecloths and napkins that were referred to as “drapes” or “mouth cloths.”
As for utensils, it is surprising not to find wooden spoons in the inventories, although silver spoons were very common in merchants’ houses. The knife was for personal use, and each person brought one to the table; only very large knives are inventoried: “cultelli grandi di taglari in tabula.”
Dinnerware was composed of collective dishes such as wooden or bronze trays (tafaria) and deep platters of undecorated wood (virnicatu). The ceramic plate (lembu) appeared in the fifteenth century and proved to be very durable. Plates both large and small (platus, platellus) came even later, as did objects made of tin, wood, and clay, a reflection of the growing prosperity of the Jewish urban upper class.
Provençal practice was based on three elements: the bowl (paraxis or stanhada), the cutting knife (talhador), and the pannikin or deep platter (grazale or grazelectus). The knife was used by two persons, each of whom had an individual platter and sauceboat.
Clay or tin vessels, or bowls or glass receptacles (gottu), probably conical in shape, were used for drinking. The presence of bottles with long narrow necks (botelhus) suggests that wine or water may have been drunk directly from the bottle. There were many jars and pitchers, usually made of materials other than glass; clay and tin pitchers appeared after the end of the thirteenth century.
Butcher Shops and the Oven
In the Jewish quarters, besides services of public or social interest, there were minimal facilities relating to culture, teaching, social services, religious activities, or hygiene. In general, the urban space was divided up in three ways: private residential space, civic/social and religious space, and commercial space. Although it would be anachronistic to expect the medieval Jews to possess a well-defined territorial model and an organized structure in the modern sense of the term, they did have, within the area dedicated to commercial transactions, their own means of producing and distributing food.
Some groups owned a supply center called “the shop of the Jewry,” rented to either a Christian or a Jew under a one-year, renewable lease that began on the first day of Lent and ended during Carnival, dates corresponding to the fiscal year. One of the contracts signed by the Jewish community of Epila contained the following stipulations: “You must have the said shop well supplied with sardines and with hake, candles, oil, and cheese which you must sell at the same prices as the Christians’ shopkeeper is obliged to offer during the present year, and must observe all the conditions that the said shopkeeper is obliged to observe.”
Among the independent establishments that guaranteed supplies of basic products were the butcher shop (macellum), which, after the synagogue, was one of the most typical buildings of public use. In principle, the attitude of the Christians was tolerant, allowing the Jews to purchase meat.
The clients of butcher shops were not exclusively Hebrews, for converts and Christians also patronized them. In this respect, the trial records of the Inquisition are very eloquent, showing that butcher shops produced more than their basic needs and even supplied the entire city with mutton, beef, veal, and kid. It appears that Jewish butcher shops sold higher-quality meat, especially during Lent, and that conditions were more hygienic, the shops better supplied, and the prices more competitive. Thus the authorities’ insistence that prices be the same as those in the Christian market proved futile.
Sometimes Jews did not possess their own butcher shop and there was a common one, shared with Christians and Mudejars, the Muslims living under Christian rule. As an example of discrimination, in 1312 the authorities of Elche banned the town’s Jews from slaughtering in Christian shops, citing the fear that the meat would be contaminated, an attitude similar to that maintained by the Mudejars. Similarly, after 1403, the Jews of Valencia were also banned from slaughtering meat in Christian butcher shops. At the end of the century, the Jewish quarter disappeared after a series of assaults, aimed at repressing the small Hebrew colony that remained in the city.
Medieval canon law was unanimous in condemning Christian consumption of meat coming from Jewish butcher shops, for it implied an offense against religion. In Castile some local statutes limited the sale of meat by Jews at certain periods of the year; Sepúlveda banned it for three days before and after Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost, except for kid. The statute of Salamanca fined any Christian butcher who sold Jewish meat and forced him to burn the merchandise; and if someone slaughtered meat for Jews during Carnival or Lent, municipal authorities threatened to shave his head.
In fact, meat was the chief source of conflict with the majority. As we indicated above, meat had to fulfill a set of standards; the so-called terefah could not be eaten because the pleura were swollen. Nor could the animal that had blood in its body, as a dying animal usually did. The problem arose, in this case, when, after an animal’s throat had been cut, it had defects that made it unsuitable for consumption, or when, through an error by the rabbi, the meat was impregnated with blood. Then it was sold to Gentiles at lower prices, violating the economic preconditions for market prices.
Jewish communities usually had privileges that assured them their own oven, where they baked the unleavened bread (matzoh) consumed during Passover. Royal or seignorial authorities tended to limit private ownership of grist mills, for it meant they could not impose the corresponding taxes and fees. Permission for these establishments was accomplished by issuing the appropriate privilege.
