András
Koerner

Jewish
Cuisine in
Hungary

András
Koerner

Jewish
Cuisine in
Hungary
A
Cultural
History with
83 Authentic
Recipes

Preface by
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

C E U P R E S S / C O RV I N A

1. Mór Guttmann’s kosher restaurant in the Óbuda district of Budapest in
c. 1890. Mr. Guttmann was so proud of the kosher nature of his restaurant that
he displayed the three-letter Hebrew word for “kosher” at eight places on
the signboards around the entrance: twice on each of the entrance’s shutter
wings, once on each of the bulging signs left and right of those shutters,
and twice on the big signboard above the entrance.

PREFACE by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .....................................................

1

KASHRUT ......................................................................................
The Ritual Slaughter of Animals .....................................................
The Koshering of Meat at Home .....................................................
Separating Dairy and Meat Dishes ...................................................
Pareve (Neither Meat, nor Dairy) Dishes and Ingredients ..........................
Kosher Wine ............................................................................
Kosher Milk and Dairy Products .....................................................
Giving up Kashrut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....................................................
Non-Jewish Views of Kashrut . . . .....................................................

2
3

4

1
11
17
21
22
25
26
28
31
32

ASHKENAZI JEWISH CUISINE ........................................................... 37
Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewry ........................................................ 39
A Short History of Ashkenazi Cuisine ................................................ 41
HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE . . . . ..................................................... 49
Seventeenth-Century Sephardi Influence ............................................ 51
Nineteenth-Century Gastronomic Writers ........................................... 57
Handwritten Recipe Collections ...................................................... 65
Nineteenth-Century Cookbooks ...................................................... 75
Early Twentieth-Century Pioneers of Jewish Ethnography .......................... 86
A Turn-of-the-Century Recipe Competition .......................................... 91
Food and Increasing Secularization ................................................... 96
Cookbooks in the First Half of the Twentieth Century .............................. 98
Post-1945 Cookbooks about Prewar Cooking ....................................... 106
Some Characteristics of Hungarian Jewish Cuisine ................................. 110
Food and Hungarian Jewish Identity ................................................ 113
Hungarian Influence on the Jewish Cuisine of Other Countries ................... 118
REGIONAL AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES ......................................... 123
The Northeastern Regions and the Galician/Polish/Ukrainian Influence .......... 126
Western Hungary and the Austrian/German Influence .............................. 131
The Northwestern Regions and the Bohemian/Moravian/Slovakian Influence ..... 132
The Southern Regions and the Serbian/Croatian Influence .......................... 133
Transylvania and the Romanian Influence ........................................... 134

5

WEEKDAYS AND HOLIDAYS ............................................................... 139
Dishes for Weekdays . . . . . . . . . ......................................................... 142
Shabbat Dishes ......................................................................... 151
Dishes for the Holiday of the New Moon ............................................. 158
Dishes of Rosh Hashanah ............................................................. 158
Yom Kippur—Dishes for Before and After the Fast .................................. 160
Dishes of Sukkot ....................................................................... 162
Dishes of Simchat Torah ............................................................... 164
Dishes of Hanukkah .................................................................... 165
Purim Dishes .......................................................................... 166
Dishes for Pesach ...................................................................... 171
Shavuot Dishes ........................................................................ 181
Dishes for the Dairy Days and for the End of the Tisha B’av Fast .................. 182
Dishes for the Birth of a Boy ......................................................... 183
Cakes for the First Day of Cheder .................................................... 184
Cakes to Celebrate the First Exam in Cheder ........................................ 186
Dishes for Bar Mitzvah ................................................................ 188
Dishes for Engagements and Weddings .............................................. 188
Dishes for Mourning Ceremonies .................................................... 195

6

HOUSEHOLDS ............................................................................... 197
Rural and Small-Town Households ................................................... 199
Keeping Geese ......................................................................... 200
Urban Households . . . . . . . . . . . . ........................................................ 207
Canning ................................................................................ 209
Maids .................................................................................... 214
The Role of Cooking in the Lives of Jewish Women ................................ 215
Kitchen Furniture and Equipment .................................................... 219
Dishes, Tableware, and Tablecloths .................................................... 222
Ritual Plates, Cups, and Table Linen ................................................ 227

7
8

DOMESTIC HOSPITALITY AND BANQUETS ........................................... 235
Dinner and Supper Guests, Home Parties, and Salons ................................ 237
Banquets and Celebratory Meals ...................................................... 244
Rules of Good Manners at Meals ..................................................... 249
JEWISH PLACES OF HOSPITALITY ....................................................... 257
Kosher Restaurants and Boardinghouses .............................................. 259
Coffeehouses, Coffee Shops, and Pastry Shops ........................................ 277
Jewish Soup Kitchens . . . . . . . . ......................................................... 289

9
10

FOOD INDUSTRY AND TRADE . . . . . . . ...................................................
Kosher Food Factories .................................................................
Kosher Wine Producers and Merchants ..............................................
Food Shops and Street Vendors ........................................................
Markets ................................................................................

299
301
311
314
317

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES ................................................................
Challah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....................................................
Gefilte Fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...................................................
Walnut Fish ............................................................................
Boiled Beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....................................................
Chopped Eggs ..........................................................................
Cholent ................................................................................
Kugel ....................................................................................
Ganef ....................................................................................
Stuffed Goose Neck ....................................................................
Tzimmes ................................................................................
Flódni ....................................................................................
Kindli ....................................................................................
Hamantasche ............................................................................
Matzo Balls ............................................................................
Chremsel ................................................................................
Goose Giblets with Rice Pilaf ..........................................................

321
323
326
328
331
335
337
346
350
351
352
354
356
359
361
365
367

EPILOGUE ....................................................................................... 369
APPENDICES ..................................................................................
1. Jewish Cookbooks Published in Hungary before 1945:
An Annotated Bibliography . . . . ...................................................
2. Authors of the Handwritten Recipe Collections Used in This Book .............
3. List of Quoted Recipes ...............................................................

373

Notes .............................................................................................
Selected Bibliography ............................................................................
Sources of Illustrations ..........................................................................
Index of Personal Names ........................................................................
Index of Subjects .................................................................................
Index of Foods ....................................................................................
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....................................................

383
393
399
400
404
409
419

373
376
377

[ viii ]

BARBARA KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT
is a Professor Emerita of Performance Studies
at New York University and Chief Curator
of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of
the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. She was
born in Toronto, Canada to immigrant parents
from Poland. She is best known for her interdisclipinary contributions to Jewish studies
and to the theory and history of museums,
tourism, and heritage. She has published
pioneering studies of Jewish cooking and
cookbooks and has written essays on those
subjects for Jewish encyclopedias.

[ ix ]

PREFACE

I

hold in my hands a unique volume. This labor of love is also a work of erudition that demonstrates the
importance of food as an area of serious study. While cookbooks abound, there is no other study of Jewish
food that can compare with this book. Even as a work of scholarship, this volume whets the appetite. The
83 recipes in its pages bring the story into our kitchens today, but with a fullness of meaning that a recipe
alone cannot convey. Rather, what we have here is not only comprehensive in its historical and regional scope,
but also in attending to all aspects of Hungarian Jewish food culture. Indeed, as a social history of Hungarian
food culture, this book examines the changing circumstances of Hungarian Jewish life and the many ways of
being Hungarian and Jewish. The result is the most complete account of a Jewish food culture to date.
Rather than anguish over whether a particular dish is or is not Jewish, whether originally or uniquely, the
author examines what Hungarian Jews actually do, be they Orthodox and traditional or acculturated or
assimilated. To tell the story of Hungarian Jewish food is to tell the story of Hungarian Jews. The many cultural
streams that pass through the Hungarian Jewish kitchen are the making of this cuisine, which is no less Jewish
or Hungarian for being related to the cuisines of its neighbors.
No aspect of the food culture of Hungarian Jews escapes the author’s eye, from the rules of kashrut and
their selective observance to festive meals at home, fine dining in restaurants, cookbooks and gastronomy,
and the Jewish food industry. As the author richly demonstrates, food is more than cuisine. The social and
cultural practices, the meanings and feelings associated with food, define it as much as the ingredients and
their preparation. This is revealed in the minutely detailed descriptions of food and social life in memoirs,
autobiographies, travel accounts, literature, and ethnographies, which are but a few of the many sources the
author mines.
There is a memoir, the first by a Polish Jew, that shows the lively trade in wine between Poland and
Hungary. The author, Dov Ber Birkenthal, also known as Ber of Bolechów, was a wine merchant and Hebrew
writer. Bolechów was in the area of Poland that later became Galicia, a province of the Austrian empire. Dov
Ber’s memoir, which he wrote in the late 18th century, describes his exploits and adventures importing
Hungarian wines to Poland, where they were greatly appreciated by the nobility and others.
Jewish Cuisine in Hungary is a feast in its own right. Savor it, perhaps with a glass of Tokaji or Máslás, one
of its sweet varieties, the wines that Dov Ber brought from Hungary to Poland.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
New York City
18 April 2018

[1]

INTRODUCTION X

I

n about 1940, as in previous years, there was a great deal of activity in the
hours before the Seder in a second-floor apartment at 19 Dob Street, a twostory house in Budapest’s old Jewish quarter. Mrs. Stern, her divorced
daughter who lived with them, and Margit, the maid, had been cooking and
baking for hours, since they were expecting thirteen adults and nine children
as guests, which meant that including the hosts (the Stern grandparents and
their daughter) twenty-five people would attend the Seder. The dumplings of
gefilte fish were ready to be served, but in the pots on the stove the simmering
chicken soup and broth for the boiled meat were still murmuring as they
bubbled.
The table, enlarged with extension leaves, took up nearly the whole living/
dining room of the small, two-room apartment, barely leaving space for
a glazed display cabinet filled with the family’s silver bowls and platters. The
three women set the table nicely and placed on it the glistening silver Seder
platter, cups, and candlesticks. In the other room, where the beds were, they
set up a table for the grandchildren. Their parents had made them take a nap
in the afternoon, so that the children would be able to stay awake during the
Seder ceremony, which usually lasted until two in the morning.
When everything was ready for the festive evening, Mrs. Stern and her
daughter changed into elegant dresses and waited for the Sterns’ six sons, their
wives and children, as well as for a poor Jew from the neighborhood, whom
they hardly knew but whom they invited every year for the Seder. The dining
room looked almost like a flower shop, since by the Jewish calendar Mrs. Stern
had her birthday on the 13th of the month of Nisan, the day before the first
Seder. Next to more modest bouquets, huge, elaborate ones were on display in
the corner near the window, since two of her sons competed with each other
to locate and buy the most beautiful flowers of the city. When, coming from
the evening prayer at the synagogue, the tuxedoed elder Stern and his sons
entered the apartment, and their wives—who came from home and wore
evening dresses—also arrived, they all quickly seated themselves around the
table. The fancily dressed group of people looked almost like a first-night
audience at the opera. The wives lit the candles, some of them only two, others
as many as five, depending on the number they customarily lit at home for the

2. The one-and-a-half-year-old
child on the left is Laurent
Stern, now in his late eighties,
who described for me the
Seders held at his grandparents
in Budapest around 1940. His
parents can be seen behind
him, and to their right is one
of his paternal uncles with his
wife and little son. His paternal
grandparents, at whom the
Seder described in the
introduction was held, are
depicted near the right side
of the picture. The photograph
was taken on the occasion
of the wedding of one of his
uncles on October 25, 1931.
(Detail of Fig. 3)

[2]

INTRODUCTION

Shabbat and the other holidays. The many guests and burning candles quickly
heated up the room, and the scent of the innumerable flowers and the ladies’
strong perfume only made the air feel even more stifling. The men—most of
whom were smokers—from time to time went out for a puff on the open
walkway outside the entrance door, since they didn’t want to make the room
even smellier. The Stern family was quite well-to-do. True, the grandparents—
who had moved with their children from Galicia to Budapest in June 1914,
shortly before the outbreak of World War I, and who continued to speak
Yiddish with each other—had only a modest yardgoods shop in Hajós Street
for their livelihood, but all their sons had become rich in the logging and in
the textile industries. The silver on the dining table and the jewelry of the ladies
glittered in the candlelight, in striking contrast to the poverty of the neighborhood and most of the tenants in the building, including the poor Jewish
family who lived next door. Laurent Stern, a retired philosophy professor from
Rutgers University, born in 1930, who as Mrs. Stern’s grandson had participated in these Seders between 1938 and 1943 and from whom I know the
details of the evening, told me that when he had asked his mother for the cause
of the bad smell coming from the next door apartment, she answered: “This
is the smell of poverty, my son.”
At the beginning of the Seder, as is customary, the elder Stern read the
Hebrew text of the Haggadah. The meal following the first part of the
recitation started with some fish dish, most of the time gefilte fish. While the
grandparents frequently made gefilte fish (Yiddish: “stuffed fish,” though in
its most common form it is a dumpling made of chopped fish), which they
had grown fond of in Galicia, in Laurent Stern’s home this dish rarely appeared
on the table, since his mother, born in the Transylvanian town of Nagyvárad
(Oradea, Romania), preferred to serve sliced fish cooked with various vegetables
in a broth as the first course of her Friday evening meal.
This was not only a matter of divergent customs of different regions, but
in part reflected differences in religious opinion. It is quite possible, however,
that in their preference for gefilte fish the elder Sterns merely followed what
they had learned from their parents, and they were unaware of the religious
motives for those ancestral habits. One reason for the popularity of this dish
among some Jews was that it provided a way to avoid borer (Hebrew: “to
separate, to cleanse”), one of the forbidden forms of “work” on Shabbat. According to these Jews, many of whom were of Galician origin, it was forbidden
to remove the bones from the fish, since this was equivalent to borer, that is
separating undesirable bits from a mixture of edible and inedible things—an
activity forbidden on Saturdays. Strangely, it was permissible to remove edible
meat from the fish carcass, since the prohibition only applied to picking out

INTRODUCTION

the fish bones. But other Orthodox Jews, including Laurent Stern’s parents,
paid no attention to the prohibition against borer and ate sliced fish during
Shabbat, Pesach, and other holidays.
The fish at the Seder dinner was followed by a soup made from hens. The
soup included vegetables and little fried pasta balls made with potato starch
instead of flour, but not matzo balls, a key part of the Seder meal for most
Jewish families. The reason for this also had to do with differing interpretations
of religious rules. Laurent Stern’s paternal grandparents claimed that matzo
mixed with water or any other liquid would become gebrochts (Yiddish: “broken”), which, according to them, was forbidden during Pesach, since it possibly
contained flour that was not perfectly mixed with water during the making of
matzo. As a result, such flour couldn’t be properly baked and so it could
ferment when the dough for the matzo balls was mixed. They didn’t object to
matzo alone—provided that it was eaten dry—but they claimed that matzo
balls couldn’t be consumed during Pesach. Relatively few Jews thought this
way in Budapest, but in Galicia this was more common—though even there it
was more characteristic of the Hassidim and less of the Orthodox, like Stern’s
paternal grandparents.
But on the next day and for all the subsequent days of Pesach, when young
Laurent Stern ate lunch at home (that is, at his similarly Orthodox parents’
home), the matzo balls in a golden soup were one of the highlights of the meal.
His mother’s Orthodox family in Nagyvárad was distantly related to Chatam
Sopher (Moses Schreiber, 1762–1839), the famous, highly conservative rabbi
of Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia), and they felt that if the rabbi could eat matzo
balls, they, too, could ignore the elder Sterns’ reservations.
The divergent customs related to gefilte fish and matzo balls prove that one
cannot talk about the lifestyles and culinary traditions of Hungarian Jews in
broad generalities, since even within the Orthodox world people interpreted
traditions differently. The above story also shows how people’s eating habits
reflect their identities, the culture they had inherited from their ancestors, their
relationship to religion, and numerous other lifestyle factors. There is, however,
a further reason why I start my book with this story: I wish to signal that
I intend to present eating habits not as isolated things, divorced from their
social and religious contexts, but as organic parts of one’s way of life.
What, how, and when people eat is one of the most important parts of
everyday life. Furthermore, it can evoke aspects of life that seemingly have
nothing to do with eating. A community’s eating habits not only reflect its
history and culture, but also the environmental influences that shaped those
habits, as well as people’s beliefs, goals, behavior, and many other things. Not
for nothing did Gil Marks call food “an enduring element of individual and

[3]

[4]

INTRODUCTION

collective memory.”1 All this is especially applicable to Jewish culture, which
frequently mixes ancestral and local traditions with influences and tries to find
individual answers to the relationship between religion and contemporary life.
It is eager to preserve traditions in some cases, while in others it is open to
change. One can investigate a culture from many angles, but perhaps we get
the best idea of it by studying it from the kitchen door. In traditional Jewish
culture the kitchen is the place where religion and family life are closest to each
other, and at the same time it is where one can observe the first signs of gradual
secularization, signs that frequently take a bit longer to notice in the synagogue.
According to Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, one of the most outstanding
scholars of Jewish culture and culinary traditions, the increasing neglect of
dietary rules showed how “Jewish identity was constructed in the kitchen and
at the table.”2
In the extraordinarily diverse world of Jews, what can and cannot be eaten
is determined by not only absolute rules, but also by dietary traditions singular
to only certain religious movements or to some communities. Frequently, such
traditions interpret Judaism’s general rules in a completely individual, idiosyncratic manner. This is typical of the decentralized nature of Judaism, in which
substantial differences exist even within the Orthodox world and Hassidism,
and where the more or less differing dietary rules of such communities are
consciously or instinctively designed to strengthen the groups’ specific identities.
With time certain dishes have become traditional, nearly obligatory parts of
holidays, not only among the ranks of religious Jews, but—if not to the same
extent—also among the assimilated. According to an old joke, most Jewish
holidays are about the same thing: “The Jews were persecuted, the Jews escaped,
so let’s sit down to eat.” Of course, it is not enough to describe the foods of the
holidays. One must also focus on the weekdays when most of the dishes served
were not uniquely Jewish but adopted from the Christian majority. Religious
Jews not only adapted these dishes to conform to the rules of kashrut, but
frequently they adjusted their flavors according to their own preferences.
Substituting lard with goose fat and omitting sour cream from meat dishes are
examples of making a treif (not kosher) dish kosher, while making sweet versions
of salty-peppery Hungarian dishes, like pasta squares with sautéed chopped
cabbage, illustrates how Jews adjusted the flavors of borrowed foods. Even
secularized Jews frequently preserved something from the typical flavors of their
ancestors’ cuisine. In spite of this, their repertory of dishes and their culinary
customs were nearly identical with those of the local non-Jewish population,
and this brings up the question whether it is justified to include them in a book
about Jewish cuisine. But these dishes represented an integral part of the
assimilated lifestyles and it is absolutely justified to include them in a study of

INTRODUCTION

[5]

Jewish cuisine. This is necessary for the same reason why a book about the way
Jews dressed shouldn’t focus only on the Orthodox and Hassidim, whose appearance was clearly different from the majority population, but it must also write
about the clothing of those assimilated or converted Jews who at first glance
were indistinguishable from the Gentiles. It is exactly the resemblance of their
cuisine and appearance to those of the Christians that makes these features of
their lifestyles important documents of the assimilation and therefore indispensable parts of any work focusing on the cuisine (or clothing) of Jews.
Nowadays there is no shortage of Jewish cookbooks, and a few of them also
include short historical accounts of this cuisine. Till recently, though, few
detailed scholarly works existed about the histories of Jewish cuisine in different
countries, and even those publications dealt with only one or another particular
aspect of it, probably because historians and sociologists considered investigations of recipes, food, and related subjects less important than studies of
everyday life based on letters, memoirs, contemporaneous publications, official
documents, statistics, and other similar sources. But in the last three decades
more and more publications have been focusing on certain features of a
country’s characteristic Jewish cuisine, and those writings are frequently read
not only by experts in the field, but also by the general public. In Hungary,

3. A photograph of the parents,
siblings, and their spouses and
children of Hermann Stern, the
secretary of the Autonomous
Orthodox Jewish Community
of Budapest. The picture was
taken on October 25, 1931,
in the ceremonial hall of the
community’s office building at
29 Kazinczy Street in Budapest
on the occasion of the wedding
of one of Hermann Stern’s
brothers. The wedding
ceremony took place in the
courtyard of the building.
Photographer unknown.

