Schmaltz: Jewish Food Past, Present, and Futures
January 16, 2018
Last Tuesday, I was lucky enough to attend a fantastic Jewish food history event at YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. “Schmaltz: Jewish Food Past, Present, and Futures” featured Michael Wex, best-selling author of Born to Kvetch and frequent Poppy and Prune resource Rhapsody in Schmaltz, and Liz Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz, co-founders of the Gefilteria and authors of the awesome cookbook The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods.
The event began with a talk by Michael Wex, focusing on Ashkenazi food culture, his experiences researching and writing Rhapsody in Schmaltz, culinary traditions from his childhood in Alberta, and the recent revival of interest in Eastern European Jewish food—the Gefilteria, devoted to “reimagining Eastern European Jewish cuisine, adapting classic dishes to the values and tastes of a new generation,” being a prime example.
Indeed, Michael Wex attributed the revival of interest in Ashkenazi food primarily to the maturation of a new generation that doesn’t associate any kind of stigma with this culinary tradition, noting that many of his generation were put off by being forced to eat some of its less enticing dishes, like organ meats, growing up. And he emphasized that the current Yiddish food revival seems largely to have passed organ meats by (liver excepted, of course). Wex reported that one of the biggest surprises in researching for Rhapsody in Schmaltz was the abundance of recipes for brain (!) latkes in old Askhenazi cookbooks.
On the subject of old cookbooks, Wex shared that the first Yiddish cookbooks date only as far back as the nineteenth century: previously, Ashkenazi food writing tended to focus solely on religious aspects, like which brachot to say on which foods. Even the early cookbooks that do exist tend to focus on more cosmopolitan fare, on the assumption that knowledge of traditional Jewish foods would be passed from mother to daughter.
As such, in order to do serious research on what kinds of foods were eaten when going far back into the past, it is necessary to consult the Talmud and other religious sources that are difficult to access for those entering the field without a hardcore yeshiva education. Wex posited this as one reason the study of Ashkenazi food has, at least until recently, been limited: people with sufficient interest in the subject don’t necessarily have the requisite skills, and vice versa.
Wex’s talk was followed by a live cooking demo by Alpern and Yoskowitz, during which they rendered schmaltz and prepared chopped liver—right on the stage of the Center for Jewish History’s auditorium. While they cooked, Wex shared some interesting anecdotes relating to the day’s menu. One interesting tidbit I picked up is that gribenes (crispy chicken skin) used to be sold as a snack at Yiddish theaters, like popcorn is at movie theaters today.
Wex explained that fried foods actually became popular at Eastern European Hanukkah celebrations due to the timing of the holiday coinciding with the annual goose slaughter, when large quantities of goose schmaltz became available. The mythology around olive oil, according to Wex, developed retroactively to justify the tradition. Coincidentally, Wex also noted that goose schmaltz is the ne plus ultra of animal cooking fats, followed by duck schmaltz, and, in a distant third place, the more commonly known chicken schmaltz, inferior in both body and flavor.
Wex also delved into the fascinating history of Crisco, which was developed specifically as a (supposedly healthier) schmaltz replacement and marketed heavily to American Jews in the early twentieth century. These efforts were so successful that the rise of Crisco played a significant role in schmaltz’s declining popularity, which is only now beginning to be reversed.