When they had to share this infrastructure, either through public or private ownership, and in order to guarantee ritual correctness, the rabbis stated that it was sufficient for a Jew to participate symbolically by tossing a log or branch on the fire from time to time or at regular intervals, even if the baking was done by a Christian.
Kneading the dough, an operation usually performed at home once a week, required its own implements. Of the inventories that have been preserved from the Kingdom of Aragon at the time of the expulsion, the “kneading place” is referred to as a separate location only twice, both times in the Jewish quarter of Calatayud. But it is true that a third of Jewish homes had “kneading basins” or troughs, usually in the porches, the wine cellars, or the kitchen.
The Domestic Scene
The kitchen is essentially a feminine area where men play a secondary and passive role confined to butchering animals or buying supplies in the market; they have no part in kneading bread and degreasing or bleeding meat, which is women’s work. A family’s social standing was closely related to domestic service, and it was common to hire women—the great majority of them unmarried—from the Jewish quarter or nearby towns. Evidently a certain degree of specialization existed, for sources distinguish several different categories: housekeepers, nurses, cooks, and maids. More generically, the term moza was used to designate the woman who took part in household duties like general cleaning or laundry and who also helped in the kitchen.
The wars, violence, and pogroms that occurred in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries shook the foundations of society, promoting uncertainty and leading to the reassembling of Jewish families around compact nuclear groups. The terrible epidemic of 1347–48 spread the ravages of bubonic and pneumonic plague, which did not disappear from the West until the fifteenth century. At the outset of the fourteenth century, the working population was reduced by two-thirds or half, suspending any expansionist tendencies and frustrating the great promise of the thirteenth century.
In Mediterranean Judaism, always patrilineal, the lineage was identified with the bayt—the father’s house—and with a hereditary surname. Children were not automatically emancipated with marriage, and their dependent condition could last until a greatly delayed majority, certainly until their father’s death. Inbreeding was almost an official rule and was praised in literature as well as folk wisdom, which invited a man to take a wife on the same street where he lived.
In this context, the table was not a mere piece of furniture where food was displayed and eaten; it was the axis around which the family life revolved. Despite the importance of the domestic family unit, living in the same house and around the same hearth, composed of the husband and wife and their unemancipated children plus domestic servants and apprentices, there was an extended family made up of the children who had left home and, up to a point, the sons- and daughters-in-law as well as other assorted relatives.
The inheritance system formed a strong link among these patriarchal, extended families in a society whose growth rate did not allow the children to live outside the economic unit until marriage (dowry) and the death or decline into old age of the parents (inheritance) made them administrators of a productive unit. This explains the importance of in-laws and grandparents, since the new conjugal society formed after marriage was enfolded into the family of one of the marriage partners.
Specific features of the art of cooking occurred only when religious components converged at certain festive times. The Jews’ daily menu hardly differed from that of their Christian neighbors, except in some methods of preparation and in certain raw materials of animal origin.
FOOD PREPARATION The cleaning and preparation of meat after butchering was extremely important because it was linked to rabbinical precepts. According to dietary law, no Jew could eat blood, the source of life. Before being eaten, meat and poultry had to be submerged in a solution of salt water (melihah) to expel the blood. This requirement, which was unnecessary when meat was broiled, did not apply to fish.
Another preliminary step consisted of quartering or otherwise cutting up the animal, which involved utilization of choppers, cleavers, and knives. Strokes were administered at the joints; shallow cuts were made, never complete ones. Use of a knife generally meant that the rest of the operation had to be performed by hand, while smaller animals, especially poultry, were skinned and broken apart manually. The bones were usually cut during the meal, as is shown by scratches made by the blade of a knife to separate the flesh from the bone.
The pieces of meat were cut into little chunks, according to domestic needs and to make them suitable for being cooked in pots. Whatever the kind of animal, the method of carving was apparently unimportant and simply meant that boiled meat was eaten. There was no real selection of pieces; everything was consumed.
GENETIC KEYS OF THE GASTRONOMIC TRADITION: RECIPES Like cooking elsewhere in medieval western Europe, Jewish cooking reflects a taste for spices, a preference for acidic flavors (like those of vinegar, sour wine, lemon or orange juice, green apples, etc.), and a lack of differentiation between salty and sweet dishes.
Butter was employed infrequently. Throughout western Europe, oil was used on days of abstinence and animal fats on other days. Church regulations standardized culinary practice in this respect, although this uniformity did not survive the Reformation. As for the Jews, they used olive oil exclusively, recovering the Graeco-Latin tradition, and this resulted in fried dishes of better quality.