[6]

INTRODUCTION

however, few studies have examined this subject, and even those restricted
themselves to describing the role and the symbolic meaning of various foods
in Jewish religious life.3 I know of no publication that is trying to give a comprehensive account of the social history of Hungary’s or any other country’s
Jewish cuisine, of its characteristics, and of the various other aspects of the
culture of eating.
Even the present volume doesn’t carry the story to the present day, but stops
at 1945. The reason for this is that the Holocaust radically changed Hungarian
Jewish society and its cooking, which until then had been characterized by
continuous, organic change. This is true even if we consider various historical
disruptions, such as the loss of two-thirds of the country’s territory due to
Hungary’s participation on the losing side in World War I. As a result of the
Holocaust, post-1945 Hungarian Jewish society is so different from the earlier
one that describing it would take a separate book. In saying this, I am not
referring merely to the near complete destruction of provincial Jewry in 1944,
but also to the fact that disproportionately few Orthodox and Hassidim survived that cataclysm.
There are several reasons why nobody has come up with a history of Hungarian Jewish cooking and eating habits. One reason is that some academics
still consider gastronomical history a subject not worthy of serious, scholarly
research. For example, one of my university professor friends—with the best
possible intent—attempted to talk me out of writing about the history of
Hungarian Jewish cuisine. “You know so much about so many things, so why
don’t you choose some other, more important subject for your next book?” he
said, not shying away from a bit of flattery in his effort to persuade me. The
other – probably more important—cause could be that in pre-1945 Hungary
only a dozen Jewish cookbooks and relatively few essays and newspaper articles
dealt with the subject—even if we include books from regions that at the time
of their publication no longer belonged to Hungary. To make matters worse,
some of those cookbooks were not even original works. Yet another reason is
that until now nobody has tried to collect prewar handwritten recipe collections
of Jewish families, even though such notebooks are not only crucial documents
of Jewish life in that period, but also the most important sources for any work
similar to mine. In some ways they are even more important than cookbooks.
While we generally know when and where such notebooks were written and
we have some knowledge of the economic situation and degree of religiosity
of their owners, cookbooks hardly ever include such information. At best we
can try to draw conclusions from the place of their publication, but this by
itself is not sufficient for an in-depth research of regional differences, as well
of the social and religious backgrounds of those who used them.

INTRODUCTION

Unfortunately, in spite of my best efforts, I failed to find recipe collections
from all the important regions. Most of the thirty-three collections I managed
to locate are from Budapest, since following the murder of the overwhelming
majority of provincial Jewish families, their personal belongings, including
their notebooks of recipes, were lost, stolen, or destroyed. In addition to
collecting old recipe collections, I tried to interview as many elderly survivors
as I could about their memories of prewar eating habits. By now, however, their
number has also diminished, so this direction of research brought similarly
limited results. Luckily, the detailed oral histories interviewers of the Centropa
organization (a non-profit, Jewish historical institute dedicated to preserving
twentieth-century Jewish family stories and photos from Central and Eastern
Europe and the Balkans) have recorded with elderly Jews occasionally include
information about their prewar family meals, and this has been especially
important for me, since some of them describe dishes and households from
regions of which I know no other such accounts.
Notwithstanding this, I feel compelled to reconstruct the culinary culture
of this vanished world, even though it is clear to me that the gaps in the
surviving records make it impossible to deal with all the important aspects in
equal depth and detail. I can’t accept that this world and its cuisine, so close to
my heart, should disappear virtually without a trace. Similar to my previous
books, I complement the text with contemporaneous photographs and
advertisements, but this time I include not only pictures of daily life, but also
photographs of objects, such as plates, cutlery, and table linen. Unfortunately,
many details of the pre-1945 Jewish culture of eating lack any photographic
record, while others are depicted by only a single surviving picture. This is the
reason why I include some photographs from books by others, as well as from
those of my own. In addition to reprinting photographs from my previous
works, I quote from my book about the daily life and cooking of my greatgrandmother, in part since I know no similarly detailed account of a Jewish
woman’s cooking, but also since I hope that through me and my ancestors the
reader could obtain a more personal connection to the past than what is
possible through my quotes of other sources.
The New Testament refers to bread and wine as symbols of Christ’s body
and blood, and ever since biblical times these metaphoric concepts have been
central to Christian religious services, like Communion. In addition, fish and
lamb have also been important Christian symbols since the early days of the
Church, and both have become parts of certain holiday traditions. But in spite
of such examples, the connection between foods and religious tradition is in
my opinion not as extensive in Christianity as in Judaism, where it is not only
at the very center of kashrut’s complicated system of rules, but where many

[7]

[8]

INTRODUCTION

dishes conform to requirements laid out in the Torah and the Mishnah, the
third-century compendium of Jewish Oral Law. Both Jewish religion in its
narrow sense and the Jewish way of life, which is inseparably connected to it,
have a tendency to control every small detail of life, to create rituals of them.
As Rabbi Harold S. Kushner puts it: Judaism “is the science of making the
mundane holy.”4 The symbolic foods of the Seder ceremony are good examples
of this: the roasted lamb shank (which in Hungary is usually substituted with
a roasted chicken wing or neck), the hard-boiled egg, the charoset (a mixture
of finely chopped apples, nuts, honey, wine, and other ingredients), and some
other indispensable foods at this ritual. Other examples are the customary
dishes of the Shabbat: the challah and wine necessary for the Friday night
Kiddush, and the fish dish that is the first course of Friday dinners. But the
list of dishes playing a symbolic role in Jewish life is virtually endless.
The same way as all the different kinds of Jews who once lived in Hungary
constituted an organic part of Hungarian society, their diverse ways of cooking
were also part of Hungarian cuisine, in itself an amalgamation of various
dissimilar influences. Linguistic and other types of assimilation has never
flowed in only one direction. Not only did a significant share of Jews gradually
switch from Yiddish and German to Hungarian as their primary language, start
to wear clothing similar to that of the non-Jewish middle class, and absorb
many of the characteristics and customs of the surrounding society, but at the
same time they exerted an influence on the Gentiles, which can be seen –
among others – in the many Hungarian words of Hebrew or Yiddish origin
and in the general popularity of cabaret, an art form, which at least in Hungary
was almost exclusively created by Jews. Such reciprocity was also typical of the
way people cooked, though—just like in assimilation of a more general sense
—here, too, the majority population influenced Jews more than the other way
around. Jews borrowed a great many dishes from the cooking of the
surrounding society, which they then proceeded to modify to conform to their
own traditions, while at the same time some Jewish dishes, such as matzo balls,
cholent, challah, and flódni (a Hungarian Jewish multilayer filled pastry)
became popular among the non-Jews, too. Both in the broader assimilation
and in its culinary version I find this mutuality most important, since for me
—more than anything else—this carries the promise of integration, of harmonious coexistence.
While working on my previous books, I hoped that the past lifestyles of
Hungarian Jews would be of interest not only for readers of Jewish origin. This
time, too, it would give me great pleasure if these culinary customs, this
gastronomic tradition, which is such an interesting, special part of Hungarian
cuisine, could be met with a response transcending ethnic and religious

INTRODUCTION

boundaries. To help such readers, I included some basic information about the
meaning of holidays and religious concepts, since without such knowledge it
would be impossible to understand the specifics of Jewish cuisine.
Although this book is primarily a cultural history and not a cookbook, it
includes about eighty recipes. They are featured here mainly as documents and
less so as guides to practical cooking, therefore I didn’t change their original
wording, though in the case of recipes taken from my own book I print both
their original text and my adaptations of them to the requirements of today’s
kitchens. Had I included modernized versions of all the other recipes, however,
this would have much increased the bulk of this volume and—more importantly—by their very lengths they would have distracted from the real subject
of this book: history. After my English versions of the recipe titles, I also provide
their original Hungarian, German, or Yiddish names, even the bilingual ones,
such as Tojásos lepény—Eier-kuchen. I included in the recipes the modern
equivalents of such no longer used measurements as meszely, Halbe, and a few
others. But since modern weights and measures commonly used in today’s
Hungary occur so frequently in the recipes, I prefer to give their US equivalents
here: 1 deka(gram) = 10 grams, 1 kilo(gram) = 1000 grams or c. 2.2046
pounds, 1 deciliter = one-tenth of a liter, 1 liter = c. 1.056 liquid quarts or
0.908 dry quart, 1 cm (centimeter) = 0.3937 inch.
Despite the fact that this isn’t a book for everyday cooking, I hope the
readers will try some of its recipes. Reading about these foods and studying
the illustrations are good ways of getting acquainted with Hungarian Jewish
cooking, but tasting the actual dishes described could complement this by
offering another, more physical way to learn about this tradition that
constituted such an important part in the history of Hungarian cuisine.

[9]

1
Kashrut
The Ritual Slaughter of Animals
The Koshering of Meat at Home
Separating Dairy and Meat Dishes
Pareve (Neither Meat, nor Dairy) Dishes and Ingredients
Kosher Wine
Kosher Milk and Dairy Products
Giving up Kashrut
Non-Jewish Views of Kashrut

KASHRUT

[ 13 ]

R

eligious Jews may only eat food that conforms to the rules of kashrut.
While kashrut is the name of the entire system of rules, the adjective
kosher (Hebrew: “fit/proper”) indicates the ritual fitness of food for
consumption, though in everyday language it is also used as an expression of
general appropriateness, unrelated to the Jewish religion. There are numerous
books about kashrut for those who wish to keep a kosher kitchen, but the
present volume is a work of history, not a how-to book. The requirements of
kashrut, however, are inseparable from the history of Jewish cuisine, which
would be impossible to understand without some knowledge of these rules.
Since I can’t assume familiarity with this, I must briefly describe it.
The rules of what is kosher for eating and what is forbidden (Hebrew:
trefah, torn, Yiddish: treif ) are frequently derived from the Torah, though some
of them appear there merely as a hint, applicable to one specific situation,
which the rabbis only later broadened to a more general rule. For example,
they derived the prohibition of eating meat dishes with dairy ones and mixing
such ingredients from a sentence occurring at three places in the Torah which
forbids cooking a newborn kid in its mother’s milk (Mos. II. 23:19; III. 34:26;
V. 14:21).
The diet of people in biblical times consisted mainly of vegetables, fruits,
and bread, but of relatively little meat, which was customary only on holidays.
As a matter of fact, there is no dietary prohibition for eating plants, only for
certain kinds of meat and fish. Of the former group one can eat the meat of
four-legged animals that both ruminate (chew their cud) and have cloven hoofs
(cow, ox, bison, goat, sheep, deer) and of certain birds, mainly domesticated
fowl (goose, duck, turkey, hen, pigeon), as well as their products (milk, eggs).
These are ritually clean (Hebrew: tahor) animals, while carnivores and birds of
prey, animals who don’t ruminate (for example, the pig), and a few types of birds
(such as the owl, stork, and ostrich) are prohibited since they are considered
unclean (Hebrew: tame, “impure”). Also prohibited are animals that died due
to natural causes or illnesses (Hebrew: nevelah, “carcass”) and those that are
found to be diseased or hurt.
In principle deer could be eaten, but only if it wasn’t shot or otherwise
damaged. It had to be captured alive and killed by a shochet, which was not
easy to achieve, so it counted as a rare and expensive delicacy in Jewish cooking.
Laurent Stern, on whose recollections the story in the introduction is based, heard

4. (page 10) The kosher salami
and smoked meat shop of the
Trenk Brothers at 25–27 Király
Street, in the heart of Budapest’s old Jewish quarter.
A signboard under the eaves
of the building advertises their
manufacturing facility, located
at the same address. One of the
signboards of the shop ‒ the
one left of its entrance ‒ is in
Yiddish, which was quite a rare
thing by the 1890s, when the
photograph was taken, since
by that time most Budapest
Jews preferred to speak
Hungarian or German. Photograph by Antal Weinwurm.

[ 14 ]

KASHRUT

5. Ice cream vendor in Munkács
(Mukacheve, Ukraine) in 1936.
Photograph by Roman Vishniac.
The Russian-born Vishniac
(1897‒1990), who lived in Berlin
after the 1917 Russian Revolution and who is represented by
five photographs in this book,
took several thousands of
photographs of certain groups
of Eastern European Jews in the
second half of the 1930s,
a world that Hitler’s Germany
threatened with extinction.
During his travels he also
visited the formerly Hungarian
town of Bratislava (Pozsony in
Hungarian) and the region of
Carpathian Rus that also had
belonged to Hungary before
1920, where he took a great
number of wonderful photographs. Although a significant
share—perhaps as many as half
—of the Hungarian
photographers before World
War II were of Jewish origin,
the assimilated Hungarian
photographers generally
avoided Jewish subjects,
probably because they felt far
more Hungarian than Jewish.
It is a telling fact that the only
photographer who systematically took hundreds
of pictures of the daily lives
of anonymous Hungarian Jews
(although by that time the
regions he visited belonged to
neighboring countries) was not
a Hungarian photographer, but
a Russian: Roman Vishniac.

from his maternal grandmother that one of the courses at her wedding dinner in
Nagyvárad around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had been
sweet-and-sour pickled venison in a puréed vegetable sauce (a dish similar to
sauerbraten). In an essay, the writer and editor Adolf Ágai (1836‒1916) included
a whole little story about Jews who consume game. “The dinner of better-off
Jews not infrequently features saddle of venison. Those cunning Hebrews can
do this, too. Some years ago Baron Rothschild of Frankfurt was vacationing at
the spa of Königswart near Marienbad, owned by Count Metternich. While
the Baron’s beautiful daughter joined the distinguished group of hunters to
stalk and, if possible, shoot deer in the vast game preserve, the billionaire, away
from the noise of guns, was walking on the road leading down into the valley,
dragging his yellow parasol behind him, which left meandering lines in the
soil. … As the old gentlemen was slowly making his way by himself, a twowheeled cart, pulled by two men, passed him. Leafy oak and pine branches
surrounded the platform of the small cart to keep its captive, a live, slim little
deer from escaping this moving prison.—‘Probably you are taking it to the
Countess, so she could play with it in her castle?’—asked Rothschild as he
petted the frightened animal.—‘Not at all!’—answered one of the workers—
‘We are taking it to the Jewish ritual slaughterer in Königswart, so he could
kill it for the Baron of Frankfurt.’ Countess Richard Metternich wanted to
please the Baron’s Orthodox father with this unusual gift of kosher venison.”5
The poet and literary critic Hugó Veigelsberg—better known as Ignotus, but
this time hiding behind the pen name of “Madam Emma”—probably relied
on Ágai’s story when he mentioned in a cookbook he edited for the literary
magazine A Hét (The Week) that those members of the Rothschild family who
remained religious Jews “can eat venison, since deer is a ruminating animal
with cloven hoofs, but instead of shooting it they catch it alive in their big
game preserves and let it be ritually slaughtered.”6 In addition to venison, the
meat of several other kinds of game is also permissible according to Jewish
tradition, provided that the undamaged animal is slaughtered by a shochet.
Although about half of the permissible kinds of birds and four-legged animals
belong to that group, in real life they are practically never consumed by
religious Jews.
Of the aquatic animals only fish can be eaten, while shellfish is forbidden.
But even of the various fish only those with clearly defined scales and fins are
permitted, therefore, for example, the smooth-skinned catfish, burbot, and
mudfish—all of them common in Hungary—are forbidden. But the diversity
of the animal world sometimes creates ambiguities in the application of kashrut
rules. For example, the status of the sturgeon family (sterlet, starry sturgeon,
sturgeon, and beluga) is disputed, since the bony armored nodules on their

KASHRUT

[ 15 ]

6. A long hallaf (shochet’s
knife) used for slaughtering
cattle and a slightly shorter one
used for lamb, sheep, and other
smaller four-legged animals in
the first half of the twentieth
century. Poultry was killed with
an even shorter knife, such as
the one in Fig. 9. Photograph by
Teodóra Hübner.
7. A stamp used for meat. It
says in Hebrew: “Orth. kosher.”

body look different from the smaller, overlapping scales of other types of fish.
This created serious disagreements: most Ashkenazic rabbis of the nineteenth
century forbade the consumption of such fish, but—similar to Sephardi Jews—
Áron Chorin (1766–1844), the Chief Rabbi of Arad (formerly in Hungary,
since 1920 in Romania), didn’t object to them. This difference in the
application of kashrut rules was typical of Ashkenazim (descendants of the
Jews of Germany, as well as of Western, Central and Eastern Europe) and Sephardim (descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, or—in the commonly
used, though culturally incorrect broader sense of the term—all non-Ashkenazi
Jews): even the most religious Sephardim tended to be more permissive in this
respect. But very few Sephardim lived in Hungary, where the Jewry was overwhelmingly Ashkenazi. In contrast to Sephardim, Ashkenazim kept making
the dietary rules more and more restrictive in the last centuries, steadily
extending their applicability. For example, Ashkenazi rabbis included cornmeal,
lentil, and beans in an ancient prohibition of consuming such foods during
Pesach that were made with flour milled from one of the five types of grains
that might ferment. It is a strange paradox that while a decreasing number of
Jews observed kashrut rules in modern times, the dietary rules kept becoming
stricter. Claudia Roden, the author of one of the best cookbooks about Jewish
cooking around the world, mentions that the Yiddish saying according to
which “If you ask permission, the answer will be: ‘It is forbidden!’ refers to the
once widespread custom of asking a rabbi if a pot or a chicken is kosher. Since
the answer was more likely to be ‘It’s forbidden,’ you were better off acting
without asking.”7
I found a good example of people demanding strict observance of the
kashrut rules even in the smallest details in a July 1926 issue of Zsidó Újság
(Jewish Newspaper), a publication popular among Hungarian Orthodox Jews:
“When the rains cease, the period of ice cream begins. Those who obey the
laws of the Torah must make sure to consume ice cream only when it comes
from a ritually reliable source. Frequently, those who eat ice cream forget to
pay attention to the wafer served with it, even though it is frequently made
with margarine that our religion strictly prohibits.”8

[ 17 ]

THE RITUAL SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS X

According to religious rules, the shochet (or sakter, as he is best known in
Hungary) must slaughter the permissible animals with an especially sharp knife
(Hebrew: hallaf ), made solely for this purpose, so that the animal dies quickly
and with the least amount of pain. A shochet has an important position of trust
in Jewish communities. He had to first learn his trade from another shochet,
then he had to obtain a permit to practice it by proving his competence in
front of three rabbis. The shochet marked the meat with his own stamp to show
that it was kosher. There were shochets who were qualified only for poultry,
others, however, could slaughter cattle, too.
Adolf Ágai left us the following account of the shochets working around
1910 at the cattle slaughterhouse in Budapest, built in 1870–1872: “In front
of the gate near the middle of the corridor a white-bearded, meek Jew sits who
tests the sharpness of the finely ground edge of his long, wide slaughtering
knife by pulling it across one of his nails, since he must be able to faultlessly
cut the throat of the animal all the way to the spinal column without getting
stuck, while he is murmuring a blessing, as is commanded by the laws of
Moses.”9 In Tapolca (western Hungary) they killed cattle intended for kosher
and nonkosher meat at the same slaughterhouse, but in many provincial cities
this was done at separate places. According to Zsigmond Csoma and Lajos
Lőwy: “Devecser [western Hungary] was a significant Jewish center, where they
slaughtered animals every week. Samu Abelesz, who lived in Somlóvásárhely
[western Hungary], owned butcher’s shops in both Devecser and Vásárhely,
where shochets killed big animals on alternate weeks for him. They grabbed the
head of the cattle, attached a rope to its horns, then with the help of a pulley
they lifted it up so that the animal stood on its rear legs. Following this, they
tied its front legs to the right rear leg with a long rope. After the shochet cut
through the animal’s neck, he let the cattle kick with its left rear leg until it
lost its life and much of its blood. When the animal stopped moving, they
lowered it and laid it to its side. … Samu Abelesz, who in addition to the
butcher’s shops owned a pub, always let the shochet kill an animal for the
Shabbat and the holidays to sell its meat in his shops. … In Beregszász, in the
Carpathian region, they held the cattle down and then tied it up. In Nagy-

8. A small enameled metal sign
and the imprint of a meat
stamp with the word tréfó (treif,
Hebrew: “not kosher”). Some
shochets used them to mark the
meat of animals they had
slaughtered but which they
found damaged, not kosher. Of
course, only people who didn’t
keep kosher bought such meat.
Kosher slaughter needs the
collaboration of several
experts: the shochet, who kills
the animal, the mashgiach
(Hebrew for supervisor), who
oversees the shochet’s work,
and the certifying rabbi, the
superior of the mashgiach, who
makes the decisions as to what
is or isn’t kosher. It made
matters even more complicated
that the representatives of the
various Jewish religious groups
didn’t always accept the kosher
certification of each other’s
rabbis.

