Post by Bonobo on Jun 20, 2020 17:41:04 GMT 1
A very interesting article:
How Jewish Culture Influenced Polish Cuisine
Author: Magdalena Kasprzyk-Chevriaux
Published: Jan 22 2015
The cuisine of the Ashkenazi Jews who lived in Central and Eastern Europe before 1939 drew inspiration from culinary traditions of other nations (much like the cuisine of other Jewish ethnic divisions).
If local dishes fitted in with kosher principles, they were adapted to to the form of Jewish cuisine. That is why, “in each particular country, Jews would assimilate a variety of local dishes, while giving them a particular character. Besides that, they use a bounty of scents and spices – a remnant of the East and lots of onion in rather unexpected combinations”, as one pre-war journalist wrote in Bluszcz, an illustrated women’s weekly.
After reading Rebeka Wolff’s 19th century book Polska kuchnia koszerna (Kosher Polish Cuisine), the emerging image of Polish Jews’ cookery is one of crude and yet refined and tasty food. The book, which was highly popular and enjoyed numerous reprints, is now also available in digital libraries. It provides recipes for completely unknown dishes, with examples of foods that used to be typical of old Polish cuisine (such as półgęski, which have recently been rediscovered by Poles).
In the 1920s, a prominent French gastronome of Polish origin, Professor Edward Pożerski de Pomiane, conducted research on the foods of Polish Jews. He found them to be rich in nutmeg, vanilla and orange rind. His Cuisine juive, ghettos modernes was published in France and it comprised a collection of recipes from Polish Jews which he had collected in different cities across Poland. Apart from the significant quantities of spice, the recipes also included sweet and sour flavours, thanks to the addition of vinegar and lemon, sugar, and onion – a flavour that was in fact a favourite tang in the Polish cookery of the Baroque period. R. Wolff thus pointed to various “principles of taste”:
When more dishes are served, they have to be varied. Thus, before a sour fish, for example, a sour and savoury soup would be out of place, but prior to a fish cooked on butter, such a soup is very appropriate. After a sour vegetable, soured meat is not a match…
Some dishes were only served during holidays or the Shabbat, since, as can easily be guessed, Jewish cuisine is filled with symbolic references and most holiday dishes posses a hidden significance. Putting it in very simplified terms, kosher cooking was meant to protect from the unhygienic and sinful.
The fact that a few million Jews lived on the historic territory of Poland must have also influenced Polish cuisine. It would not be an exaggeration to say that both culinary cultures are intertwined. Dishes as popular in the everyday as gołąbki and even potato pancakes probably have Jewish origins.
In Poland – in Warsaw and Kraków in particular – several restaurants specialise in dishes of the Polish Jewish tradition, but almost none of these restaurants are kosher.
More:
culture.pl/en/article/how-jewish-culture-influenced-polish-cuisine
How Jewish Culture Influenced Polish Cuisine
Author: Magdalena Kasprzyk-Chevriaux
Published: Jan 22 2015
The cuisine of the Ashkenazi Jews who lived in Central and Eastern Europe before 1939 drew inspiration from culinary traditions of other nations (much like the cuisine of other Jewish ethnic divisions).
If local dishes fitted in with kosher principles, they were adapted to to the form of Jewish cuisine. That is why, “in each particular country, Jews would assimilate a variety of local dishes, while giving them a particular character. Besides that, they use a bounty of scents and spices – a remnant of the East and lots of onion in rather unexpected combinations”, as one pre-war journalist wrote in Bluszcz, an illustrated women’s weekly.
After reading Rebeka Wolff’s 19th century book Polska kuchnia koszerna (Kosher Polish Cuisine), the emerging image of Polish Jews’ cookery is one of crude and yet refined and tasty food. The book, which was highly popular and enjoyed numerous reprints, is now also available in digital libraries. It provides recipes for completely unknown dishes, with examples of foods that used to be typical of old Polish cuisine (such as półgęski, which have recently been rediscovered by Poles).
In the 1920s, a prominent French gastronome of Polish origin, Professor Edward Pożerski de Pomiane, conducted research on the foods of Polish Jews. He found them to be rich in nutmeg, vanilla and orange rind. His Cuisine juive, ghettos modernes was published in France and it comprised a collection of recipes from Polish Jews which he had collected in different cities across Poland. Apart from the significant quantities of spice, the recipes also included sweet and sour flavours, thanks to the addition of vinegar and lemon, sugar, and onion – a flavour that was in fact a favourite tang in the Polish cookery of the Baroque period. R. Wolff thus pointed to various “principles of taste”:
When more dishes are served, they have to be varied. Thus, before a sour fish, for example, a sour and savoury soup would be out of place, but prior to a fish cooked on butter, such a soup is very appropriate. After a sour vegetable, soured meat is not a match…
Some dishes were only served during holidays or the Shabbat, since, as can easily be guessed, Jewish cuisine is filled with symbolic references and most holiday dishes posses a hidden significance. Putting it in very simplified terms, kosher cooking was meant to protect from the unhygienic and sinful.
The fact that a few million Jews lived on the historic territory of Poland must have also influenced Polish cuisine. It would not be an exaggeration to say that both culinary cultures are intertwined. Dishes as popular in the everyday as gołąbki and even potato pancakes probably have Jewish origins.
In Poland – in Warsaw and Kraków in particular – several restaurants specialise in dishes of the Polish Jewish tradition, but almost none of these restaurants are kosher.
More:
culture.pl/en/article/how-jewish-culture-influenced-polish-cuisine