We rarely know in detail all the ingredients of dishes or the method of preparation; however, thanks to their survival in tradition, we can make a partial reconstruction. Indeed, Jewish recipe collections, especially those preserved by Sephardic Jews of our day, recreate the most outstanding dishes, which involve a grammar of taste dating back many centuries.
Culinary elements do not conform to present-day standards; for example, celery and lettuce could be served at any point in the meal. Nor was there the same distribution of dishes into first course, main course, and desserts, so we have to think in different terms while remaining mindful of the fundamental dishes, based on vegetables, meats, and so forth.
Stews constituted a special chapter, owing to their prominence both on feast days and ordinary days. Hamín was omnipresent and was an essential element in the diet owing to its high protein value. Its customary ingredients were legumes (primarily chickpeas) and seasonal green vegetables (like cabbage and leeks), hard-boiled eggs, meat (goose, beef, mutton, or ox), onions, and different kinds of spices (like saffron, pepper, and salt). Its composition was as varied as the ethnographic geography of medieval Jewry, the products of the land, and the season of the year when it was consumed, though it maintained its fundamental character. Thus, in Catalonia hamín consisted of spinach, chickpeas, mutton, salt meat, and eggs; in Toledo, of chickpeas, beans with meat, coriander, caraway, cumin, pepper, and onion. In Murcia it was more austere: a pot of chickpeas without meat but with abundant oil; in the Canary Islands goat’s meat was used, cooked with oil and onions in abundance and accompanied by little cakes made of unsalted barley flour.
Preparation was not complicated, for all the ingredients were placed in a pot and cooked together until the dish was finished. Eggs were “haminized” by placing them in earthenware pots and boiling them in the shell with oil and ashes, which gave them their typical dark color.
Other dishes that merited the description of “Jewish foods” or “Jewish stews” were fricassees, meat pies, and meatballs. Meatballs were just that—balls of veal or beef and spices browned in olive oil. The following descriptions indicate that meatballs could be prepared in two ways—either fried and then seasoned with sauce or simmered in broth: “She minced the meat and made little balls of the said meat with sauces and fried them in oil, and they ate”; “she took the said meatballs and stuffed them into mutton tripes and tied them with string and put them to cook in the broth.” As for meat pies, there were both sweet and salted varieties. They were eaten either as dessert or a main course and were extremely popular. They were cooked in a vessel known as a padilla, a large pot described as “taller than a handbreadth.”
The kinds of salads served depended on the season. At Passover a salad of celery, lettuce, and vinegar was indispensable. Another popular vegetable on medieval Jewish tables was eggplant, cooked as an accompaniment to stew or stuffed with meat and spices.
The commonest fried dishes were those made with squash, spinach, or leeks, although they could also be made with pumpkin or onions. In all these dishes, except those with pumpkin, breadcrumbs were added for thickening. The fried dishes based on green vegetables were served as a first course on Pessach, when unleavened bread replaced the breadcrumbs. Vegetables were used profusely as an accompaniment to meat and fish.
There are few references to dishes containing fish, which were fried or broiled. There was considerably greater consumption of mutton, veal, lamb, and poultry. Meat was usually roasted or braised, with oil and spices. Chickens were roasted; the bird was covered with oil after it was cleaned and roasted whole, or it was stewed with sauces.
Sauces, an essential complement of meat and vegetables, were seasoned with aromatic herbs or prepared with oil and the spices available in city markets. The preferred sauce to accompany boiled fish was made with eggs, flour, lemon, and the broth from cooking the fish.
Eggs were prepared either hard-boiled or in the form of omelettes; they could also be eaten seasoned and combined with meat, greens, or sauces. One Aragonese convert explained that she “broke eggs into an iron frying pan, and after they were cooked tossed in some ground meat fried with onions, and then beat more eggs and added them and took another frying pan with coals in it and covered them.”
Among the spices most frequently cited are garlic, saffron, pepper, and, less often, coriander, not to mention the seasoning in the oil as well as salt.
Of the ample and varied desserts and sweets, we may mention nougat, rye-flour biscuits, quince paste with honey, salted almonds, cheese crullers, and sweets made with hempseed.
According to Jaume Riera, the daily diet of a typical middle-class Jewish family during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries consisted of bread, cabbage, salad, olive oil, and wine.
In general, people ate a great deal and drank in large quantities. The daily intake of food may seem quantitatively excessive, but it was of inferior quality because of the relative lack of glucose, proteins, fats, and certain vitamins. In contrast, the meals of the European nobility, while theoretically better tasting and composed of foods rich in calories, were notably lacking in certain vitamins, especially Vitamin A. This resulted in low resistance to infections and a consequent incidence of bladder and kidney ailments. In this regard medieval Jewish cuisine might be said to be more balanced than Christian cuisine.