9. Shochet knife used for
slaughtering poultry and
a sharpening stone, both from
early-twentieth-century
Budapest. According to the
rules, the knife had to be razorsharp, so that the animal
suffered as little as possible.
Photograph by Richárd Tóth.

szöllős, another town in that region, they killed the animals in a small house,
the slaughterhouse, next to the synagogue. They covered the eyes of the animal,
tied its four legs together, then, while tilting it to its side, they sat on top if it
and cut through its throat. When all its blood has ran out, they tied a rope to
its rear legs, pulled it up and flayed it. In Nagyszöllős the chief rabbi’s assistant
was always present at a kosher slaughter.”10
In communities with their own shochet people could ask him to slaughter
animals on any weekday. But places where only one or two Jewish families
lived generally didn’t have their own shochet, and one of the family members
had to take the poultry to the ritual slaughterer in a nearby settlement or to
arrange that once a week, at an agreed time, he should visit them to perform
the work. In such communities kosher killing was tied to the schedule of the
shochet who made the rounds generally on Thursdays. He slaughtered the
animals on that day, since the families had to prepare for all the cooking and
baking necessary for the Shabbat, when all meal preparations had to be
completed on Friday before sunset. The shochet was always unbribeable and
unappealable in his decisions as to what was fit for consumption. He was to kill
the animal with only one decisive slash. If this for some reason didn’t succeed,
he couldn’t repeat it; he was not allowed to keep cutting with a blunt instrument.

KASHRUT

[ 19 ]

Nevertheless, on the rarest of occasions, such a mistake could occur in the killing
of a chicken, which of course greatly annoyed the animal’s owner.”11
In most small towns, including Moson (westernHungary), where my greatgrandmother lived between 1876 and 1932, Jews purchased beef and veal at
the kosher butcher, which they then had to kosher (cleanse of any remaining
blood) at home before cooking. But far more frequently than consuming beef
and veal, they ate poultry, which they typically raised in their backyards in
rural areas or purchased live in the towns. When they wanted to eat one of
those birds, they took it to the shochet for killing and then koshered it at home.
In cities, such as Budapest, however, they could also find kosher shops selling
poultry already slaughtered. Although my great-grandmother bought young
geese at the open-air market so she could fatten them, she raised chickens,
ducks, and pigeons at home, which she then sent with her maid or her
granddaughter (my mother) to the shochet for slaughtering.
But even those Jews who didn’t raise poultry frequently ate chicken and
goose, because they needed several hens to make a good soup or broth and they
had to have goose fat for their cooking and baking. “There were two sajhets
[shochets] in Munkács,” explained Ernő Galpert, born in 1923, to an interviewer
of the Centropa organization. “There was a house next to one of the synagogues,
and that was were they worked. … They called this house slobrik in the local
Jewish dialect. It had a large room, where always lots of people gathered before
the Shabbat. Both sajhets stood behind a counter. On the side where the sajhets
stood, metal hooks were hammered into the counter. People brought the
chicken with its feet tied with a string, so it was easy for the sajhet to use that
to hang the bird from one of the hooks. Since the sajhet needed both his hands
for doing this, he held the knife in his mouth during that time. Then with

10. An advertisement from 1927
of Sándor Schulek’s knife shop
in Kírály Street, the commercial
spine of Budapest’s old Jewish
quarter. According to the ad,
chalofim (shochet knives) and
instruments used by mohels
(Hebrew: circumcisers) for
performing circumcision were
among the specialties of the
store.

[ 20 ]

A KÁSRUT

a lightening-quick movement he slashed the throat of the bird. The chicken
writhed for a short while, splashing blood in all directions. Then the sajhet
took the chicken off the hook and handed it back to its owner. … People
generally sent their children to the sajhet. We children liked to go there, because
lots of other kids gathered at the sajhet before the Shabbat and other holidays,
so we could chat with each other while waiting. Once in a while a child took
a chicken home only to learn that it belonged to someone else. So the mothers
decided to tie the chickens’ legs with colored fabric strips to make it easier for
their children to recognise their own bird.”12
One of the strictest prohibitions is against consuming the blood of animals,
since according to the Torah: “Only be sure that thou eat not the blood: for
the blood is the life; and thou mayest not eat the life with the flesh” (Mos. V.
12:23). The ritual slaughterer must kill the animal by cutting through the
artery in the neck with one quick movement, and then he must hang the
animal with its head down to let its blood run out. Only the meat from an
undamaged and healthy animal can be kosher. The shochet must make sure of

KASHRUT

this both before the slaughter and again after it, when he cuts open the animal
to examine its most sensitive organs, like the heart, the stomach, the lungs of
the cattle, and the throat of the fattened goose to see that they are not in any
way damaged. But even if he finds everything in order, certain parts of the
animal are forbidden. The shochet should remove from four-legged animals
certain fats and the nerve running from the spinal column to the rear legs (the
gid hanase in Hebrew), which is the nerve that can cause sciatic pain in people.
But since those forbidden parts are all in the rear half of the animal and since
it is very difficult and time-consuming to remove them, Ashkenazim generally
avoid the whole hindquarter, while Sephardim take the trouble of removing
the fats and the sciatic nerve, and so they can eat this half of animals, too.
Similar to the duty of separating meat dishes from dairy ones, the prohibition
against the sciatic nerve of four-legged animals is also based on the Torah, in
this case on the story about Jacob’s thigh getting hurt while he wrestled with
the angel. According to a passage at the end of this story in the Bible: „therefore
the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the
hollow of the thigh, unto this day” (Genesis 32:32). The prohibition derived
from this made it mutually beneficial for Jewish and non-Jewish butchers to
cooperate. “In Kővágóörs, Tapolca, Somlóvásárhely, and Devecser [all in
western Hungary] the front part of the cattle was sold in the kosher butcher’s
shop, while the hindquarter in the nonkosher one.”13 We know examples of
such collaboration not only among butchers, but also among the Jewish and
Christian inhabitants of villages and small towns: “Several times during the
Great Depression when Jenő Katz [who lived in Szamostatárfalva in Szatmár
County, northeastern Hungary] purchased a calf at one of the fairs, he shared
the 4 or 5 pengő cost of it with my [Christian] father or with one of our
relatives. He let the shochet slaughter it and then gave the hindquarter to my
father.”14 All this shows that the Jewish and Christian population of many
villages once maintained cordial relations with each other.

THE KOSHERING OF MEAT AT HOME

The shochet let as much of the blood run from the slaughtered poultry and
four-legged animal as possible, but this was by no means the end of the
cleansing. Unless it was poultry to be roasted whole, the meat had to be cut
into pieces of appropriate sizes. Then within 72 hours of the animal’s slaughter,
the meat had to be koshered, that is, deprived of any remaining blood. This
was typically done at home. First the pieces had to be soaked in water for half
an hour and then be placed on a shallow wicker basket (sometimes on

[ 21 ]

11. A shochet is slaughtering
lamb and poultry at a Jewish
farmer in Pográny (Pohranice
in Slovakia) in 1911. Photograph
by József Ernyey from the
collection of the Museum
of Ethnography. In 1901 the
magazine Magyar Zsidó Szemle
(Hungarian Jewish Review)
started to feature a “Folklore”
column, one of the first signs
in Hungary of scholarly interest
in using the methodology of
ethnography for examining
traditional Jewish life. But the
Hungarian pioneers of Jewish
ethnography focused mainly
on the lives of Orthodox and
Hassidic Jews and by and large
ignored the other Jewish
groups. They were describing
this almost exclusively in
writing and rarely through
photographs. Of the Hungarian
Jewish press only the magazine
Múlt és Jövő (Past and Future)
published an occasional
photograph of the daily lives
of anonymous Jews. Although
between about 1910 and 1930
the Museum of Ethnography
collected a few photographs
of Jewish daily life and some
objects used by Jews, Hungarian ethnographers were mainly
interested in the lives of nonJewish Hungarians in rural
areas and only to a very limited
degree in the lives of Jews. This
is the reason why among the
220,000 pictures in the photographic collection of the
museum, there are only thirtysix photographs of Jews
predating World War II. But it is
precisely their rarity that makes
these pictures such important
documents, since, for example,
this photograph depicts a scene
in the daily lives of traditional
rural Jews about which no other
photograph exists from the
period before 1945.

[ 22 ]

KASHRUT

12. The koshering of meat in
Munkács in the early 1990s.
Unfortunately, I haven’t found
a photograph of this from
before 1945, but the koshering
was done the same way at that
time as on this picture: on
a shallow wicker basket used
especially for this purpose.
Photograph by Ferenc Kiss.
13. A branch of the kosher
smoked meat and sausage
manufacturers Fleischmann,
Polacsek & Co. on Budapest’s
Erzsébet Boulevard in the
1930s. The wife and daughter of
Béla Schreiber, the manager of
the shop, stand at the entrance
to the shop. The factory was in
Dob Street, in Budapest’s old
Jewish quarter. Photographer
unknown.

a wooden grate) to allow the water to drip. Following this, the entire surface
of the damp meat, including the insides of the poultry, had to be sprinkled
with coarse salt, so it could draw the blood from the flesh. After another half
hour the salt was shaken from the pieces, which were then rinsed several times
and placed in a bowl of water. Finally, the pieces were transferred to the rinsed
wicker basket and a bucket of water was poured over them. Koshering (or
kashering, that is, the process of melihah) was done to remove the blood, but
the salting that went with it also made the meat tastier. This is a good example
for the occasional confluence of religious and culinary considerations and for
the blurring of the border between them. But in other instances religious rules
could hurt culinary quality. For example, liver, from which it is impossible to
remove the large quantity of blood merely by soaking and salting, has to be
broiled or grilled on both sides and then rinsed before it could be used. This
could hurt its quality or at least make achieving it more difficult, since liver
hardens if cooked too long and its characteristic flavor—objectionable to some
—becomes more pronounced.
In addition to kosher butcher shops, plants manufacturing kosher meat
products—salamis, sausages, smoked meat, and the like—served the needs of
religious Jews, and in the bigger cities one could also find retail shops selling
such goods. The plant once owned by the Trenk Brothers in Budapest’s Király
Street is an example of the manufacturing facilities (Fig. 4), while their shop
in the same building and a store on Erzsébet Boulevard that sold the products
of the firm Fleischmann, Polacsek & Co. represent places where people could
buy such goods.

SEPARATING DAIRY AND MEAT DISHES

Hardly any rule of kashrut exerts a comparable influence on everyday life as the
necessity of separating dairy dishes and ingredients from the meat ones, and
the requirement to have separate kitchen tools and dishes for those categories.
Not only is it not allowed to place dairy and meat (milchig and fleishig in
Yiddish, chalavi and basari in Hebrew) food on the same plate, but one must
wait a while between consuming them. In earlier times most of Ashkenazim
followed the command of the Shulchan Arukh, the manual of Jewish religious
lifestyle, to wait six hours when they wanted to eat something dairy after
a meat dish, but nowadays, in most Jewish groups, this has decreased to three
hours. On the other hand, a mere half hour wait has been sufficient when
someone wished to eat meat after dairy, and according to some modern
Orthodox rabbis even a rinsing of one’s mouth is enough.15 Furthermore, such

[ 24 ]

KASHRUT

cooking ingredients must be stored separately, and one must use different
utensils and equipment for the preparation of such dishes, as well as different
tableware, cutlery, and tablecloths for serving and eating them.
The Torah mentions at three separate places that it is forbidden to cook
a newborn kid in its mother’s milk, but the prohibition extending this to the
mixing of meat and dairy dishes or ingredients probably evolved later, perhaps
in the second century. Although this probably wasn’t a custom followed by all
the Jews in second-century Palestine, in the community of Rabbi Jose the
Galilean (Hebrew: Yose HaGalili) people could eat poultry cooked in milk,
and we also know that—influenced by him—the Babylonian Rabbi Judah ben
Batyra permitted this, too. After the death of Jose the Galilean in about 130,
however, this practice came under general rabbinical prohibition, which Rabbi
Akiva, Rabbi Jose’s famous contemporary, also supported. The Aramaic version
of the Torah prepared sometime between the second and sixth centuries already
paraphrases the parts about cooking a kid in its mother’s milk as “Don’t eat
meat with milk.”16 So, by then the general prohibition must have existed.
Much of Jewish cuisine consists of non-Jewish dishes adjusted to conform
to the requirements of kashrut, and figuring out ways to satisfy the prohibition
of mixing meat with dairy was the hardest task in this. A good example is
chicken paprikás, one of the most popular Hungarian dishes and one that
combines meat with sour cream. As the ethnographer Árpád Csiszár writes:
“People considered chicken paprikás, popular among Hungarians, as an example
for combining meat and dairy products in a dish. This is why in everyday speech
a simple poultry pörkölt [a dish similar to paprikás, but lacking dairy ingredients,
like sour cream] is called a ‘Jewish paprikás.’”17
Jews invented the joke about the obligation of separating meat and dairy
dishes that Géza Komoróczy and his coauthors include in Jewish Budapest, their
excellent book. The joke seems to indicate that more than a few Jews were not
in complete agreement with carrying dietary rules to the extremes. “Three men,
each from different communities, run into each other in the street. One of
them says: Our rabbi is so pious that he has separate kitchens for meat and
dairy dishes. The other man replies: Our rabbi keeps two servants, one for
meat and another for dairy. The third one boasts: That’s nothing compared to
our rabbi who is so pious that when he teaches in the yeshiva and the text states
basar ba-halav [meat with dairy], he says basar, then waits six hours before
uttering the word halav.”18

A KÁSRUT

[ 25 ]

PAREVE (NEITHER MEAT, NOR DAIRY) DISHES AND INGREDIENTS

In addition to meat and dairy courses, Jewish religion knows a third group:
the pareve or parveh (Yiddish: “neutral”) dishes and ingredients. The Yiddish
name of this group probably comes from the Czech párový, that is “pair” or
“dual.” According to Gil Marks, while the Yiddish terms of fleishig and milchig
date from the late fourteenth century, the word pareve appeared centuries later,
mainly due to its adoption by Polish Jews in the early nineteenth century,
although the concept of the neutral food category had been previously known
in rabbinic literature.19 Pareve foods can be eaten with either meat or dairy
dishes and such ingredients can be used in the preparation of both fleishig and
milchig courses. The pareve group includes fruits, vegetables, grains and flours,
permissible fish, vegetable fats and oils, as well as eggs, honey, sugar, salt, and
water.
I have previously described some of the fish permitted by the laws of
kashrut. Due to the symbolic significance of fish—which can, among others,
stand for fertility and for the coming of the Messiah—fish dishes have long
been traditional first courses on Shabbat and other holidays. For this reason,
but also for the cheapness of many kinds of fish and the simplicity of dietary
rules concerning them, such dishes were probably more common in Jewish
households than among most Hungarians of other faiths. It is relatively easy
to prepare fish, since one doesn’t have to take it to the shochet, it can be killed

14. Miksa Spiegel and his wife
at their fish stand in Budapest’s
Hold Street indoor market.
Although the photograph was
taken around 1950, selling fish
was Spiegel’s business already
before the war. Photographer
unknown.

[ 26 ]

KASHRUT

at home, and it isn’t necessary to kosher it, that is, to soak, salt, and rinse it.
Furthermore, fish can be served in either meat or dairy menus (the former case
is very common, since the Friday evening meal always starts with fish and
continues with meat dishes). Fish, however, couldn’t be cooked together with
meat nor could animal fat be used in its preparation. In addition, it had to be
served as a separate course on a separate plate. When people wished to use the
same plate and cutlery for fish and meat courses, they had to be washed after
the fish dish. But this is common sense: who would want eat meat that smells
of fish?
Pareve plant fats and oils also played important roles in Jewish cooking. For
instance, one was allowed to serve pastries or cakes in a meat menu only if they
were made with plant fats or prepared with the fat of permissible animals.
Several Jewish companies manufactured such pareve products in Hungary in
the 1920s and 1930s, among them the Sussmann factory, which produced the
Venus brand of cooking fat and oil, and the Hutter Company that was responsible for the Ceres brand of fat, made from coconuts.
Soap produced by Israel Rokeach in Kovno, Lithuania, in 1870, was the first
commercial product approved by a rabbi as kosher. In 1890 Rokeach immigrated
to the US, where he started to produce kosher food items in addition to nonfood kosher products (like soap) for people keeping kashrut rules. In 1925
canned vegetarian baked bean manufactured by the H. J. Heinz Company
became the first food product in the US with a nationwide distribution and on
which a graphic label indicated that its kosher nature had been approved by a
rabbinic hechsher, a certificate of dietary fitness. By 1935 kosher Coca-Cola was
also available in stores. In some cases in the US it became practical to market
certain rabbinically approved pareve food products for not only Jews but also
for all other customers.

KOSHER WINE

15. Advertisement of the Venus
brand of kosher cooking fat and
oil from 1926.

Religious Jews were only allowed to drink such wine. Its kosher nature didn’t
refer to its ingredients, but to its production: namely, that religious Jews
supervised the whole process from the pressing of the grapes to the bottling
and pasteurizing of the wine. During the days of Pesach people drank wine
that was judged to be appropriate for this holiday, that is, certified not to have
been in touch with anything that could possibly ferment (called chametz), such
as grains, flours, dough made with them, and bread. The requirement of kosher
wine had to do with the liturgical role of wine in many non-Jewish religions.
According to the Talmud: “We must assume that the wine was intended for

9

16. Lithographic advertisement
of sweet Sauterne kosher wine
from Palestine, from around the
turn of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
17. A 1926 advertisement of
a Budapest store selling kosher
wine from Palestine.

[ 28 ]

KASHRUT

18. Stamp with text stating that
the butter is kosher (this is a
reversed image for the sake of
legibility). Some rabbis allowed
consuming nonkosher butter
(although even they added that
it was better to avoid this), while
others forbade it.
19. Imprints of stamps used in
stores selling kosher milk. The
text of the stamps: “Attention!
You have to pick up the milk by
ten o’clock in the morning” and
“We are only able to sell as much
milk against this coupon as the
quantity of milk received that day
allows”.
20. A Jewish shop of milk and
dairy products in 1937 in
Erzsébetváros, a Budapest
district where about a third
of the population was Jewish.
Photograph by Ferenc Berkó.

sacrifice.”20 On the other hand, no similar prohibition exists for alcoholic
drinks not made from grapes.
Jews at many places in the wine-making regions of northeastern Hungary
produced and sold kosher wine. From as early as 1609 we have a letter describing this. In this letter, people of the town of Kassa (Košice, Slovakia)
complain that Jews harvest kosher wine in Mád, and that not only Christian
Poles, but Polish Jews come to Tokaj-Hegyalja (a famous wine-making region)
to buy up the grape harvest. As they write: “They themselves picked the grapes,
pressed them and poured [the juice] into barrels, and since they are on the property of his highness, we can’t get to them.”21 Tamás Raj, a rabbi and historian,
describes this in greater detail: “From the sixteenth century on a significant
Jewish community established itself in southern Poland and Galicia. But this
is a region where grapes aren’t [or hardly] able to grow. Since those Jews needed
kosher wine to satisfy the requirements of religious tradition and since they
had become used to wine in their former places of residence, they needed to
find wine-growing regions. … This was why Polish and Galician Jews came to
Hungary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially at grape-harvest
time: they prepared their kosher wine here and they shipped it from here, so
that it could meet their needs throughout the year. This connection brought on
important consequences. One such result was—as was proven by Lajos Tardy, a
cultural historian—the establishment of early Jewish communities in this area,
especially in the Hegyalja region. So it became possible for the Jews living here
to secure sufficient quantities of grapes for the grape harvest and for they
themselves to grow grapes or at least to supervise its cultivation.”22

KOSHER MILK AND DAIRY PRODUCTS

Religious Jews could consume milk only if a Jew—who could be a child—had
been present when the cow was milked, so he or she could oversee the circumstances of the milking (to see that no unpermitted animal product got into
it) and the appropriateness of the bucket (that no meat or animal fat touched
it). Leopold Karpelesz told the interviewers of the Centropa organization that
for a while he had worked at a farm in Transylvania, which sold kosher milk:
“I went to Nagyernye [this settlement is 10 kilometers from Marosvásárhely,

KASHRUT

[ 29 ]

[ 30 ]

KASHRUT

a Transylvanian town] to work there as an agricultural servant. The Jewish family,
where I served, owned land and animals. … We took kosher milk to Marosvásárhely. We got up at four in the morning, went to the houses and collected
the milk into kosher containers. They paid attention to the containers to make
sure that they were clean and hadn’t been in touch with meat products. They
only used such pails for the dairy. When we finished distributing the milk to
the Jewish houses in Marosvásárhely [Târgu Mureș], we guarded the cows or
cleaned the stall.”23
E. G., born in 1922 in Transylvania, was also answering Centropa’s questions
when she explained how they made sure the milk was kosher: “Mommy was very

KASHRUT

religious, very-very kosher. … Initially a family from Nagyenyed brought us the
milk. But mommy got angry with them, because she noticed that they used the
milk can also for meat. From then on I went for milk with my cousin. We had
a tin pail, that was what we took when we went for milk. We took the pail, a
towel, and a milk can. We even took water in the pail from home for washing
the cow’s udder. When the udder was clean and the pail empty, they let the milk
run into it. Then we transferred the milk into the milk can and carried it home.”24
We know from the ethnographer Miklós Rékai that “if possible, the Jews
in Munkács [Mukacheve, Ukraine]—even after the Holocaust—used milk that
came from cows kept by their brethren, and they also got their dairy products
from such households. The older generation there can still recall that earlier
the laws of kashrut had been strictly kept and that they preferably had taken
their own pail for milking the cow.”25 On the other hand, my great-grandmother
in Moson in the 1910s—who sometimes showed a bit of flexibility in keeping
the rules—bought the milk from one of her non-Jewish neighbors. Although
she sent her own milk can with her granddaughter (my mother) who went for
the milk, I find it likely that my mother wasn’t present at the milking, as the
rules would have required.
Although according to the Mishnah (the third-century compendium of the
ancient Oral Laws), curd cheese and hard cheese made with rennet taken from
a calf ’s stomach can’t be kosher, the Shulchan Arukh (Kitzur Shulchan Arukh
38:14) permits this, provided that a Jew makes the cheese or at least supervises
the manufacture of it, and that a Jew owns the finished product. Many Hungarian Jews ignored some details of these rules, though in Hungary, too, there
used to be factories for manufacturing kosher dairy products, for example, the
Viktória Cheese Factory in Ölbő, western Hungary. While the Shulchan Arukh
forbids eating cheese made by a Gentile, it allows butter made by them, though
even there it advises one to avoid it, if possible.

