The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey From Samarkand to new York
by: Claudio Roden
November 26, 1996, Knopf Publishing
688 pages
Review by: E Broderick
The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden is one of the most comprehensive collections of Jewish food from across various Jewish cultures – Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi etc. Yet I confess, I’ve never tried a single recipe from it. For me, Claudia Roden is not just a provider of recipes, although many are detailed in the book, she is a curator of memories. Specifically, the cultural memory of a people in diaspora who preserve their traditions and history through food. I use this book to learn about how the various lands we have lived on and the persecutions we have suffered inform our tables. Not necessarily to cook.
The Book of Jewish food is divided into two sections, one covering Ashkenazi food and one covering everything that isn’t Ashkenazi. That is obviously a hard thing to put a label on and also a much longer chapter. There are really evocative photos and postcards spread throughout, and in addition to thorough introductory chapters, side bars give information on specific foods and customs.
Rodin herself acknowledges that it is impossible to try every recipe, to list all the variations, and so instead she chooses to focus on the ones that taste best to her. She most definitely likes sour cream more than I do (I did not previously think this was possible) and many of these dishes are prepared differently than I make them, but I didn’t mind. The point for me was the history. As Roden notes, while our communities spread out over recent years they’ve also mingled more, and current recipes have begun to cross cultures. I put tamarind paste in my holoptches. In the past that would have been a sacrilege but I think Roden would approve.
The Ashkenazi chapter did occasionally feel slightly reductive to me, but I think this is because Roden’s background, and palette, were formed on an Egyptian and Syrian background. I can forgive her for not realizing how actually vastly different certain noodle kugels are. Plus, for all I know a person with a Sephardic background may have similar feelings about the chapters relevant to their cooking. It’s extraordinarily difficult to condense this many years of history into a recipe. Either way, I found myself engaged in the reading, even quoting fun facts to whoever happened to be around me at the time.
If I did try one of the recipes included it would probably be teigelach because I’ve always wanted to try those but nobody I know makes them. I imagine things might take a little practice. Roden’s recipes are somewhat sparse – leaving room for those around you to tell you how they in particular did such and such back in the old country. So whatever version I make will be my version, reflective of this new country. Maybe in a few hundred years someone will write a book about it. Let’s hope it is just as thoughtful and thorough as the Book of Jewish Food.