Sacrificial and Symbolic Ceremonies
The slaughtering of animals was a complicated matter in rabbinical Judaism, requiring particular skills in cutting the animal’s throat (shehitah) as well as exploration of the animal once it was opened (bediqah, or ritual inspection). These acts were performed by a special official, who received the name of shohet and bodeq.
The shohet, or butcher, was hired by the community; he was paid a fixed salary and could have no other employment. By law no other professional was allowed to perform the sacrifices. It sometimes happened that the concession of a monopoly on meat was stipulated in the clauses of the contract, as in Borja and Barbastro, but only when there was a guarantee of regular supplies to the citizens.
The butcher had to cut the arteries and trachea with a single stroke of the knife, and this was followed by a very careful inspection to make sure that the animal suffered from no illness. If it had died from natural causes or if it had been killed by a wild animal, its flesh was prohibited (nevelah).
To acquire sufficient skill, the butcher had to complete elementary rabbinical studies and be accredited by a certificate of expertise (kabbalah), some texts of which have survived to the present day. From the thirteenth century onward, his professional development, owing to its religious nature, was supervised by a rabbi—the rabbi of butchering—in matters such as bleeding the animal, cutting the internal organs, boning, castration, and so forth, as well as dietetic laws in general.
Another ritual concerned the extraction of the challah, a portion of dough tossed into the oven before baking. This ceremonial act represented the tithe owed to the Lord. This practice, very widespread among converts, persists today as a cult element of the collective unconscious in many parts of Mediterranean Europe.
THE CADENCE OF TIME AND THE CLOCK OF LIFE Distribution of the principal meals throughout the day occurred in relation to the vital cycle. The existence of a morning meal (yantar) seems proven, and another at twilight, the supper. Both meals were referred to with the verbs disner or souper, and the other meals between those two were indicated by the verb boir.
In addition, people probably ate on arising at daybreak, but the fact that not all members of the family were present explains why there was no specific term to indicate the meal. Documents reflect only the practice of a meal structured around the table, with the presence of a minimum number of diners.
The main meal took place at midday, after the day’s work was done. Some Inquisition records give more details. Hence one witness describes a meal that took place between twelve and one o’clock in the afternoon in a convert’s household in Calatayud: everyone was sitting at the table and eating rye bread, the bowls with the last of the hamín were being removed from the table, and the diners were preparing to eat some capons or roast fowl.
It was a common practice that, when a successful business transaction had taken place, if one of the participants went to the home of a third person who was at table, he would be invited to join in the meal.
Supper was eaten at the end of the day to coincide with the last rays of twilight. The Hebrews were influenced by the Sumerians and Babylonians in their measurement of time, so their calendar was governed by the phases of the moon. Fasts were broken after seeing the moon in the firmament.
SACRALIZATION OF THE PROFANE: ABLUTIONS AND BLESSINGS Presence around the table had its own liturgy, for the table was not simply a place for the mere act of eating. The table was also a small public space where different participants, linked to one another by kinship or friendship, came together.
Purification and ablution before pronouncing the blessing (berahah) reveal Islamic influence. To preside over the preliminary blessing as well as the one at the end of the meal, which every pious Jew pronounced each time he participated in a pleasurable activity, a minimal quorum (mezumah) was needed. This was similar, to some degree, to the minyan. The documents make a distinction between the “blessing in the Jewish fashion” and that pronounced by Christians; the Jewish blessing required a particular setting, in which a proper garment, the tallit, was worn.
In the blessing spoken before the meal, bread and wine are the sacred elements—adopted by the Christians as a sacramentalization of the Last Supper, representing transubstantiation of the body and blood of Christ: “He performed the blessing at the table by taking a cup of wine in his hand, and said certain words over the wine in Hebrew, which this witness did not understand, and then he took a sip of wine and gave all the others sips of it, and then he took a loaf of bread and cut it in seven pieces, but not completely cut through, saying seven words in Hebrew which this witness did not understand, and then he took that bread which he had blessed and cut, and took a mouthful and gave mouthfuls to all the others, and said that it was blessed bread, and then they had supper, and afterward, when they had supped, he spoke the benediction and they stood up.”
Another no less beautiful blessing began with the prayer “Let us bless Him, for we have eaten of what is His, and by His favor we live,” to which the other diners replied, “Blessed be He, for we have eaten of what is His, and by His favor we live.” After this formula, the sacral circuit was closed and was followed, at least on festive days, by animated after-dinner conversation, which could last for hours, sometimes in the Romance tongue and sometimes in Hebrew.
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