GIVING UP KASHRUT

For someone to keep slightly kosher is just as absurd as for a woman to be
slightly pregnant—but in spite of this it occurs. As modernity advanced some
people started to keep kashrut rules less strictly, while others completely
abandoned them. This was, however, not always a simple thing emotionally,
and it was frequently accompanied by a vague feeling of guilt, which at times
even led to strange, paradoxical behavior. For instance, my great-grandmother,
who lived in a small town near the Austrian border, knew perfectly well that
her sons kept pork sausages and bacon in one of the large granaries that were

[ 31 ]

21. The cheese store of Dávid
Drucker at 3 Király Street, in the
old Jewish quarter of Budapest,
in the 1890s. Like the shop
depicted in Fig. 4, this one, too,
had a Yiddish signboard (left of
the store entrance). Photograph
by Antal Weinwurm.
22. An advertisement from 1926
of the Viktória Kosher Cheese
Factory, located in Ölbő,
western Hungary. It lists the
following products of the
factory: Swiss cheese (Emmentaler type), full-fat cheese,
butter, farmer cheese (in the
original: túró), and spreading
cheese.

[ 32 ]

KASHRUT

parts of her family house, since they liked to eat such stuff. But for the sake of
family peace she accepted her sons’ behavior, provided they didn’t bring the
pork products into her apartment. Even stranger is what Bella Steinmetz, born
in 1911 in Szárhegy (Lăzarea today in Romania), told Centropa’s interviewers
about the way she used to wrestle with the issue of forbidden food: “I kept a
little lard in my house, since I loved to eat bread with lard on it, but I was
careful not to mix it with goose fat, since my parents and my in-laws ate with
me. My in-laws kept kosher, but also my father wouldn’t have eaten with me
had he known about the lard. He used to eat treif things outside, so that we
shouldn’t be aware of it. He worked on Saturdays too, which we explained with
the necessity of making a living. Many times we took home some ham, which
we ate in the kitchen in part from the ham’s wrapping paper, in part from a tin
plate, something that we never did with other foods. For a long time my
husband didn’t even know that I ate bread with lard.”26
Like many other assimilated Jews, Andrew Romay (Andor Friedmann), my
recently deceased friend in New York—who was born in 1922 into an Orthodox family in Miskolc, north-central Hungary—didn’t keep kosher and
observed only the three most important Jewish holidays, and even those not
to the last detail. But at the same time he avoided eating pork and lard. What
makes his behavior and that of other Jews like him even stranger, is that they
eat lobster and shrimp, which are also forbidden by kashrut. My friend generally ordered shrimp when we ate in a Chinese restaurant.
Of course, such Jews are perfectly aware of the inconsistency of this, they
nevertheless feel that by not eating pork and lard they are somehow paying
respect to the traditions of their ancestors. But why do they eat lobster and
shrimp? Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett believes the reason for this has to do
with the “culturally formed thresholds of disgust.” For some reason—which
she feels should be further explored—certain forbidden foods, “particularly
shellfish, cured pork, and the unporged hindquarter of beef, were seductive,
whereas other forms, like lard, were generally repellent.” According to her,
“ideology and hygienic purity aside, certain nonkosher foods were rejected on
aesthetic grounds, a remnant of the internalization of religious taboo.”27

NON-JEWISH VIEWS OF KASHRUT

Keeping kosher and the social controversy this caused played an important role
in the discussion conducted in 1844 by the liberal politician and journalist Lajos
Kossuth and Lipót (Leopold) Löw, a famous rabbi, on the pages of Pesti Hírlap
(Pest newspaper). Kossuth wrote the following about the chances for emanci-

KASHRUT

pation and the obstacles to achieving it: “As long as they [the Jews] can’t eat the
same salt and bread with their fellow citizens, can’t drink the same wine, and
can’t sit at the same table, which—together with other similar things—hinder
the social integration of the different religious communities, as long as this is
only done by their more cultured representatives, whom their brethren of the
same faith consider to be bad Jews, until solemn religious opinion doesn’t declare
these things inessential to the Jewish religion, Jews will not be socially emancipated, even if they are hundred times emancipated politically.”28 Géza Komoróczy gives an account of Lipót Löw’s witty response, also published in the Pesti
Hírlap: “Löw gave a striking answer to Kossuth’s faulting the Jews for prohibiting
that they eat with other groups. Even if Löw emphasizes eating as a metaphor
for the differences between Jewish and non-Jewish Hungarians, one can’t
interpret this as a value judgment. As Löw writes: ‘One can’t deny that the dietary
rules are completely innocent in all respects and that their status wouldn’t make
any difference, regardless whether a Jew eats or doesn’t eat pork. Or would you
believe, for example, that [Moses] Mendelssohn wouldn’t be worthy of full rights
as a citizen since he never ate pork, while a base striver of Pest better deserves
such rights since he eats ham?’”29 This is, however, not a fully convincing argument, since Kossuth wasn’t arguing against offering equal rights to Jews but for
giving up the rules of kashrut, which he considered to be obstacles to the Jews’
full social acceptance. There were, however, other, more complicated reasons for
their imperfect social acceptance. But even if we disregard those other reasons,
many Jews shared Kossuth’s opinion in the century following his article: they
stopped keeping kosher, hoping this could perhaps contribute to their integration into majority society. For a while, this seemed more or less successful,
but later it failed: around 1940 the discriminatory so-called Jewish Laws were
just as applicable to them as to the Jews who kept kosher, and in 1944 they, too,
were deported to concentration camps.
In rural settlements close social and economic ties evolved frequently between the majority population and the local Jews. “The non-Jewish Hungarian
peasants who lived in the same community with the rural and semirural Jews
noticed that they had many customs different from theirs. They registered the
‘otherness’ of the Jews, which they considered strange on the one hand and
understandable on the other,” writes Zsigmond Csoma. “Hungarian peasants
found the Jewish customs concerning kitchen activities and cooking ingredients especially interesting and different from their own. They registered this
difference and talked about it with each other—if only to the extent of some
verbal clichés. Thus the Hungarian peasants considered and accepted this
‘otherness’ as self-evident, as a natural part of everyday life. Christian farmers
frequently showed compassion for those groups of eighteenth- and nineteenth-

[ 33 ]

[ 34 ]

KASHRUT

century Jews who occupied a low level in the social hierarchy, and this compassion accompanied and colored their view of them as ‘others.’”30
The non-Jews mostly accepted Jewish “otherness” and maintained good
relations with them not only in villages but in small towns as well. Mrs. Vilmos
Vázsonyi’s recollection of a Seder around 1894 in the small town of Mátészalka
(northeastern Hungary) offers a good example of this: “My last Seder forty
years ago at Uncle Jumi [Yiddish nickname for Benjamin; he was a neighbor
of Mrs. Vázsonyi’s parents] was especially beautiful. … There were fine matzo
balls in the terrific hen soup. Just when they were serving this steaming divine
soup, the door opened with great noise and in came our fatherly good friend,
the Lord Lieutenant of the county. He told my father: ‘I stopped by at your
place my dear János, but they sent me here. Gosh, how well you are feasting
here! What is this: name day, christening, or wedding?’ ‘Neither of those’—
I answered—‘it is Seder, the night before Pesach.’ The Lord Lieutenant, a dear
fellow, immediately sat down to us, placed a little cap on his head, and with
a mischievous smile kept sipping from the wine. … Without much ado he
started to eat the matzo balls, the various sauces, but he was most interested in
the golden yellow szamorodni wine from Hegyalja, carefully labeled ‘shel Pesach’
[for Passover]. Later we sang the ‘kid’ song [a humorous song in Hebrew and
Aramaic, sung at the end of the Seder] and he didn’t hesitate to try to sing
with us.”31
The relationship between Gentiles and Jews in the cities wasn’t always this
good, and some non-Jews not only found the dietary habits of religious Jews
strange, but also objectionable. Like Lajos Kossuth in an earlier period, some
Christians couldn’t understand why the Jews kept adhering to such strange
dietary rules. Why can’t they eat the same kind of food as everyone else? On
the other hand, in some cases they not only accepted the special eating habits
of Jews, but, when they had them over as dinner guests, they tried to please
them with Jewish specialties. Ede Vadász recorded such an event: “Kálmán
Széll [1843‒1915, politician and banker] on summer Sundays during the last
five years of his life regularly invited the higher officers of his institutes to his
house in Vasrátót. On account of the Jewish invitees he served scalded matzo
with farmer cheese on one occasion [he meant it as a substitute to the typical Hungarian dish of noodles with farmer cheese, sour cream, and pork
cracklings], at another time matzo balls in a ragout soup, and yet another time
a matzo kugel, which he called a pudding. The matzo was specially baked for
these dishes. He was most astonished when these surprises didn’t bring the
expected result, although both he and his guests ate with great gusto the Jewish
dishes his kitchen prepared.”32 Of course, it is also clear from this that the
Jewish guests at this dinner were perfectly willing to eat nonkosher food.

KASHRUT

In the increasingly anti-Semitic ambiance of the late 1930s, the conflicts became stronger, as can be seen, for example, from a government decree designed
to make the kosher slaughter of four-legged animals practically impossible. This
decree, first introduced in the spring of 1938, used the excuse of humanity to
make the stunning or dazing of such animals mandatory prior to their slaughter.
Although the decree didn’t openly say this, in reality it was directed at ritual
slaughtering and at religious Jews, since the shochets were prohibited from using
electric stun machines, which in any case they couldn’t have afforded in villages
and small towns. As a result, several hundred thousands of Jews who obeyed
kashrut rules could only eat poultry meat, and they could consume other meats
only if the shochet was willing to disregard the law. The decree hurt not only
the religious Jews, but their community organizations as well, since they lost
the income from the tax revenues they collected on the production of kosher
meat. The law also hurt non-Jewish butchers, since they generally received the
hindquarters of the ritually slaughtered four-legged animals, which a kosher
butcher couldn’t sell. The government decree made this mutually advantageous
arrangement between Christian and Jewish butchers impossible. For this
reason, non-Jewish butchers also protested against this law. Laurent Stern—
whose father was an official of the Budapest Orthodox Community Organization—frequently heard discussions at home about this decree. Though he
was a child, he understood from the discussions that most shochets didn’t obey
this regulation. For example, a shochet in Beregszász, northeastern Hungary,
took the risk of secretly killing calves in the rear courtyard of the ritual
slaughterhouse.33 The main worry of Stern’s parents and other religious Jews
was that perhaps the regulation was merely a first step toward the complete
prohibition of any kosher slaughter.
Nowadays in the United States, where I live, Gentiles not only don’t object
to Jews keeping kosher, but quite a number of them buy certain kinds of kosher
ingredients and meat. For instance, instead of regular table salt many knowledgeable home cooks prefer to cook with the coarse-grained kosher salt (it is
called kosher because it is used for koshering meat), which has no chemical
additives. Also, many members of the majority population buy kosher chicken,
which they consider tastier than the regular ones. The reason for this is that
salt sprinkled onto the chicken before cooking is never able to permeate and
therefore flavor the entire thickness of the meat as well as the salt applied during
koshering.

[ 35 ]

2
Ashkenazi
Jewish
Cuisine
Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewry
A Short History of Ashkenazi Cuisine

ASHKENAZI JEWISH CUISINE

[ 39 ]

T

he Ashkenazic style of cooking, especially that of the surrounding
countries, exerted no less of an influence over Hungarian Jewish cuisine
than did the rules of kashrut. Almost all Hungarian Jews were Ashkenazim, and their cooking reflected this culture, though sometimes a Sephardic
influence could also be found. What were the characteristics of these two
worlds of Jewish culture?

ASHKENAZI AND SEPHARDI JEWRY

As early as the Roman Empire, Jewish communities existed in some regions of
the Italian peninsula and other areas of Southern Europe, as well as in Pannonia
(a province of the Roman Empire that included certain parts of present-day
western Hungary). The Jews who settled in a few regions of today’s Germany
and France—especially along the Rhine—after the eighth century, and later in
Austria as well, probably came from those southern regions and perhaps also
from the Near East. In the eleventh century, the Jews of Germany, northern
France, and Austria started to be known as Ashkenazim (Hebrew, meaning
Germans; but Ashkenaz was originally the name of a biblical figure). In the
Middle Ages, the Crusades and the expulsions of Jews from England, France,
and parts of Germany drove masses of Jews eastward to Polish, Ukrainian, and
Lithuanian territories. With time, the meaning of the term Ashkenazi came to
include nearly all the Jews of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, as well as
their descendants, who moved to the United States, Israel, and elsewhere.
Ashkenazim spoke various dialects of Yiddish, a language formed of High
German, New Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Slavic elements, and written in
the Hebrew alphabet.
The adjective Sephardi (Hebrew, meaning Spanish, but initially the name
of a biblical location, Sepharad) originally referred to the Jewish communities
that had evolved in Spain in the eighth century (following the Moors’ conquest
of that country) and later in Portugal. Nowadays, in its narrow sense, the word
denotes the descendants of those Jews who had lived in the Iberian Peninsula
before they were expelled or forcibly converted in the late fifteenth century. In
a broader sense, the word Sephardi can also refer to Jews living in North Africa,
Western Asia, Southern Europe, and some other regions, as well as their descen-

23. (page 36) The fishmonger
Meyer Kon in Jablonka, a town
in Poland’s Bialystok district,
in 1927. In 1921, Forverts
(Forward), an important Yiddish
daily in New York, commissioned Alter Kacyzne (1889,
Vilna–1941, Tarnopol), the
photographer of this picture,
to take photographs of the
everyday lives of Yiddishspeaking Polish Jews. Kacyzne
was a well-known Yiddish poet,
journalist, and photographer,
of whom about 700 photo
enlargements of his Forverts
pictures survive.

[ 40 ]

ASHKENAZI JEWISH CUISINE

dants, who follow Sephardi liturgy and customs. Many of them used to speak
Ladino, a Judeo-Spanish language. The term Sephardi is also frequently—
though incorrectly—used for the descendants of the ancient Near Eastern
communities that once existed in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Yemen, and other parts
of the region. Mizrachi (Hebrew, meaning Eastern) Jews is another name
frequently used for some of these communities. In the broadest but also the
most imprecise sense of the term, however, Sephardi can also signify all nonAshkenazi Jews.
Throughout the centuries, these two different cultures existed in separate
regions, more or less living separate existences. Sometimes, people belonging
to these contrasting traditions harbored prejudices against each other, and
mixed Ashkenazi-Sephardi marriages were rare. Of course, the two groups and
their cooking showed a great deal of regional variety, but the general differences
separating the cuisines of Ashkenazi and Sephardi cultures were even more
important. These differences were primarily due to the dissimilar climate and
the differences in locally available vegetables, fruits, and animals.
Ashkenazim lived mainly in regions with a cold climate, in which energyrich dishes—usually cooked with chicken or goose fat—were the most appropriate. In addition to potatoes, which became popular in the late eighteenth
century, their cooking typically involved onions, garlic, cabbage, carrots, as well
as freshwater fishes, primarily carp. Large areas where the Jews lived were
landlocked, and in such regions herring was the only saltwater fish that was easily
available. Herring could be transported without refrigeration in barrels filled
with strongly salted brine, therefore it was cheap even in areas far away from the
ocean.
Sephardim, on the other hand, mainly lived in warmer climates, and
tomato, eggplant, zucchini, peppers, rice, cracked wheat, olive oil, and saltwater fish were prominent in their cooking. According to Claudia Roden,
“There were few cases where the two worlds overlapped geographically, and
when they did, it was a matter of one culinary culture taking over the other—
there was no fusion of styles, no Ashkenazi-Sephardi hybrids, and no unifying
element.”34
For example, in the Balkans, Ashkenazim adopted Sephardi cooking styles,
while in Amsterdam the descendants of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews who
had moved there in the late sixteenth century switched to the Ashkenazi style.
One of the few exceptions to this trend is the macaroon, which Ashkenazim
learned to make from Sephardim, who in turn had probably adopted it from
the Moors in Spain. Fish in walnut sauce—once one of the most popular dishes
among Hungarian Jews—probably also shows Sephardi influence. While the
repertoire of dishes and cooking styles of Western, Central, and Eastern

European Ashkenazi Jews has a great deal in common, Sephardim lived in
geographically far more dispersed areas with more dissimilar historical and
social traditions, and as a result their cooking varied more widely from region
to region.

A SHORT HISTORY OF ASHKENAZI CUISINE

As mentioned, Ashkenazi culture evolved in the Middle Ages in Germany and
northwestern France, especially along the river Rhine, but migrating Jews
carried it to other regions of Europe as well. The basic idea behind a number
of Jewish dishes goes back to some of the oldest religious writings, the Torah
and the Mishnah, but the courses they mention differ greatly from their
present-day form, and probably no Jew today would recognize the ancestral
cholent, which the Mishnah requires to keep “covered and warm” (Hebrew:
tomnin et ha’hamin) for the Shabbat.

24. Women in Białystok, Poland,
take the dishes of cholent to the
community oven at the baker’s
in 1932. Photographer unknown.

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ASHKENAZI JEWISH CUISINE

25. Jewish fishmonger and his
customers at the market of the
town of Kalisz, in central
Poland, just before the holidays
in September 1930. The woodframed fishing net of the
merchant is near the bottom
of the picture, in front of his
balance scale. He used this net
to lift live fish from his water
container or bag. This picture
by a photographer called Engel
appeared in Forverts, a New
York Yiddish daily founded
by Yiddish-speaking socialists
in 1897. Most of the Jewish
immigrants to the United States
after the 1870s came from
Eastern Europe. Between 1880
and 1924, around two million
Jews immigrated to the United
States, many of whom used
Yiddish as their primary
language. By 1930, the newspaper had a circulation
of 275,000 and was one of the
most important dailies in the
United States. In the 1920s and
the early 1930s, the editors sent
several photojournalists to
Eastern Europe, especially to
Poland, but also to Transylvania
and eastern Slovakia, to take
photographs of Jewish daily life
there. Today these photographs
count as highly important
documents of Jewish lifestyles
once existing in Eastern Europe.

