Many Jewish foods are beloved in American culture. Everyone eats bagels, and the delicatessen is a ubiquitous institution from Manhattan to Los Angeles. Jewish American Food Culture offers readers an in-depth look at both well-known and unfamiliar Jewish dishes and the practices and culture of a diverse group of Americans. This is the source to consult about what “parve” on packaging means, the symbolism of particular foods essential to holiday celebrations, what keeping kosher entails, how meals and food rituals are approached differently depending on ways of practicing Judaism and the land of one’s ancestors, and much more. Jonathan Deutsch and Rachel D. Saks first provide a historical overview of the culture and symbolism of Jewish cuisine before explaining the main foods and ingredients of Jewish American food. Chapters on cooking practices, holiday celebrations, eating out, and diet and health complete the overview. Twenty-three recipes, a chronology, a glossary, a resource guide, and a selected bibliography make this an essential one-stop resource for every library.

Magnetic duo and stars of the Brooklyn food scene, Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz revitalize Old World food traditions for today's modern kitchens in their debut cookbook.

Tablet’s list of the 100 most Jewish foods is not about the most popular Jewish foods, or the tastiest, or even the most enduring. It’s a list of the most significant foods culturally and historically to the Jewish people, explored deeply with essays, recipes, stories, and context. Some of the dishes are no longer cooked at home, and some are not even dishes in the traditional sense (store-bought cereal and Stella D’oro cookies, for example). The entire list is up for debate, which is what makes this book so much fun. Many of the foods are delicious (such as babka and shakshuka). Others make us wonder how they’ve survived as long as they have (such as unhatched chicken eggs and jellied calves’ feet). As expected, many Jewish (and now universal) favorites like matzo balls, pickles, cheesecake, blintzes, and chopped liver make the list. The recipes are global and represent all contingencies of the Jewish experience. Contributors include Ruth Reichl, Éric Ripert, Joan Nathan, Michael Solomonov, Dan Barber, Gail Simmons, Yotam Ottolenghi, Tom Colicchio, Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, Maira Kalman, Action Bronson, Daphne Merkin, Shalom Auslander, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and Phil Rosenthal, among many others. Presented in a gifty package, The 100 Most Jewish Foods is the perfect book to dip into, quote from, cook from, and launch a spirited debate.

Traces three centuries of Jewish-American culinary history, with more than three hundred kosher recipes, a historical overview, and an explanation of dietary laws.

A comprehensive, A-to-Z guide to Jewish foods, recipes, and culinary traditions—from an author who is both a rabbi and a James Beard Award winner. Food is more than just sustenance. It’s a reflection of a community’s history, culture, and values. From India to Israel to the United States and everywhere in between, Jewish food appears in many different forms and variations, but all related in its fulfillment of kosher laws, Jewish rituals, and holiday traditions. The Encyclopedia of Jewish Food explores unique cultural culinary traditions as well as those that unite the Jewish people. Alphabetical entries—from Afikomen and Almond to Yom Kippur and Za’atar—cover ingredients, dishes, holidays, and food traditions that are significant to Jewish communities around the world. This easy-to-use reference includes more than 650 entries, 300 recipes, plus illustrations and maps throughout. Both a comprehensive resource and fascinating reading, this book is perfect for Jewish cooks, food enthusiasts, historians, and anyone interested in Jewish history or food. It also serves as a treasure trove of trivia—for example, the Pilgrims learned how to make baked beans from Sephardim in Holland. From the author of such celebrated cookbooks as Olive Trees and Honey, the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food is an informative, eye-opening, and delicious guide to the culinary heart and soul of the Jewish people.

“Twitty makes the case that Blackness and Judaism coexist in beautiful harmony, and this is manifested in the foods and traditions from both cultures that Black Jews incorporate into their daily lives…Twitty wishes to start a conversation where people celebrate their differences and embrace commonalities. By drawing on personal narratives, his own and others’, and exploring different cultures, Twitty’s book offers important insight into the journeys of Black Jews.”—Library Journal “A fascinating, cross-cultural smorgasbord grounded in the deep emotional role food plays in two influential American communities.”—Booklist The James Beard award-winning author of the acclaimed The Cooking Gene explores the cultural crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine and issues of memory, identity, and food. In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them. The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty’s own passage to and within Judaism. As intimate, thought-provoking, and profound as The Cooking Gene, this remarkable book teases the senses as it offers sustenance for the soul. Koshersoul includes 48-50 recipes.

The history of the Jewish people has been a history of migration. Although Jews invariably brought with them their traditional ideas about food during these migrations, just as invariably they engaged with the foods they encountered in their new environments. Their culinary habits changed as a result of both these migrations and the new political and social realities they encountered. The stories in this volume examine the sometimes bewildering kaleidoscope of food experiences generated by new social contacts, trade, political revolutions, wars, and migrations, both voluntary and compelled. This panoramic history of Jewish food highlights its breadth and depth on a global scale from Renaissance Italy to the post-World War II era in Israel, Argentina, and the United States and critically examines the impact of food on Jewish lives and on the complex set of laws, practices, and procedures that constitutes the Jewish dietary system and regulates what can be eaten, when, how, and with whom. Global Jewish Foodways offers a fresh perspective on how historical changes through migration, settlement, and accommodation transformed Jewish food and customs.

What is Jewish cooking in France? In a journey that was a labor of love, Joan Nathan traveled the country to discover the answer and, along the way, unearthed a treasure trove of recipes and the often moving stories behind them. Nathan takes us into kitchens in Paris, Alsace, and the Loire Valley; she visits the bustling Belleville market in Little Tunis in Paris; she breaks bread with Jewish families around the observation of the Sabbath and the celebration of special holidays. All across France, she finds that Jewish cooking is more alive than ever: traditional dishes are honored, yet have acquired a certain French finesse. And completing the circle of influences: following Algerian independence, there has been a huge wave of Jewish immigrants from North Africa, whose stuffed brik and couscous, eggplant dishes and tagines—as well as their hot flavors and Sephardic elegance—have infiltrated contemporary French cooking. All that Joan Nathan has tasted and absorbed is here in this extraordinary book, rich in a history that dates back 2,000 years and alive with the personal stories of Jewish people in France today.

Presents a collection of recipes for authentic Jewish dishes, including appetizers, soups, side dishes, main dishes, Passover dishes, breads, and desserts.

Kosher USA follows the fascinating journey of kosher food through the modern industrial food system. It recounts how iconic products such as Coca-Cola and Jell-O tried to become kosher; the contentious debates among rabbis over the incorporation of modern science into Jewish law; how Manischewitz wine became the first kosher product to win over non-Jewish consumers (principally African Americans); the techniques used by Orthodox rabbinical organizations to embed kosher requirements into food manufacturing; and the difficulties encountered by kosher meat and other kosher foods that fell outside the American culinary consensus. Kosher USA is filled with big personalities, rare archival finds, and surprising influences: the Atlanta rabbi Tobias Geffen, who made Coke kosher; the lay chemist and kosher-certification pioneer Abraham Goldstein; the kosher-meat magnate Harry Kassel; and the animal-rights advocate Temple Grandin, a strong supporter of shechita, or Jewish slaughtering practice. By exploring the complex encounter between ancient religious principles and modern industrial methods, Kosher USA adds a significant chapter to the story of Judaism's interaction with non-Jewish cultures and the history of modern Jewish American life as well as American foodways.