During the Middle Ages, Jews grew grapes and produced wine, as this was
the only way to secure kosher wine for themselves. Rashi (1040–1105),
a famous rabbi from Troyes, in northern France, lived in part from the money
he earned with his vineyard. While German Jews in this period laid greater
emphasis on religious studies than on culinary pleasures, their French and
Italian co-religionists were not so one-sided. Written records from twelfth- and
thirteenth-century Germany, France, and Austria mention meat pies favored
by local Jews. Slightly more recent documents mention floden, a flat cake of
curd cheese between two dough layers. The ancestors of the various kinds of
noodles—which Franco-German Jews of the Middle Ages usually fried or baked
instead of boiled—came from Italy, and the Yiddish names for some of them
(grimseli, vermesel, verimselish) were derived from the same Latin word as the
Italian vermicelli. In addition to noodle courses, thick soups, legumes, cabbage,
fish, meat and bread were the most common foods of the Jews, though poorer
Jews existed mainly on soups and gruels. In the thirteenth century, Rabbi Meir
ben Baruch of Rothenburg mentioned that vegetable soup and some kind of
dumpling were common foods among southern German Jews, although he
does not specify which kind. His pupil, Rabbi Moses Parnes, wrote about a
mush, which he called Brie (Brei in modern German). German Jews frequently

ASHKENAZI JEWISH CUISINE

used onion and garlic in their cooking. This was most likely an ancient
tradition, since the Mishnah refers to Jews eating garlic, which they considered
an aphrodisiac, on Friday evenings (Ned. 8:6), and the Talmud also lists it
among the pleasures of Shabbat (Shab. 118b). Indicative of its later popularity
is the fact that a fifteenth-century Turkish Karaite scholar became annoyed
with his Ashkenazic students, “who eat their dishes prepared with garlic, which
ascends to their brains.”35 Not only German Jews liked garlic, but—according
to a 1916 newspaper article by Ede Vadász—their Hungarian brethren, too:
“Jews have always been very fond of yellow onion and garlic, the latter one in
part since they considered it to be an aphrodisiac. József Szinnyei on page 1074
of the second volume of his Hungarian Dialect Dictionary (Magyar Tájszótár)
records that some people called garlic ‘Jewish bacon.’”36
Medieval Jews in northern Italy and France had a more varied cuisine than
Jews in Germany. Hamin (Hebrew: “warm”), a Shabbat casserole cooked on
Fridays from whole grains, chickpeas, onions, and pieces of meat and kept
warm for Saturday lunch, evolved from the Middle Eastern dish harisa (a kind
of porridge that is unrelated to the nearly identically named harissa, a chili
paste) in the Sephardi culture of Spain, and migrated from there to Provence
in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. French Ashkenazim renamed the
dish tsholnt, and this was the start of the triumphal march of one of the most
characteristic Ashkenazi dishes, cholent. Soon, Jews living in other regions of
Ashkenazi culture, such as Germany and Bohemia, adopted this course and its
newly minted name. Cholent, schalet, scholet, and the Hungarian sólet—the
ways this dish is called in the Ashkenazi world—are all variants of its original
French name.
In sixteenth-century Venice and Rome, as well as in some other places, Jews
who had previously lived in communities less isolated from dominant society
were forced into separate quarters. In addition, ghetto-like communities also
existed elsewhere, such as Prague and Frankfurt. At about the same time, Joseph
ben Ephraim Karo (1488‒1575), based on earlier sources, put together a
collection of rules, called the Shulchan Arukh (Hebrew: “prepared table”),
which included religious guidelines for Jewish cooking and meals. Since these
rules reflected Sephardi customs, Rabbi Moses Isserles (c. 1520‒1572) in
Cracow published an edition of this work with notes indicating how Ashkenazi
practices differed from it. These rules exerted a great deal of influence on the
Ashkenazi way of living, not only in Poland, but elsewhere, too.
Several typical Shabbat dishes evolved in Germany: braided barches or
berches (Rabbi Elchanan Kirchan mentions it at the end of the seventeenth
century),37 sweet-and-sour fish, gefilte fish (stuffed fish), chopped liver, boiled,
marinated meat, and kugel (in Hungarian: kugli), a dumpling or pudding made

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of noodles or bread with added eggs and fat, originally baked in the same dish
as the cholent, but later in a separate dish.
The migration of Jews from Central and Western European countries to
Poland and Lithuania, which had been happening for some time, accelerated
in the fourteenth century, when those countries, in an effort to develop their
towns and cities, granted various privileges to attract migrants, including Jews.
As a result, Jews who had previously been persecuted in and frequently expelled
from numerous parts of France, Italy, and Germany, now settled in this region.
Several additional measures by Polish rulers in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries further increased this migration. From the early sixteenth century,
ever more Jews settled in Lithuanian and Ukrainian territories, where, in
addition to other occupations, they made their living as managers of
agricultural properties owned by Polish nobility and as lessees of their flour
mills, taverns, and sometimes even of their lands. In addition, they worked as
merchants, glazers, tanners, and soap makers, to name only a few of the ways
they earned their livelihood. They lived in cities, such as in Cracow, and in
towns, the so called shtetls (Yiddish: town; plural: shtetlach), where sometimes
the majority of the inhabitants came from their ranks. It is interesting to note
that a large number of Polish Jews worked in the food and hospitality industry;
they leased flourmills, dairy factories, distilleries, and taverns. They also farmed
fish—mainly carp and pike—in ponds.
By 1772, more than 95 percent of East European Ashkenazic Jews lived in
the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Between 1772 and 1795, the Commonwealth was partitioned and absorbed into the Austrian Empire, the Russian
Empire, and the Kingdom of Prussia. Overpopulation in Galicia (a region in
southeastern Poland and northwestern Ukraine, annexed by the Habsburg
Empire in 1772) intensified migration to Hungary, the Romanian lands, and
the Russian-ruled territories. Migrants took with them their cooking styles and
traditions, which left a mark on the cuisine of the Jews who had been living in
those lands for some time. With the partitioning of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, the largest Jewish population in the world now lived in
Russian-ruled areas, the Kingdom of Poland (a region controlled by the tsars
but not formally annexed to the Russian Empire) and the Pale of Settlement, a
zone of forced residence established in the former Polish territories. Not everyone
living in this zone was Jewish, but Jews represented a significant part of the
population, and in some small towns they were the majority. As the Russian
Empire expanded, especially to southern Ukraine, Jews were permitted and at
times even encouraged to move to these newly acquired regions.
Before the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, hardly
any Jews had lived in Russia, so the Russian Jewish population consisted of

ASHKENAZI JEWISH CUISINE

descendants of people from the Polish and Lithuanian territories. Because of
this, but also because of the similarities in climate and culture, there were many
shared features in the cuisines of Russian and Polish Jews, especially among
Jews who used to live in eastern Poland, which now belonged to Russia. All of
them liked dark brown rye bread, pickles, chicken soup, beet soup, other
substantial soups, cabbage, root vegetables, onion, as well as dumplings, filled
pasta (kreplach), and sweet noodle pudding (lokshen kugel). They were also fond
of carp and herring, and after the 1830s also of potatoes, which until then had
not been part of their diet. While in earlier times honey had been the main
sweetener, with the establishment of sugar refineries in the first half of the
nineteenth century in areas where the sugar beet was an important crop—such
as Silesia (today’s southwestern Poland), the location of the world’s first beet
sugar refinery, as well as Galicia and certain regions of Ukraine—sweetish
flavors came to be much favored. In northern Poland and Lithuania, however,

[ 45 ]

26. A matzo maker in Lida
(Poland, Nowogródek province)
in 1926. Photograph by Alter
Kacyzne for Forverts (Forward),
a New York Yiddish daily.

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ASHKENAZI JEWISH CUISINE

27. A schieber (Yiddish: “slider,”
meaning an oven loader) is
balancing four freshly baked
round matzot on a pole as he is
transferring them to the cooling
rack visible in the lower right
corner of the photograph. The
unbaked matzot hang on a pole
behind his head. H. Bojm took
this picture in Żyrardów, central
Poland. It was featured in an
April 1929 issue of Forverts
(Forward).

people did not follow this fashion, and sour dishes, such as sauerkraut, remained
popular. Some of the other dishes that Jews in Ukraine and Russia liked were
cooked buckwheat kernels (kasha), small pancakes made of buckwheat flour
(blini), various kinds of beet soup (borscht), and filled savory turnovers made
of yeast or other types of dough (Yiddish: piroshkes, Russian: pirozhok).
As mentioned, a significant number of Ashkenazic Jews moved east between
the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, but starting from the second half of the
seventeenth century, many of them decided to return to Western and Central
Europe because Prussia and Austria abolished or eased some of their former
anti-Jewish measures. As a result, new economic opportunities opened up there
for the Jews. Due to migration and natural growth, the Jewish population
continued to grow not only in these countries, but also in Hungary, Bohemia,
and Moravia, especially during the eighteenth century, when the ideals of the
Enlightenment gradually reduced the prejudices against them. By the end of

ASHKENAZI JEWISH CUISINE

the eighteenth century, due to the annexation of Galicia in 1772 and of
Bukovina in 1775, the Habsburg Empire had the world’s second largest Jewish
population after Russia, and this remained the case until the end of the
nineteenth century. Industrialization kept accelerating the process of urbanization: from the middle of the nineteenth century, many Jews migrated to
Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Warsaw, where increasing modernization
and closer contact with the dominant society gradually affected their culture
and cuisine.
In the ethnically diverse Habsburg Empire, the culinary culture of the Jews
incorporated many local influences. It was shaped, for example, by the French
orientation of Viennese cuisine and its large variety of pastries, cakes, and other
desserts, such as flourless tortes and filled doughnuts. It was also influenced
by Hungarian specialties (such as strudels, rolled from paper-thin sheets of
dough that the Hungarians learned to make from the Ottoman Turks during
their occupation of the country), the many different kinds of dumplings of
the Czechs, the potato salad of the Austrians and Germans, as well as the
djuvece of the Serbs, which was probably the ancestor of lecsó, a Hungarian
vegetable stew of onions, tomato, and sweet peppers. In Vojvodina (today a
province of Serbia), Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Transylvania, Jews adopted from
the locals Southern Slavic-, Turkish-, and Bulgarian-influenced dishes and
ingredients, such as eggplant and roasted or baked sweet peppers, foods that
were rarely consumed by Jews or Gentiles in other parts of the Habsburg
Empire. Jews mainly used goose fat in cooking and baking in northern France,
western Germany, and regions of the Austrian Empire, while in eastern
Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and the Baltic States they primarily used
chicken fat.
While in earlier times simple, rustic dishes had been dominant in Jewish
cooking, a special version of cuisine bourgeoise (middle-class cuisine) evolved
among some Jews as a result of their modernization, urbanization, and increasing wealth. This, however, hardly affected the way poor people ate. The
Jewish middle classes mainly ate more refined versions of the traditional Jewish
and local Gentile courses, and only rarely developed new types of preparations,
such as flódni, a pastry specialty for Purim, which was a nineteenth-century
Hungarian invention.
These examples show how Jewish cuisine managed to reconcile its loyalty
to tradition with openness to all sorts of new influences. In the following pages,
I will examine how the cooking of Hungarian Jews reflected these historical
changes and cultural influences.

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3
Hungarian
Jewish
Cuisine
Seventeenth-Century Sephardi Influence
Nineteenth-Century Gastronomic Writers
Handwritten Recipe Collections
Nineteenth-Century Cookbooks
Early Twentieth-Century Pioneers of Jewish Ethnography
A Turn-of-the-Century Recipe Competition
Food and Increasing Secularization
Cookbooks in the First Half of the Twentieth Century
Post-1945 Cookbooks about Prewar Cooking
Some Characteristics of Hungarian Jewish Cuisine
Food and Hungarian Jewish Identity
Hungarian Influence on the Jewish Cuisine of Other Countries

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

Jewish cooking is the triumph of taste,
necessity, and cunning. Its accomplishments
deserve to rise to interreligious validity
and international significance.
– Adolf Ágai, 189539

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SEPHARDI INFLUENCE X

W

hile we know very little about Hungarian Jewish cuisine before the
nineteenth century, the manufacturing of kosher wine is documented from as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The reason why we have older and more numerous information about kosher
wine than about Jewish food is due to the fact that making such wine was an
industrial activity, which had to be regulated and which could produce many
disputes, while home cooking, aside from questions related to its kosher nature,
counted as private affairs, not worthy of recording. Collections of responsa
(centuries-old rabbinical answers to religious questions) can sometimes offer
fragmentary insights into what Jews ate in some European countries before the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, since they contain decisions as to the
kosher nature of a cooking ingredient or a dish. But unfortunately, such early
responsa written by Hungarian rabbis don’t include information about this.
Although the earliest description of the ingredients Hungarian Jews used in
their cooking is from the seventeenth century, for a long time after that we have
no information about their dishes and customs related to food preparation and
eating. The description mentioned comes from Isaac (Yitzhak) Schulhof (c.1650,
Prague–1733, Prague), who moved from Prague to Ottoman-occupied Buda in
1667, and became one of the leaders of the Jewish community there. In his
Megillat Ofen (Buda chronicle), an extended work written in Hebrew, he records
the story of Buda’s recapture from the Ottoman Turks by the Austrian troops in
1686. Although much of it is about the fight and about Schulhof ’s vicissitudes
during and after the battle, he also gives a brief account of the way Jews lived in
Buda before the siege, including the foods they could buy.
“At the time [in 1678/1679] I lived in Buda’s holy community,” Schulhof
starts his account. “The city was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, and
our settlement there was flourishing, like a green olive tree, secure and peaceful
—we could really say: every man could sit ‘under his vine and under his fig
tree,’40 there was no harm in the country. Food was so cheap that no one who
hears it would believe it: a pound of meat of a fattened cow cost four pennies,
and they asked eight pennies for a pound of fattened goat or fully grown sheep,
but that piece was so marbled that one could hardly see the redness of the meat
from the whiteness of the fat. And the innumerable kinds of fish of various

28. (page 48) The front cover
of Mrs. Rafael Rezső Hercz’s
Jewish cookbook, published
in 1899 in Budapest. (Detail
of Fig. 40)

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sizes were also incredibly cheap! We could buy a big pint of wine from the
merchant for two Imperial garas [small change], but if someone had a winepress
and thus could make his own wine, a pint of it didn’t cost more than at most
three or four fillér [pennies]. And all those vast quantities of fruit and all the
kinds of sweets!—and all of them so cheaply that the chronicler is hardly able
to tell or record it.”41
It would be even better if Schulhof had written not only about the foods
used by the Jews of Buda, but also about the dishes they cooked. Nevertheless,
even in its present form this vigorous, engaging description is wonderful, and
for a long time it remained unique in the Hungarian Jewish context. It is almost
as if its author had been an experienced newspaper reporter: his account smells
of life. Schulhof describes the price of foods and several other details of daily
existence, and he is able to bring his account to life for the reader with the help
of such vivid images as the goat meat which “was so marbled that one could
hardly see the redness of the meat from the whiteness of the fat.” Of course,
today people wouldn’t like such fatty meat, but he clearly considered it desirable.
It is interesting to learn from him that in those years the meat of goat and fully
grown sheep (mutton) cost twice as much as beef. Schulhof probably refers to
the winepresses of Buda Jews when he writes about self-made wine, so perhaps
this can be considered as an early mention of kosher wine. It appears to
contradict this, however, that according to other sources, Ottoman authorities
threatened decapitation for using wine even for Jewish rituals.42 While the
quotation from the chronicle mainly lists cooking ingredients, perhaps the “all
kinds of sweets” refers to things available at a kosher bakery or gingerbread
maker, otherwise Schulhof, a religious Jew, wouldn’t have bought them. In that
age, nearly all Jews were religious and kept kosher households, but in the case
of Schulhof this is supported by many passages in his text. His relatives were
also religious: his mother was the daughter of Samson Bacharach, a rabbi in
Prague and later in Worms, and his father-in-law was the famous Rabbi
Ephraim ha-Kohen (1616‒1678), the head of the Buda community. According
to the occupations listed in Ottoman tax registries there was always a Jewish
butcher (in Turkish: kasab) in Buda, and most probably a shochet, ritual slaughterer as well.43
We also learn a bit about Schulhof ’s household in Buda, since he writes
about the servant working for them. “For long I had a Christian servant girl
with us, whom I bought from a Turk: she was his captive and one of those
Gentiles whom they [the Turks] had captured during their siege of Vienna.
This young female servant liked my whole family and was loyal to my house,
since I didn’t treat her strictly and made her do only housework. She soon
became familiar with the Jewish religious rules concerning cooking and its

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

pots.”44 The chronicler also tells how this servant saved his life when, during
the recapture of Buda, Schulhof became a prisoner of the Austrian Imperial
troops. All this very much reminds me of the frequently intimate relationship
between Christian servants working at Jewish families and their employers and
how well such servants knew the Jewish customs and dietary rules. In addition,
it makes me recall that although Christian servants were no longer allowed to
work for Jewish families during the last years of World War II, many of them
remained loyal to their former employers and sought to help them in all kinds
of ways, for example, by hiding family members from the pursuers or by
safekeeping their valuables. It is not clear from Schulhof ’s text whether he
spoke Hungarian, but in addition to Yiddish and Hebrew he certainly knew
German, since he uses a few such words in his writing and he must have
conversed in this language with his Christian servant, a native of Vienna.
He also writes about baking bread and about the baking ovens in the houses
of Jewish families when he describes how the Jews in Buda were forced to work
during the holiday of Rosh Hashanah. While it is forbidden to cook and bake
on Shabbat and Yom Kippur, on Rosh Hashanah and the other holidays—
when all other work is prohibited—one is allowed to cook, but only for that
day and for the family. The event he describes in the following quotation presented the Buda Jews with an awful dilemma, since they were forced to bake
bread for others, which is not permitted on such holidays. “Eight days before
the holiday of Rosh Hashanah in the year of 444 [1684] the army of our ruler,
the emperor—may his glory increase—suddenly attacked the Ottoman troops.
… And our ruler’s army fought with them, and killed lots of people from the
Ottoman army. … When this news reached the city of Buda, all the inhabitants
there were overcome with great dread, fright, fear, and terror. Rosh Hashanah
is a holy day of our Lord, but we were forced to quickly obey a command,
according to which when anyone—regardless whether Jew or Turk—doesn’t
bake throughout the day as much bread as the oven in his house can
accommodate, he would be executed. And we made bread, so that when
people, who hadn’t been killed by sword, return from the battle, they should
be able to refresh themselves with a bite of bread.”45
Both before and during the Ottoman occupation, Buda’s Jewish population
largely consisted of German- and Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim. In the course
of the nearly 150 years of foreign rule, however, many Jews relocated to Buda
from other regions of the Ottoman Empire, primarily from the Balkans. Those
people were mainly Sephardim, and the “small” or “old” synagogue in today’s
Táncsics Mihály Street was probably theirs. Today there is an exhibition in this
restored prayerhouse. During the long decades of occupation, the Buda Jewry,
consisting of approximately a thousand people (roughly 700 Ashkenazim and

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300 Sephardim), was the largest Jewish community of Hungary. At the time
the country was divided into three sections: a part under Habsburg rule, another
area under Ottoman rule, and the semi-independent Principality of
Transylvania. Jews in Buda ate mostly dishes similar to the ones consumed by
their German, Bohemian, and Austrian brethren of the period and described
in the previous chapter. But the substantial Sephardi minority probably also
influenced their cuisine, since some responsa by Rabbi Ephraim ha-Kohen
indicate that they kept in close touch with the Ashkenazi majority, and on rare
occasions the two groups even prayed in each other’s synagogues.46
But during the country’s liberation from the Ottomans much of its population ran away or was killed, and those foreign Jews who came to settle in
Hungary in the eighteenth century and later were almost exclusively Ashkenazim. As a result, in later centuries only small groups of Sephardim existed
here and there in the country. All this contributed to the strong Ashkenazi
dominance in the way Hungarian Jewish cuisine evolved after the Ottoman
occupation. It displays almost no Sephardi influence, which is perceivable only
in some parts of Transylvania and in those regions of southern Hungary that
now belong to Serbia and Croatia. This is by no means contradicted by the
contention of Hassidim in the northeastern regions who claimed to be
Sephardim on the basis of their liturgy, but who in reality were Ashkenazim
by origin and whose cooking completely reflected that tradition.
In the seventeenth century, however, the Sephardi influence must have been
significant, as both the goat meat and mutton mentioned by Schulhof and the
lamb and goat meat referred to in another, nearly contemporaneous document
about the Jews seem to indicate. These documents leave the impression that
dishes made with such meat must have been common among the Jews of the
period. To my knowledge, until now nobody has realized how different this is
from Hungarian Jewish cuisine of later centuries, in which—similar to the
European Ashkenazi repertory of dishes—courses made with goat meat and
mutton have been rare or completely absent. Although lamb dishes do occur,
they are not nearly as common as those made with beef, veal, or poultry.
The document that reinforces this impression of seventeenth-century
Sephardi influence in Hungarian Jewish cooking is a letter written by Count
Kristóf Batthyány (1637‒1687) on April 16, 1681. We learn from it that such
influence wasn’t confined to Buda, since the Count was writing about the Jews
of the distant town of Rohonc (Rechnitz, Austria). In this letter he confirms his
agreement with the Jews living on his property, thus falling under his
jurisdiction, that they may slaughter calves, lambs, and goats. “We hereby
acknowledge our agreement with our Rohonc Jews that they are free to kill
calves, lambs and goats in exchange for a yearly payment of forty forints.”47 In

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

a roughly contemporaneous passage from the tax register of the Rohonc properties of the Counts Batthyány, local Jews refer to lamb as an important part of
their diet: “We are paying for the permit to kill calf and lamb for our own use.”48
Several Hungarian Jewish cookbooks document the absence of goat meat
from the local Jewish cuisine of later centuries and the rarity of mutton in it.
For example, Mrs. Aladár Adler’s 1935 cookbook, which features a very large
number of recipes, doesn’t include any for goat and only five for dishes made
with mutton or lamb, much less than for courses using poultry or beef. The
cookbook Mrs. Ábrahám Ganz published in 1928 in Dés, a Transylvanian
town, goes even further: it not only excludes all dishes made with goat, but
those with mutton and lamb as well. The book Old Jewish Dishes by Zorica
Herbst-Krausz also doesn’t feature any such courses.
While such dishes were rare among Hungarian Jews in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, mutton and lamb were some of the most popular kinds
of meat in Sephardi culture, like among the Jews of Turkey, Morocco, Egypt,
and the Balkan countries, although in the twentieth century the consumption
of the stronger tasting mutton became less common even in those regions. Jews
living in North Africa and in certain parts of the Near East were also fond of
goat meat, and even in Italy kid (baby goat) chops (capretto per pesach) were
one of the traditional Passover dishes. In the cooking of Ashkenazim, however,
goat meat hardly ever could be found, which isn’t contradicted by the frequent
depiction of goats in Chagall’s pictures, since Russian and Ukrainian Jews kept
the animal for its milk, not its meat.
All this proves that in the seventeenth century Hungarian Jewish cuisine
was influenced by not only the Ashkenazi style of cooking, but by the Sephardi
way as well—although this influence soon disappeared after the Ottoman
occupation, and it has been replaced by the culinary traditions of the Austrian,
Bohemian, Moravian, Galician, and Ukrainian Jews who migrated to Hungary
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
But a few Sephardi communities continued to exist even after the seventeenth century, especially in Transylvania: in Gyulafehérvár and Temesvár (Alba
Iulia and Timişoara, Romania). In the nineteenth century a small Sephardi
community also existed in Pest. Its members were descendants of Jews who
had migrated from the Ottoman Empire to Hungary, and they even had a synagogue at 35–37 Király Street, where they prayed according to their own rites.
The maternal great-grandfather of the writer, journalist, and magazine editor
Adolf Ágai (1836‒1916) and his bride were such Turkish-born Jews, who
settled in Pest in the eighteenth century and opened a shop selling eastern
import items. Ágai mentions a Sephardi dish in his recollections of him, which
according to Ágai was one his great-grandfather’s favorites. “The nights before

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[ 57 ]

holidays one could hear old Castilian and Andalusian songs in addition to
pious chants and zemirot (religious songs) around my great-grandfather’s table,
on which a spinach-filled national pastry was especially popular.”49 This might
have been boreka (or burek or börek), a half circle-shaped and baked or fried filled
pastry turnover of Turkish origin, though also known elsewhere in the Sephardi
world. In most cases its dough was made with olive oil, and the turnover itself
could be of large or small size and could have different fillings, mostly savory
(for example: vegetable, feta cheese, or chopped meat), but sometimes also sweet.
The spinach-filled versions were called borekas de espinaka.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY GASTRONOMIC WRITERS

Unfortunately, the next surviving account about the cooking of Hungarian Jews
is from about 150 years later, from the middle of the nineteenth century: it was
written by Moritz Gottlieb Saphir, born in 1795 in Lovasberény, a small town
in western Hungary. When he wrote it, he had been living in Vienna for decades,
and that was where his German-language piece, called Die Gastronomie der Juden.
Eine Jugend-Erinnerung (Jewish gastronomy: Recollections of my youth), was
printed in 1856.50 It describes how Vogl’s Jewish restaurant in Vienna makes
him recall his memories of Jewish food. Saphir—who was fluent in many
languages and lived in several countries in the course of his life—mentions only
in one instance where he ate a dish, but based on the title of his piece it is
reasonable to assume that he is recalling most of the courses from his youth in
Hungary, where with some interruptions he lived until age 26. Although he
converted to the Lutheran faith in 1832, he was familiar with kashrut rules and
with the customary dishes of Jewish holidays, since he had grown up in a
religious family and studied in the yeshivas of Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia) and
Prague, as his father wanted him to become a rabbi. The piece, written with
palpable love and good-natured irony, mainly deals with typical Shabbat dishes:
with the fish course, the cholent egg, the cholent itself, the dumpling that cooked
in the cholent pot, the kugel, and the stuffed goose neck.
After the introductory section of his recollections, he describes how some
“modernized” Jewish fish courses on restaurant menus remind him of his
preference for old-fashioned Jews and their traditional dishes, those that are
authentic. In his opinion, it is better if a Jew remains true to his origins and
proudly proclaims: “I am Jewish!” Of course, Saphir, who converted to another
religion and who—according to the editor of a collection of his writings—was
a “perfect gentleman” in both dress and behavior,51 wasn’t much different from
those “walking stick Jews” whom he mocks in his article for bending this or

29. Moritz Gottlieb Saphir (1795,
Lovasberény–1858, Baden,
Austria), the author of the
earliest study of Hungarian (or
at least presumably Hungarian)
Jewish food. A lithograph by
Josef Kriehuber, an Austrian
painter, from 1835.

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that way to suit changing circumstances and whom he contrasts with the
steadfastness of authentic Jews. But Saphir was an unusually complex, contradictory personality, in whom the desire to adapt himself to modern society
didn’t preclude the love of traditions and at the same time the condemnation
of overdone assimilatory strivings in others. It is easy to be shocked by this,
but I can’t condemn Saphir’s inconsistency, since—if in a less extreme form—
at times I, too, have similarly mixed feelings concerning the question.
He writes about the fish dishes so important in Jewish cuisine, first of all
about the “sour fish” in which raisins, almonds, walnuts, and gingerbread
temper the sourness. But he intends all this to be merely an introduction before
a more detailed presentation of the Shabbat courses, which in his opinion are
the true “Jewish national dishes.” Saphir, who left Judaism, mocks himself by
claiming that these are dishes only a genius can describe, a Jew enjoy, and
a meshummad (Hebrew: “apostate”) appreciate.
Among the courses of the Saturday midday meal he first describes the
cholent egg and its divine—or as he says “mysterious”—aroma. Saphir’s cholent
egg is very different from those I know, since it is not cooked the usual way,
placed among the ingredients in the cholent dish, but baked separately in a
tightly covered clay pot, in which the egg is surrounded by ashes. This can’t be
a misunderstanding, since he even specifies that if the cover of the pot doesn’t
close tightly, one could seal it with soft dough pressed around the lid. The pots
of the cholent egg and of the cholent itself are placed in the communal Shabbat
oven on Friday, well before sunset, and they are only removed on Saturday,
before the midday meal. Saphir doesn’t serve his cholent egg together with the
cholent, which is the usual way, but as a separate course before it. According
to him, when people peel the egg prepared this way it turns out that it has
shrunk to about half the size of a boiled egg and has gotten slightly wrinkled
and brown, while its flavor has grown more concentrated. I should try it
sometime, since it sounds interesting.
The cholent described by him is also unusual, at least nowadays, since it is
not made with beans but with dried peas. “Cholent is the union of the classical
with the romantic: we take classic barley and romantic peas, combine them
the same way as Tieck and Franz Horn [early-nineteenth-century German
romantic poets and writers, both of them well-known Shakespeare experts]
blend Shakespeare and themselves, then add a big piece of smoked beef. People
place this dish in the communal Shabbat oven on Friday, naturally after mixing
some fat and garlic into it, and they let romanticism and classicism blend there
until Saturday noon, to absorb the basic ideas from the smoked beef, and thus
become a system that we call cholent.”

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

Pea Cholent (Erbsen-Schälet)
From Sarah Cohn‘s cookbook, published in 1888 in
Regensburg, Germany. Around 1900 her book was also
brought out in Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia), at that
time part of Hungary.52
Comment: Her description of the dish is in part based
on a recipe included in Therese Lederer’s Germanlanguage Jewish cookbook, published in Pest in 1876.
Of course, it is possible that both versions follow
a recipe from a third cookbook.
We make this the same way as the cholent of beans, but
instead of dried beans we use dried peas and instead of
finely chopped suet we use a good-sized piece of beef

with a piece of garlic sausage [made of beef]. Naturally,
for each types of cholent [her book also includes
recipes for bean cholent and rice cholent] we can use
the fat and meat of our choice. We can also mix rice,
barley, etc., into the different cholents. In such cases,
however, we should follow the procedure included in
the rice cholent recipe, only that those variations
require more fat.

Saphir also offers an account of the kugel, one of cholent’s traditional side
dishes. But even here he isn’t presenting the better known type, made of pieces
of bread (or noodles or potato) mixed with flour, fat, and eggs, and baked either
in the cholent dish or—more frequently—in its own round pot. Instead of these
well-known versions, he describes a much simpler one in which a fat piece of
beef is laid over a dumpling made of flour mixed with chicken fat. This type
of cholent dumpling, made without eggs, was usually called a ganef rather
than a kugel. Although he mentions that his kugel developed its unique aroma
while it was baking in the communal oven, it is unclear from his description
whether the dumpling was baked inside the cholent pot, like the ganef was
in most cases, or separately. He was not alone to call a ganef-like cholent
dumpling a kugel: some nineteenth-century German Jewish cookbooks, for
example Rebekka Wolf ’s (fourth edition, 1865, Berlin) and Flora Wolff ’s
(1888, Berlin), did the same. Saphir describes his kugel as sphere-shaped, and
although the kugel could indeed be roughly ball-shaped, like a large dumpling,
if it was placed in the same pot with the other ingredients of cholent and baked
with them, a round version baked separately in a special pot was far more
common. He makes an ironic reference to the anti-Semites who frequently
accuse the Jews of cowardice, and in the little story he invents about this he
amusingly plays with the double meaning of the word kugel, which in German
can be both the name of the dish and the word for a sphere or a cannonball:
“People earlier used to doubt the courage of Jacob’s descendants in the battle

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and accused them of being afraid of the cannonball [die Kugel ]. This is the
reason why Jews confront the kugel on each Shabbat with courage and quiet
confidence.”
He then uses the term ganef for a completely different type of cholent
dumpling, which Saphir, who was best known as a humorist, wittily calls the
illegitimate child of the cholent and the kugel. This has some truth to it, since
the ganef can indeed be similar to the kugel, though eggs, typical ingredients
of kugels, are missing from it. Its Yiddish–Hebrew name means a “thief,”
because it absorbs (that is, “steals”) the flavor of foods baked with it. Saphir’s
ganef is a filled dumpling, which is baked in its own pot placed in the cholent
oven. Like some other dishes he describes, this one is also different from the
usual preparation: in his version it is the outside layer of dough that “steals”
the flavor, the aroma of the filling, made of rice, beans, goose breast, goose
liver and other delicacies. While his variation, made with expensive ingredients,
is a sort of “upper-class thief,” all the other ganefs I know are unfilled, elongated
dumplings made of coarse semolina or flour with the addition of chicken fat,
spices and a little water, which are then placed directly on top of the cholent
in its pot, and baked that way. Finally Saphir mentions the stuffed goose neck
(called gefilte helzel or halsli in Yiddish), which was also a frequent course at
the Saturday midday meal. His version of it is filled with a mixture of coarse
semolina, flour, and fat, but other, more luxurious kinds also existed, like the
one in which the filling includes goose meat and goose liver.
Chronologically the next significant writing about our subject is by Adolf
Ágai (1836‒1916), a writer, humorist, journalist, and magazine editor, who
was a highly popular author of his age. Although we have a few other magazine
articles and studies from the late nineteenth century about Hungarian Jewish
cuisine, even some cookbooks and handwritten recipe collections, but before
I would get to them I wish to examine Ágai’s journalistic essay, since it is conceivable that its inspiration came from Saphir’s Die Gastronomie der Juden from
nearly forty years earlier, which his piece—published in 1895 with the title
Jewish Cuisine: For the Education of Anti-Semitic Gourmets 53—in some ways
resembles. Although Saphir and Ágai created significant works in other literary
genres, both of them were primarily known as humorists. The assimilated Jew
Ágai was hardly religious and Saphir converted to another religion, but they
both knew traditional Jewish life well, which they viewed with some nostalgia
on the one hand, and from which on the other hand they wished to keep their
distance. It is an interesting fact that humorists wrote the two earliest and most
significant studies about Hungarian (or, in the case of Saphir, presumably
Hungarian) Jewish dishes. Both authors used a mildly ironic voice in their
pieces; perhaps they tried to temper their nostalgia through this and avoid the

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

30. Adolf Ágai (1836,
Jánoshalma–1916, Budapest).
Photograph by Ferenc
Kozmata from around 1875.

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Apple Kugel (Apfelkugel)
From the recipe collection of Mrs. Bernát Berger, née Teréz
Baruch, which she started to write in 1869.

unsalted butter or pareve margarine, 1 teaspoon unsalted
butter or pareve margarine (for the top of the kugel)

Comment: People ate apple kugel, also called schalet or
apple shalet, not as a side dish to cholent (like most other
kugels), but separately as a dessert, mostly on Saturdays,
especially during the Shabbat before Purim. Gentiles must
have also liked it, because it was primarily for them that
Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935) included it under the name
of “schâleth à la juive” in his Guide Culinaire, his classic
work on French cooking, first published in 1903. My
reconstruction is based on the traditional apple strudel
recipe (although I make a much smaller portion of dough
than my great-grandmother) and on similar fillings used
in other recipes of her collection. Instead of rolling up the
dough with the filling spread on it and then bending this
to fit the round kugel form, I decided to line the form with
the dough and encase the filling with it, because this is
a little easier to make and can be cut into segments like
a torte.

Preparation:
1. Place sliced apples, sugar, and lemon juice in a large
bowl, mix them well, let them rest for at least ½ hour, but
preferably 1 or 2 hours. The apples will release liquid.
2. Place flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food
processor and pulse to blend. Add egg, oil, wine or
vinegar, and 1 tablespoon water. Process it for about
30 seconds. If the dough doesn’t form a ball on top of the
blade, add more water by the ½ tablespoonful and
process it very briefly to incorporate the water. It should
be slightly softer than pasta dough. As soon as the dough
forms a ball, transfer it to a lightly floured work surface
and knead it for 3 to 5 minutes until it is satiny smooth
and elastic. If it is sticky, knead in a little flour. Flatten the
dough into a 1”-thick disc, wrap it in plastic, and let it rest
for at least ½ hour.
3. Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 350°F. Grease
a 7” soufflé dish and line it with parchment paper.
4. Wipe out the bowl of the food processor. Place ¼ cup of
the walnuts and 2 tablespoons sugar in the bowl of the
machine and process until the nuts are finely ground. Add
the remaining ¼ cup nuts and pulse briefly a few times to
coarsely chop them. Heat ½ tablespoon butter or
margarine in a heavy skillet, add bread crumbs and lightly
brown them while continuously stirring. Pour the
approximately ¼ cup liquid produced by the apples into

Tanslation of the original German-language recipe:
Make a strudel dough from two Halbe [twice 3 cups or
0.7 liter] flour [about 2 lbs in total], then fill it as you
would an apple strudel, with the exception that the sheet
of dough shouldn’t be as thin as in a strudel. Spread the
filling over the sheet of dough and then roll it up, but not
quite as loosely as a strudel. Place this in a well-greased,
paper-lined kugel form [this was a round clay pot] and
bake it.
Updated version:
Ingredients (for 8 servings): 4 Golden Delicious apples,
peeled, cored and cut into ¼” slices, ⅓ cup sugar,
2 tablespoons lemon juice, 1⅓ cups flour, 1 teaspoon
sugar, ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 large egg, 2 tablespoons canola
oil, 1 tablespoon white wine or 1 teaspoon distilled white
vinegar, 1 to 3 tablespoons water, 1 teaspoon unsalted
butter or pareve margarine (to grease the dish), ½ cup
walnuts, 2 tablespoons sugar, ½ tablespoon unsalted
butter or pareve margarine, ½ cup fresh bread crumbs,
½ cup golden raisins, 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest,
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 2 tablespoons melted

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

a small saucepan and boil it down to a thick syrup. Pour
it back into the bowl of apples; add walnuts, toasted
bread crumbs, raisins, zest of lemon, cinnamon, and
melted butter. Mix them together.
5. Unwrap the dough and place it on a lightly floured work
surface. With a floured rolling pin, roll it out into an about
17” diameter circle. Periodically during rolling, lift up one
side of the dough, throw a little flour under it, and give
the dough a quarter turn to make sure it doesn’t stick.
6. Loosely roll up the dough circle around the rolling pin
and unfurl it centered on the soufflé dish. Lift up the
edges of the dough to gently lower the middle part into
the dish so that it completely covers the bottom. Let the
edges of the dough hang over the side of the dish. Fill the
dough with the apple filling, leaving any liquid in the
bowl, and tap the filling down. Fold the overhanging part

of the dough to almost enclose the kugel, leaving a small
vent hole in the center. If the dough flap is slightly short
on one side, you can gently stretch it to required size. Dot
it with 1 teaspoon butter or margarine cut into small
pieces. Cover it with parchment paper cut to size.
7. Place the dish on a baking sheet and bake it in the
preheated oven for 25 minutes. Remove the parchment
paper cover and bake the kugel for another 20 to 25
minutes or until the top is slightly browned at places but
is still quite light overall. Set the dish on a rack and allow
it to cool for 15 minutes. Unmold it onto a large plate and
place an inverted serving plate on top. Holding the kugel
between the 2 plates, flip it over so the serving plate is on
the bottom. Let it cool to lukewarm before slicing. Serve it
lukewarm or at room temperature. It can be served with
raspberry syrup or a fruit sauce.

threat of sentimentality. But it is also possible that they merely followed in this
respect the conventions of the feuilleton, lighthearted observations or comments on daily life, one of the most popular journalistic genres of the period,
which had been introduced to Hungary primarily by Jewish authors.
Saphir focuses on the typical Shabbat dishes, but Ágai, in addition to dealing with those courses, also writes about baked goose liver and some of the
foods customary during Passover. Like Saphir, he mentions pea cholent: “This
has its fans, too, and one must admit that it brings out the aromas of the
smoked meat better than the version made with beans.” Nevertheless, bean
cholent was Ágai’s clear favorite, which in his experience was baked at home
and not in the communal oven, like in Saphir’s piece. He describes its preparation in some detail: “On Friday afternoon the Jewish woman poured beans
into the pot, filled it up with water, stuck a fat piece of smoked beef into the
midst of the beans, sprinkled it with some paprika, added sliced onions to it,
hid a few uncooked and unshelled eggs among the ingredients, and finally
sprinkled a little flour over everything. She placed the covered pot in the breadbaking oven under the big kitchen range, in which the cobs and peat (or wood
in the forested regions) had already burnt to ambers. Then she sealed the oven
door airtight with soft dough pasted around it, which the maid would remove
only the next day at noon. So that was how the cholent started its happy bubbubling, how it cooked, steamed, or ripened, and how long all this took. …
Only a mouth that tasted it is able to praise its spice and aroma. And like all

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other plentiful pleasures, this, too, is followed by languor. Under the cholent’s
leaden weight the body collapses onto a sofa and lets its lifeless limbs hang
down all the way to the carpet, since it is impossible to eat only a little of it.”
Ágai is a determined cholent purist: “Sometimes they mix barley into it. But
this is a falsification of the pure bean style. … It doesn’t even accept goose meat
well. Only smoked brisket is appropriate in it, which at the same time provides
it with desirable fat.”
Ágai describes the cholent egg too, but, unlike Saphir, he bakes it the usual
way in the cholent pot. He also writes about the chopped eggs made of it,
which he considers to be of Galician origin and which he likes less than when
the cholent egg is cut into segments. “The Jews from the Counties of Ung,
Bereg, and Máramaros [at the time in northeastern Hungary, today in Ukraine
and Romania]—if they can afford it—follow the example of their Galician
brethren and chop the peeled egg, mix it with chicken fat, pepper and minced
onions, and dilute it to an egg mush, which one must get used to in order to
like it. The eggs are best when cut simply into segments and served with salt
and paprika.”
Of the various kugels he includes the lokshen kugel, a variety made with
noodles, though he either omits or forgets to mention the beaten eggs typically
added to the cooked noodles before baking. “We boil noodles, made by cutting
fairly hard pasta dough into broad ribbons, and for a sweet kugel we add raisins,
tiny grapes, almonds, and cinnamon before rolling the noodles into a ball,
while for a savory version we substitute the raisins, etc., with ground pepper
and lots of goose fat.”
He briefly touches upon the ganef and the stuffed goose neck, but what he
writes about matzo meal and the Passover dishes is even more interesting.
“There are other miracles created by the Jewish woman from twice ground
flour [i.e. matzo meal]: tortes, doughnuts, pies, etc. In addition, using sheets
of matzo doused with hot milk she can make túróscsusza [farmer cheese
noodles], from which only the fried bacon bits [typical ingredients of túróscsusza] are missing. … It is worth mentioning that although religious Jews can’t
eat rabbit, the Jewish home cook is able to make a version of vadas nyúl
[marinated hare in puréed vegetable sauce] from Easter lamb, which she prepares the same way. She is no less inventive when she, in full observance of
kashrut rules, douses a roast with sour cream—which she made from the emulsion of almonds.”
Ágai’s piece first appeared in Egyenlőség (Equality), a Jewish weekly. Samu
Haber (1865‒1922), the assistant editor of the magazine, who later changed
his name to Sándor Komáromi, decided to complement it with his own
article,54 in which he describes some of the typical Jewish dishes missing from

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

Ágai’s study. Similar to Saphir and Ágai, Haber wasn’t a practicing cook, and,
as a result, all three occasionally err in the specifics of how the dishes were
prepared, but this matters little considering the documentary importance of
their writings.
Haber first describes flódni (a pastry made with four different fillings
between five layers of dough) and kindli (another kind of pastry filled with
either walnuts or poppy seeds) which were traditional desserts for Purim and
Simchat Torah. The pastries he presents are similar to the ones made today,
though Haber also mentions a round, torte-like version of flódni, a pastry that
is always cut into rectangular slices nowadays. A cookie he calls kijachli is less
common these days. According to him, people made it from a dough
consisting of eggs, sugar, flour and a little fat or oil, and they sprinkled its top
with granulated sugar. Together with the previously mentioned pastries, these
cookies were one of the typical sweets given as presents at Purim. He also
mentions krenczli (better known as pepper krancli or feferbajgli), “a pastry
made of fat-rich and peppery short-dough, which is shaped into a ring.” In
many families it was served with wine during the night after a child’s
circumcision and also after dinner on Fridays. He rhapsodizes about fish in
walnut sauce, a favorite course of evening meals on Fridays and the eve of
other holidays. “Our dear modernized brethren rather don’t go to the
synagogue than to give up their fish in walnut sauce. Who makes today such
a sauce from bread and flour paste? It has no equal anywhere but in Jewish
cooking.” Following this, he sings the praises of apple kugel: “My God, is there
any mortal who doesn’t like apple kugel, this non plus ultra wonder made of
equal parts of apple and flour paste?” Finally, he writes about the goose ganef,
a dish I haven’t come across in other sources: “Oh, thou thighless pelvis of
geese, covered with a thick layer of fat. You should open slits in yourself, so
that a mixture of ground pepper and flour could be pushed into them! The
cook should stick you into soupy cholent. She shouldn’t set you on a fire so
hot as to make you loose your ambrosia and collapse, all shrunken, into your
own ruins! You should come to my table accompanied by cholent eggs, so that
you could inspire and strengthen me!”

HANDWRITTEN RECIPE COLLECTIONS

Of the thirty-three handwritten recipe collections known to me from the period
before 1945, the one Mrs. Bernát Berger, née Teréz Baruch (1851, Győrsziget–
1938, Budapest), my great-grandmother, started to write in 1869 is probably
the oldest. The only reason why I can’t be sure of this is because there are two

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A Good Meat Soufflé (Ein gutes Fleischkoch)
From a late-nineteenth-century manuscipt in the
collection of the Hungarian Jewish Archives. The German
text of the manuscript is written with Hebrew letters.
Allow two bread rolls to soften in almond milk. Place it
on the range and cook it well. Add to it a little fat, then

let onions brown in the fat. Chop the meat and cook it
under cover in the fat. Then mix in the two soaked rolls,
two whole eggs, salt, pepper, [ground] nutmeg,
[unreadable], sugar, and two whipped egg whites. Mix
all this well. Grease a dish and bake the mixture over
a slow fire.

Cooked Black Fish (Gute schwarze Fishe zu sieden)
From a late-nineteenth-century manuscript in the
collection of the Hungarian Jewish Archives. The second
edition of the Jewish cookbook written by Marie
Kauders and published in Prague in 1890 includes
a slightly different version of the same dish. Based on
it, I corrected the cooking sequence of the recipe in the
manuscript, which was a bit garbled.
Take a Halbe [3 cups, 0.7 liter] beer, a little vinegar,
a few bay leaves, a little thyme, cloves, cinnamon,
pepper, salt, allspice, garlic, celery, and parsley. Allow

all this to cook well in a tin dish. Now place the fishes
in it, add a little vinegar, so that they turn black, and
allow them to cook well until they soften, then remove
the sweet [fresh water?] fishes. Strain the beer and the
spices, then make a sauce from this liquid. Mix into it
some walnuts, a nice portion of sugar or honey, and
a little butter. Place this [sauce] on the range, and when
it boils add the [removed] fishes to it, and allow them
to cook a little, so they blacken, too.

undated manuscripts of recipes in the collection of the Hungarian Jewish
Archives, which are also from the nineteenth century, and so conceivably they
could be a little older than her collection, though most probably they postdate
it. Among the other handwritten recipe compilations I managed to locate there
are one or two that are from the end of the 1890s, but all the others are from
the twentieth century. I received the majority of them from descendants of
Budapest families that no longer kept kosher, which is understandable if we
consider that in Budapest, where most of the survivors come from, the majority
of the Jews didn’t observe kashrut rules before World War II. Most of the
Orthodox and Hassidim in Hungary lived in the provinces, from where nearly
all Jews were deported and murdered in 1944. So the notebooks I gathered
unfortunately don’t give a balanced picture of the dishes the various groups of
Hungarian Jews prepared in different parts of the country, but we must be
happy that at least a few recipe collections survived the destruction.

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

I am familiar with the contents of only one of the two manuscipts in the
Jewish Archives, since the other one, which contains solely desserts, remains
unpublished and untranslated. The one I know was translated by Bettina Kiss,
who provides a detailed description of it in her M.A. dissertation.55 The collection consists of thirty-three recipes and its age can be surmised not only
from its language (it is in German spelled with Hebrew letters, and this became
very rare after the turn of the century) but also from the recipes’ old-fashioned
units of measurements, which are more or less identical with those used by my
great-grandmother. These measurements became obsolete around the end of
the nineteenth century, which makes an earlier date probable. The vast majority
of the recipes in the manuscript are for preserves, fruit juices, and desserts, but
there are some for savory soufflés and main courses, too. Judging from the
recipes, the person who wrote them must have kept a kosher household: for
example, in the meat soufflé she recommends using almond milk (made by
soaking ground almonds in water and then straining the liquid) instead of
cow’s milk, which would be prohibited in a fleishig dish.
When my great-grandmother Teréz Baruch (called Riza by her family)
started gathering recipes into a notebook in 1869, she was an unmarried young
woman living in her parents’ home in Győrsziget, a small town in western
Hungary. Their store, located in the same building, sold ribbons, embroidery,
laces, and sewing accessories. Although she knew Hungarian well, she wrote
the recipes in German, since—similar to most middle-class people of the town
—this was the language her family preferred to speak at home. The notebook
contains more than 130 recipes, and to my great luck not only desserts—like
the majority of similar collections—but also soups, appetizers, main dishes,
and side dishes, probably because Riza wanted to write down her mother’s
recipes so that she should be able to cook from them after her marriage. It is
also most fortunate that her collection includes many typically Jewish specialties: cholent, three different kinds of kugel, matzo balls, matzo torte, matzo
fritters, and a lot more. Judging from the units of measurements used, she must
have written most of the recipes not long after 1869 or at least no later than
the turn of the century. The last few, however, seem to be from the 1920s, since
she continued using her notebook until her death in 1938.
Since almost certainly Riza’s mother, born in 1818, dictated at least the first
few dozen recipes, the contents of the notebook display an even more antiquated style of cooking than what was common when it was written. It is a sign
of its archaic character that dried ginger is the most frequently used spice in it,
while paprika can only be found in a few recipes near the end of the notebook.
Even there, the pinch of paprika was merely used as a coloring agent and not
for its flavor. Paprika started to become the dominant spice used in Hungarian

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31. Teréz Baruch (1851,
Győrsziget–1938, Budapest) in
c. 1870, at about the time when
she started writing her
notebook of recipes. Photograph by the widow of J.
Skopall, a photographer with
studios in Győr and Magyaróvár,
both in western Hungary.

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[ 69 ]

Sweet Butter Biscuits (Édes vajas pogácsa)
Nineteenth-century recipe from Mrs. Fülöp Berger,
née Regina Kauders.
25 dekas butter, 50 dekas flour, 12 dekas vanillaflavored confectioners’ (powdered) sugar, grated zest
of 1 lemon, 2 egg yolks, a pinch of salt, 1.5 dekas fresh
yeast fermented in a little lukewarm milk, and baking
soda to fit the tip of a knife. One should knead all this

with as much sour cream as it takes to make a dough
that is slightly harder than a strudel dough, then roll
this out three times and let it rest. Finally roll it out
finger thick, cut it into rounds [with a cookie cutter],
coat the top with whipped egg whites, and sprinkle it
with sliced almonds and granulated sugar. Bake it on
a buttered baking sheet at moderate heat.

cuisine only in the first half of the nineteenth century, so much so that
eventually they hardly used other seasonings aside from salt and black pepper.
From the Middle Ages up to then, however, dried ginger had been one of the
most common spices in Hungary. By my great-grandmother’s time, however,
it was somewhat passé, and these days it seldom appears in local cooking. Some
traditional Jewish courses, for example, matzo balls, however, continue to be
seasoned with dried ginger, at least in Hungary. The complete absence of
tomatoes from the dishes in her collection is also a sign of its archaic cooking
style. The tomato—originally from Peru—was imported into Spain in the sixteenth century. Though it appeared in Hungary not much later, it was
considered an ornamental plant and became popular in cooking only at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Hungarian Jews started to cook with it
even later, and then only in dishes adopted relatively late from Gentile cooking
and not in the traditional Jewish courses, none of which include tomato. Potato
dishes also became widely popular in Hungarian cooking only around 1800.
Riza’s collection seems to reflect this fact, since merely four of her recipes use
potato, and even those only in the form of a potato dough and not as
a vegetable cooked whole or cut into pieces.
Roughly contemporaneous with my great-grandmother’s collection are
those twenty-five dessert recipes which I have from Mrs. Zsigmond Deutsch,
née Júlia Pollak (c. 1850‒1925), Riza’s best friend and relative through marriage, who lived in Nagybecskerek (Zrenjanin, Serbia). In addition, my family
documents include a few recipes of Riza’s older sister, Mrs. Sándor Berger, née
Lujza Baruch (1848, Győrsziget–1927, Moson), in part in her own handwriting,
in part in copies by her daughter, Frida Berger, who included them in her own
notebook of recipes. The earliest recipe I have from my family, one for sweet
butter biscuits (édes vajas pogácsa), is also from Frida Berger’s collection, who

32. The table of contents and
first page of Teréz Baruch’s
notebook of recipes, which she
started to write in 1869. The
recipes are in German, because,
similar to many middle-class
people in western Hungary and
Budapest at the time, this was
the language of preference in
her family. Behind the recipe
collection we can see a photograph of her and another
notebook, in which she copied
her favorite poems and lyrics
of opera arias. Photograph by
Young Suh.

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HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

Matzo Fritters (Überzogene Matze)
Recipe of Mrs. Sándor Berger, née Lujza Baruch from
about 1880.
Translation of the recipe’s original German text:
Make a batter from 6 eggs, sugar, the same amount of
[ground] almonds as sugar, and 4 tablespoons of fine
matzo crumbs. Break the matzo into palm-sized
pieces, quickly pull them through some sweetened
white wine, lay the pieces one by one on your palm,
spread some batter on them not too thickly, and lower
the pieces, with their coated side down, into the hot
fat. Now, carefully coat their other side too, but it is
better to let the first side finish frying, before coating
the other side.
Updated version:
Ingredients (for about 12 pieces): 1 cup fruity white
wine, 2 tablespoons sugar, ⅓ cup raw almonds,
3 tablespoons sugar, 2 egg yolks, 3 tablespoons
unsalted matzo meal, 2 egg whites, 2 sheets of
unsalted matzo, each broken into 6 approximately
2”× 3½” rectangles, 3 cups canola oil, 2 tablespoons
confectioners’ sugar, ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon.
Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 175°F. Mix wine with 2 tablespoons
sugar in a soup plate. Place almonds and 3 tablespoons sugar in the bowl of the food processor and
process for about 20 seconds, until finely ground.
Place egg yolks in a medium bowl, add matzo meal and
ground almonds. Stir well to evenly moisten the dry
ingreadients and to break up lumps in the fairly dry
mixture.
2. Whip egg whites until they form firm peaks. Stir
about half of the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture,
then carefully fold in the rest of the whites.
3. Pour about 1” oil into a medium-sized pot and heat
it to 375°F. Reheat the oil to 375°F between batches.
4. Briefly dip a piece of matzo into wine, then with
a knife or spatula spread batter about ⅛” thick on one
side of the matzo. Repeat this with 2 more pieces. With
the batter side down, lower the 3 pieces of matzo into

the hot oil in one layer. Fry them for about 15 seconds,
until their coated side turns light golden brown.
Remove them with a slotted spoon or skimmer and
transfer them in one layer, batter side down, onto
a wire rack to drain while you dip, coat, and fry the
first side of the remaining pieces of matzo in batches
of three. Now, spread batter on the second side of the
first 3 pieces and lower them with the freshly coated
side down into the hot oil and fry them for about
15 seconds, until this side turns light brown, too.
Transfer them onto a cooling rack to drain for a few
minutes then to another wire rack set over a baking
sheet in the preheated oven to keep warm while you
fry the other pieces. Coat and fry the second side
of the remaining pieces of matzo in batches of three.
5. Arrange the pieces on a serving dish. Mix confectioners’ sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl, pour
the mixture into a small strainer and tap it over the
pieces to generously dust them with sugar. Serve them
as soon as possible, while they are still hot.

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

wrote next to the recipe’s title that it was from “grandmother Berger,” that is,
from Mrs. Fülöp Berger, née Regina Kauders (1813, Körmend–1892, Csabrendek, both in northwestern Hungary). This was by no means unusual: many
handwritten collections include recipes that the owner of the notebook received
from relatives and friends, and the owners frequently indicated the name of
the person who dictated them. Although all the previously mentioned recipes
are from religious Jews, there are few Jewish specialties among them, since the
collections mainly describe the preparation of widely known desserts. Júlia
Pollak’s dairy barches (challah) and Lujza Baruch’s matzo fritters are some of
the few characteristically Jewish preparations in these notebooks.
Of all the recipe collections I have from my ancestors, Riza’s notebook
contains the largest number of Jewish specialties, even more than a booklet
I inherited from her niece, Frida Berger (1882, Moson–1963, Budapest) that
is dedicated to recipes for Pesach and Purim. Frida, however, represented a later
generation, which no longer kept a kosher household and was only superficially
religious, as can be seen from the title of one of her recipes: “sugar pretzels for
the Christmas tree.”

Bread Kugel (Zsemlye kugli)
Mrs. Sándor Indig, née Antónia Törzs’s recipe from the turn of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
Mix 2 egg yolks, a little sugar, the juice of 1 lemon, a little ground pepper, 3 soaked
bread rolls, and a little fat. Then add 2 whipped egg whites. Grease a small pan,
sprinkle it with bread crumbs, and pour in the dough. Dot its top with lots of fat
and bake it.

Tomato Jelly
(Paradicsom-kocsonya)
Recipe of Mrs. Ármin Nádas from around 1925.
Cook a jelly from meat soup, lots of tomatoes,
a litttle lemon juice, white wine, salt and
pepper, and strain it through a paper bag.

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HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

Farmer Cheese Biscuits (Túrós pogácsa)
A recipe of Mrs. Mihály Grosz, née
Margit Schwarcz, from around 1915.
25 dekas sieved farmer cheese,
25 dekas flour, 25 dekas butter. Knead
this well, roll it out to finger thickness and bake it.

Of course, in addition to studying the recipe collections handed down in
my family, I also examined those which my research turned up from other
Jewish families. The oldest of them was written by Mrs. Sándor Indig, née
Antónia Törzs (1878, Győr, northwestern Hungary–1945, Budapest), the sister
of one of the best-known Hungarian actors of the early twentieth century.
According to a note on the first page of the booklet, she started copying the
recipes into it on October 16, 1895. Antónia was one of those assimilated
Jews who no longer obeyed kashrut rules. Although she lived in a fairly large
apartment and had a maid, so she was by no means poor, she prayed only at
home on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, because she claimed that she
couldn’t afford a seat in the synagogue. Though she wasn’t seriously religious,
and her husband even less so, her collection includes bread kugel, one of the
traditional Jewish side dishes served with cholent at Saturday midday meals.
Mrs. József Béres, née Teréz Klein (1892, Szatmárnémeti, today: Satu Mare,
Romania–1966, Budapest), whose recipe collection is from c. 1915, also ignored kashrut rules, though perhaps she followed the tradition of Purim gifts,
since one of her recipes is for kindli, a Jewish pastry frequently given as a gift
at Purim. A roughly contemporaneous notebook contains the recipes of Mrs.
Mihály Grosz, née Margit Schwarcz (1895, Siófok, west-central Hungary–
1947, Budapest). Her husband was a kosher butcher, the owner of a shop his
father had founded in 1880 at 7 Dob Street, in Budapest’s old Jewish quarter.
Although the shop sold only kosher meat, the recipes in the collection suggest
that she wasn’t keeping kosher at home. Mrs. József Schein, née Erzsébet
Löwentritt (1885, Budapest–1975, Budapest), the author of another collection,
is an example of those who kept their Jewish identity and celebrated the more
important holidays even after they had stopped observing kashrut rules. Her
continuing sense of Jewishness can be seen from the numerous recipes in
her notebook that are traditionally part of the Shabbat, Purim, and Pesach

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

celebrations, some of which (matzo farfel, scrambled eggs with matzo, matzo–
potato dumplings, and salon-kindli) I include elsewhere in this book.
A recipe collection from about 1925 displays an even higher degree of
assimilation, since it includes dishes made of rabbit meat, which is prohibited
by kashrut. The collection is worthy of attention not only since in addition to
desserts it contains a rich choice of soups, appetizers, main courses, vegetable
dishes, and salads, not to mention homemade ear drops against hearing loss,
but also for the person who owned it: Mrs. Ármin Neubauer (later she changed
her name to the more Hungarian-sounding Nádas), the grandmother of Tibor
Rosenstein, the owner-chef of one of the best restaurants in Budapest today.
Yet another recipe collection was written by Mrs. Gyula Spitzer, née Olga
Domber (1906, Olasz, southwestern Hungary–1992, Pécs, southwestern Hungary) in the 1930s. She was the mother-in-law of the late József Schweitzer,

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33. The recipe collection of Mrs.
Sándor Indig, née Antónia Törzs
(originally Bloch), into which she
started copying recipes in 1895.

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HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

34. The title page of the
collection of recipes Mrs. Ármin
Nádas (Neubauer) started to
write in about 1925. The motto on
the title page means: “The
shortest road to the heart leads
through the stomach.”

Hungary’s former chief rabbi. Originally she kept kosher, but in 1944 she gave
this up, then in 1951 she decided to start observing the dietary laws again. Her
parents were Neológ Jews (a branch of Hungarian Judaism promoting modest
religions reforms) who moved to Pécs when Olga was a child, and they opened
a general store there. On summer weekdays they frequently cooked summer
squash slaw in tomato sauce (paradicsomos tök), which they ate either cold or
hot. While cabbage in sweet-and-sour tomato sauce (paradicsomos káposzta)

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

was common throughout the country in both Gentile and Jewish families, the
version made with summer squash slaw was eaten mainly by Jews, and the only
recipe I know for it is from a Jewish cookbook. The Dombers kneaded their
own bread, but took it to the baker for baking. On most Fridays they served a
less labor-intensive lunch than on other days, for example, goose liver or goose
cracklings with home-fried potatoes, sautéed onions, and paprika. Friday
evening meals always started with fish, usually followed by boiled meat served
with a sauce. Midday on Saturdays they had cholent and halsli with either
flour-based or meat filling. They rarely ate beef, but between fall and spring
goose dishes were common on their table, including goose soup. Their kitchen
had only one cupboard, but they kept the pots and tableware for dairy and
meat separate in it.
Two collections of recipes from Vinkovci in Croatia mean a lot to me not so
much because of their contents—neither of them includes traditional Jewish
recipes—but due to the way they survived. Both were written by women who
perished as a result of the Holocaust. When Mrs. Ármin Borovic, née Margit
Schreiber, one of the few local survivors of deportation, first returned to Vinkovci
after the war, she discovered the recipe collections in a pile of thrown-out things
in front her neighbor Berta Baum’s ransacked home. Berta Baum copied her
recipes with neat, almost calligraphic handwriting into a thick notebook – her
collection is one of the most extensive known to me. I always choke up with
emotion when I hold this tattered book whose blue fabric covers became water
stained and delaminated when it was lying on the street in Vinkovce. It reminds
me of its owner’s terrible death and of the once-flourishing Jewish culture of
Vinkovce and so many other provincial towns and villages.

NINETEENTH-CENTURY COOKBOOKS

The first Jewish cookbook published in Hungary was written in German by Julie
Löw or Löv (the spelling on the second edition).56 It appeared in 1840, twentyfive years after the first Jewish cookbook in the world, created by Joseph Stolz
and published in 1815 in Karlsruhe, Germany.57 Stolz was the personal chef of
the Grand Duke of the State of Baden (Grossherzoglich badischer Mundkoch). In
addition to writing his Kochbuch für Israeliten (Cookbook for Jews), he was also
the author of another cookbook intended for Christian homes. He wasn’t Jewish
and, aside from not mixing dairy and meat ingredients, and having a separate
chapter for desserts to go with dairy menus (Mehlspeisen zu Milchspeisen), his
book has little Jewish character: all the specialties of this cuisine are missing from
it. As he writes in his preface: “I observed this cuisine in the homes of the most

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HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

35. The 1842 second edition
of Julie Löv’s Jewish cookbook,
written in German, originally
published in 1840 in Pozsony
(Bratislava, Slovakia). This was
the first Jewish cookbook written
by a Hungarian and published
in Hungary.

cultured Jews from this area, and after I had sufficiently gotten to know how they
prepared their dishes, I improved certain things in their methods [...] so that in
respect of taste the courses should meet the demands of a better class of
cooking.”58 Authenticity was clearly not Mr. Stolz’s top priority. One had to wait
another few decades even in Germany for a really useful Jewish cookbook, which
could teach readers how to make the characteristic courses of this cuisine.
Unlike Stolz, Löv was Jewish, but the defficiencies of her cookbook—
printed in Magyaróvár, northwestern Hungary, and published in Pozsony
(Bratislava, Slovakia)—much resemble Stolz’s. The title of her work is: Die
wirthschaftliche israelitische Köchin, oder: neues vollständiges Kochbuch für Israeliten. Ein unentbehrliches Handbuch für wirthliche Frauen und Töchter. Nach
vieljähriger Erfahrung herausgegeben von Julie Löv (The thrifty Jewish cook, or:
a new and complete cookbook for Jews. An indispensable handbook for hospitable women and daughters. Published by Julie Löv, based on her many years
of experience). The elaborate title promises a lot, but unfortunately the work
delivers little. The truth is that claims of the title notwithstanding, the book is
neither complete nor Jewish, at least not in the way it presents their cuisine.
It is roughly contemporary with the first Jewish cookbook in England,59
published in 1846, but while that work includes both Sephardi and Ashkenazi
dishes, in Löv—the same way as in Stolz—Jewishness is restricted to not mixing
meat and dairy ingredients. In a few recipes, though, she recommends
substitutions to dairy ingredients in the courses of a meat menu. For example,
she writes the following at the end of the recipe for minced carp (Faschirter
Karpfen): “For serving this in a meat menu we should use some fat instead of
butter and regular bread instead the dairy barches [challah], furthermore we
should leave out the cheese.” But we search in vain in the book for cholent,
kugel, gefilte fish, matzo balls, other Pesach dishes, or for typical Jewish desserts.
Not only are such recipes missing, but she is completely mum about the rules
of kashrut, the Jewish holidays, and the special requirements for preparing
Pesach meals. But judging from the fact that in 1842 it had a second edition,
the book must have sold well. It was distributed not only in Hungary and
Austria but in Germany, too, since the second edition was advertised in both
the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums (Jewry’s General Newspaper) in Leipzig
and the Allgemeine Zeitung (General Newspaper) in Augsburg. According to
an ad printed in the June 25, 1842, issue of the Leipzig paper, the work is
“stocked by all the bookstores of the Austrian Monarchy and one can order
it from abroad at Herr Ed. Kummer in Leipzig.” Even if Löv’s work leaves
a lot to be desired, this can’t detract from her accomplishment of publishing
Hungary’s first Jewish cookbook.

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

Unfortunately, I know nothing about Julie Löv except for her “many years
of experience,” which she mentions on the title page. She must have been Hungarian, since József Szinnyei lists her in his The Lives and Works of Hungarian
Writers (Magyar írók élete és munkái), the multivolume reference book he published between 1891 and 1914, but he fails to complement the listing with a
short biography, as he typically does with other authors. It also makes her
Hungarian origin likely that her book features a few dishes she considers typical
of local cuisine: gulyás meat (Ungarisches Gulaschfleisch), Hungarian-style diced
meat (Ungarisches Bröckelfleisch), a casserole made of sliced vegetables and
smoked beef tongue (Wurzelwerk auf ungarische Art), and a multilayer apple
dessert in which the apple filling is placed in between twenty-five very thin
sheets of dough (Ungarischer Äpfelkuchen). Notwithstanding her claim as to
the origin of the last two dishes, few in today’s Hungary would guess this from
the recipes alone. Authors of old cookbooks frequently copied recipes from
each other, and I managed to trace Löv’s Ungarischer Äpfelkuchen to the 1830
edition of István Czifray’s (actually: István Czövek’s) Hungarian National
Cookbook, where it is called Pesti almás kalács (Apple cake à la Pest). All Löv
did was to translate the Hungarian recipe into German.
In 1854 Pest was still a separate city, not yet united with its sister cities of
Buda and Óbuda to form Budapest. The Jewish cookbook published that year
in Pest (though printed in Vienna)60 is significant not only in Hungarian
culinary history but internationally as well, since this was the world’s first
Yiddish cookbook, predating the next such publication in Vilnius, Lithuania,
by more than forty years.61 Unfortunately, however, until now no study has
focused on it. True, it is included in Henry Notaker’s bibliography of Jewish
cookbooks between 1815 and 1945,62 and Bettina Kiss also mentions its title
in Zsidó gasztronómia Magyarországon (Jewish gastronomy in Hungary), her
2012 M.A. thesis, but not even Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a leading expert
in the history of Jewish cuisine, seems to know it, since in her article about
Jewish cookbooks (an entry in the 2007 edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica)
she claims that the 1896 Vilnius volume was the first such publication in
Yiddish. The neglect is to some degree understandable, since apparently only
a single copy of the 1854 cookbook has survived: it is in the library of the
University of Amsterdam. However, even Henry Notaker is not aware of its
existence, since in his recent, 2017 volume about the history of cookbooks he
writes the following: “There is unfortunately no known copy of this book, but
we know from the title that its aim was to give advice about kashrut, including
how to prepare the meat correctly.”63
The language of the book is the Pest version of Western Yiddish, which
was closer to German than Eastern Yiddish, once widely used by Jews in

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36. The title page of a Yiddish
cookbook, published in Pest
in 1854. This was the first such
publication in the world.

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HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

Eastern European countries, including some parts of Hungary, mainly its
eastern regions. Its publisher was the M. E. Löwy Company,64 a bookstore and
publishing house, founded in 1786, nearly seventy years before the publication
of this cookbook. It was one of Pest’s oldest—possibly the oldest—businesses
publishing and selling Jewish prayer books and other religious publications in
German, Yiddish, and Hebrew. It is, however, not quite accurate to say that
the store was in the city, since the beginning of today’s Király (King) Street,
where the company was located, was outside the old city wall—though not far
from it—so technically it wasn’t part of the city of Pest. Most of the building
that housed the company was taken up by an inn, called König von Engelland
(The English King), which gave the street its name. József Orczy, a nobleman,
purchased the building in 1795 and combined it with an adjacent large house
on today’s Károly Boulevard, which his family had owned for some time, to
create the huge, two-story Orczy House on the corner of Király Street and
Károly Boulevard, which was later, in 1829, further enlarged by the addition
of a third floor. Very soon nearly all the occupants of the Orczy House were
Jews, and this remained so until the demolition of the building in 1936.
In the last years of the eighteenth century this neighborhood was the commercial center of the city’s Jewry of slightly more than a thousand people. The
Jews’ Market, an open-air market, was here near the New Market Place (Új
vásártér, where today’s Deák Square is), and that was where the grain, cattle,
leather, fur, wool, cotton, and broadcloth merchants were selling their goods.
Nearly all Jews were religious in that age, and most of them probably purchased
their prayer books in M. E. Löwy’s store. In addition to prayer books, the company published works like an 1860 Hebrew–German dictionary of all the
words in the Torah by Alois Wolfgang Meisel, Pest’s chief rabbi, the fifth edition
of a German-language Jewish cookbook by Therese Lederer in 1884, and an

Fresh Cherry Soup (Kirschen Suppe)
From a Yiddish cookbook published in Pest in 1854. Larissza Hrotkó’s translation.
Pit one or two pounds of cherries. Cook a small spoonful of flour in a piece of
poultry fat or butter until it turns yellow, add the pitted cherries to this, and cook
them well under cover. Pour a mixture of half water and half wine over this, add the
grated zest of half a lemon, a little ground cinnamon, three pounded cloves, and
sugar according to taste. Brown bread roll pieces in poultry fat or on a grill, and
pour the cooked cherries over them.

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

exceptionally beautiful, illustrated Yiddish wall chart from 1899 about the
shocheting rules.
Pest’s Jewish population kept increasing and becoming more middle class
around the middle of the nineteenth century, and the Löwy company published this Yiddish cookbook for them and their brethren in other cities, such
as Pozsony and Vienna. Its title was: Nayes follshtendiges kokhbukh fir di yidishe
kikhe: ayn unentbehrlikhes handbukh fir yidishe froyen un tökhter nebst forshrift
fon flaysh kosher makhen un khale nehmen, iberhoypt iber raynlikhkayt un kashrut
(A new and complete cookbook of the Jewish cuisine: An indispensable handbook for Jewish women and daughters, with instructions for koshering meat
and separating challah, as well as for general cleanliness and kashrut). The
author’s name is missing from the title page, which in a cookbook usually
meant that it included recipes copied without permission from a foreign
publication. The publisher doesn’t even try to hide in his introduction that the
recipes came from other works: “... I took therefore the trouble of gathering
from the most recent and outstanding cookbooks the best, most healthy, and
tastiest dishes and their methods of preparation, and the the present little
volume is the result of that effort.”65
The work is not only evidence of the increasing number of middle-class
Jews—poor people had no money for cookbooks—but also of the fact that at
the time the vast majority of Jews in Pest could easily read Hebrew letters.
While in the first half of the nineteenth century a big share of this population
spoke Yiddish, in the second half of the century Hungarian or German became
the everyday language for many of them, and one could increasingly rarely
hear Yiddish in the homes and on the streets. Of course, religious Jews remained familiar with Hebrew letters, but with the growing desire to assimilate,
the number of people who knew Hebrew really well and could read it easily
probably decreased.
German phonetically written with Hebrew letters was one of the innovations
of the Jewish reform movements, and Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the
Torah, published in Berlin in 1779, was the first significant such work.
Mendelssohn, though, had completely different aims with his Torah translation
than the publishers in Pest, Prague, Vienna, and other cities had with their
publications written in local versions of Western Yiddish. While Mendelssohn
was trying to make it easier for Jews, who until then could only read Yiddish and
Hebrew, to become familiar with literary German, with Hochdeutsch, the
publishers of those cities had commercial goals in mind when they put out books
in Western Yiddish: they wanted to increase their business by making books
available for the users of this language. In the decades after 1850, however, the
proportion of Yiddish speakers declined in Pest’s Jewish population. Presumably,

Fish Soup
(Fisch Suppe)
From a Yiddish cookbook
published in Pest in 1854.
Larissza Hrotkó’s
translation.
Place a small piece of
butter in a dish with
a cover, add one onion,
parsnip, carrot, kohlrabi,
all of them diced or sliced.
Place this on coal [on
a range], add the head of
a pike or carp, and let it
cook under cover until it is
brown. Sprinkle a few
spoonfuls of flour over it,
allow this to cook a little
in the covered dish, pour
in as much pea broth as is
necessary for a soup, and
add a little salt and spice.
Following this, strain it
over toasted bread and
serve.

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HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

37. The title page of the Germanlanguage Jewish cookbook,
published in 1873 in Fünfkirchen
(Pécs) and Baja, two towns in
southern Hungary. The author’s
name is missing from the title
page – usually an indication that
most of the recipes were copied
from a foreign publication.

this explains why there was no need for a second edition of this cookbook and
why it remained not only the first, but also the last such publication in Pest.
Although the book includes chapters about the requirements of koshering
meat at home, the need to separate and burn a small piece of a larger batch of
dough, and the blessing that should be told over the piece, one can’t find in it
any information necessary for keeping kashrut rules and for preparing the
traditional foods for the various holidays. It contains no chapter, for example,
about the preparations for Pesach and the characteristic dishes of that holiday,
a subject most later Jewish cookbooks describe in some detail. I haven’t had
the opportunity to read the whole work, since I don’t know Yiddish and the
work unfortunately has been only partially translated, but judging from the
currently available parts (the introduction, the chapter about koshering meat,
the beginning of the section about soups, and the table of contents) it appears
that the most common traditional Jewish dishes are missing from the thin book
of only seventy-eight pages: we can’t find in it recipes for cholent, kugel, ganef,
matzo balls, and many other specialties of this cuisine. But this was not so
unusual, since—as we have seen—Julie Löv’s 1840 work also leaves out all the
traditional Jewish dishes. This cookbook nevertheless represents an improvement compared to Löv’s, since it writes about some requirements of the
Jewish cuisine, for example, about the koshering, while Löv offers no guidance
in this and other relevant subjects.
The majority of the recipes describe well-known dishes, but the volume also
includes some unusual ones. Of those, probably the kidney soup (Nierensuppe) is
the most surprising, since Ashkenazi Jews hardly ever ate kidney, though some
Sephardim didn’t object to it. Religious laws don’t prohibit eating kidney, and it
is possible—though not easy—to remove all the blood from it, nevertheless
Ashkenazim avoided it. Other offals—for example, liver, lungs, brain, sweetbreads,
spleen, tongue, and once in a while even tripe—do turn up in Ashkenazi cooking,
but I know only one other cookbook (Bertha Gumprich’s 1896 work, published
in Trier, Germany) that includes a kidney dish. But it must have been consumed
in Talmudic times, since the Babylonian Talmud includes the following passage:
“A three-year-old calf used to be prepared for Rabbi Abbahu on the termination
of the Shabbat, of which he ate a kidney” (Shab. 119b).
The book Die wirthschaftliche israelitische Köchin, oder: neuestes geprüftes
und vollständiges Kochbuch (The thrifty Jewish cook, or: the newest tested and
complete cookbook),66 published without the author’s name in 1873 in the
southern Hungarian cities of Pécs and Baja, shares many characteristics with
Löv’s work of thirty years earlier: the volume is in German, it lacks all the
traditional Jewish dishes, and it offers no guidance for obeying kashrut rules
or preparing for Pesach. It also resembles the earlier book in the inclusion of

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a few Hungarian-type dishes (beef, lamb, and turkey pörkölt, which were dishes
consisting of meat pieces cooked with onions and paprika). But since this 1873
work offers little new, I don’t examine it here in detail.
Far more substantial and original is Therese Lederer’s German-language
cookbook, published in 1876 in Budapest.67 Compared to the previous works
it represents a huge step forward, since in addition to a large selection of other
dishes it also features some of the important traditional Ashkenazi specialties:
bean cholent, rice cholent, pea cholent, meat kugel, bread kugel, lokshen kugel,
matzo kugel, chremsel, matzo fritters, barches, and meat tzimmes. The Jewish
pastries flódni and kindli are missing from the book, but this can be easily explained with the fact that they became popular only in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century. The work includes chapters about koshering, kitchen
furnishings, and equipment required by kashrut. In addition, it describes the
preparations for Pesach, the table setting for Seder, and the preparation of
poultry, fish, and vegetables for cooking. So the promises of its long title don’t
seem to be exaggerated: Koch-Buch für israelitische Frauen. Gründliche Anweisungen, ohne Vorkenntnisse alle Arten Speisen, vorzüglich die Originalgerichte
der israelitischen Küche, auf schmackhafte und wohlfeile Art nach den RitualGesetzen zu bereiten. Nach 30-jährigen Erfahrungen gesammelte u. geprüfte
Recepte für junge Hausfrauen, Wirthschafterinnen und Köchinen, zusammengestellt
von Therese Lederer, geb. Krauss (Cookbook for Jewish women: Thorough instructions for how to prepare, without any prior knowledge, all kinds of dishes,
primarily the original dishes of the Jewish cuisine thriftily and in a tasty way
while observing the ritual laws. Recipes collected and tested in accordance with
her 30 years of experience by Therese Lederer, née Krauss, for young housewives, housekeepers, and cooks). Mrs. Lederer offers recipes for some dishes,
which she considers to be in the Hungarian style: scallion sauce, tomato
chicken, chicken pörkölt, grilled breast of veal with tomato sauce, veal paprikás
with tiny dumplings, gulyás meat, mutton with green beans, Hungarian carp,
apple-filled dough layers à la Pest (she borrowed this recipe from the cookbook
of Julie Löv, who in turn took it from an earlier Hungarian collection), polenta
(which she calls Kukurutz-Male, the German version of its Hungarian name:
kukorica málé), noodle squares with farmer cheese, sixteen kinds of strudel,
poppy seed- and walnut-filled pastry roulades (bejgli), and many additional
Austro-Hungarian specialties. Of course, she has to omit the customary sour
cream from the veal paprikás to make it conform to kashrut rules. Instead of
it, she sprinkles a little flour over the nearly completed dish, adds a little meat
broth, cooks this briefly, and then enriches this sauce with a few egg yolks. It
doesn’t resemble the usual paprikás, but sounds good. Jewish specialties and
Hungarian-style courses, however, represent only a minority of the nearly 550

38. The title page of Therese
Lederer’s Jewish cookbook,
published in German in
Budapest in 1876.

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Rice Cholent with Goose Giblets
(Reis-Schalet mit Ganseljungs)
From Therese Lederer’s Jewish cookbook, published
in German in Budapest in 1876.
Place a broad piece of bone in the cholent pot
to keep the food from getting burned. Follow
instruction no. 7. for pretreating ½ kilo rice. (This
instruction: Soak the rice for a short time in cold
water, [drain,] then pour boiling water over it, dry it
by spreading it on a sieve, and rinse it with cold
water.) Place the rice together with the wellcleaned goose giblets or with a fat hen in the pot.
Now add salt, water, and onions to them, and
proceed according to the recipe for bean cholent.
(The relevant section from that recipe: Cover the
pot. Place it Friday afternoon in the cholent oven,
and remove it first at Saturday noon, for the midday
meal. In many big city neighborhoods separate
cholent ovens exist, while in smaller communities
certain bakers accept the cholent pots.)

recipes in her book: most of them describe dishes of a less ethnic character,
which she adjusted to conform to the laws of kashrut.
Mrs. Lederer perhaps felt it necessary to explain in her book how one
should set up a kosher household and run it according to ritual dietary rules,
since in the last quarter of the nineteenth century the increasing assimilation
and the more middle-class lifestyle of many households made it less certain
that all young Jewish women were familiar with such things. As early as in
1856, Rebekka Wolf wrote the following in her introduction to the second
edition of her Jewish cookbook, first published in Berlin in 1853: “It isn’t rare
that a young woman has no chance to get acquainted with these religious
traditions in her parental home, and, as a result, she becomes most embarrassed
when she marries a religious man. This book will be especially useful for such
young women, since it can teach them all the requirements of a religious Jewish
household.”68
Judging from the numerous Hungarian dishes in her volume, Mrs. Lederer
was probably Hungarian, though it is surprising that József Szinnyei didn’t list
her in his comprehensive handbook of Hungarian writers. Unfortunately,

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I looked similarly in vain elsewhere for personal information about her. This
is puzzling, since she must have been known both in Hungary and abroad,
which can be seen from the fact that Sarah Cohn’s Jewish cookbook—published
in Regensburg, Germany—borrows a great deal from Mrs. Lederer’s work. Even
a quarter of a century later the first Hungarian-language Jewish cookbook is
still based on Mrs. Lederer’s work; in fact much of it is a mere translation of
her volume. It is understandable that these later works took her book as a
model, since her recipes are testimonies to her expertise. It also speaks for her
book’s success that the first edition in 1876 was followed by at least four later
ones. While Max Dessauer, a Pest publisher, was behind the initial editions,
the fifth one was brought out in 1884 by the same M. E. Löwy’s Sohn company
that thirty years earlier had published the first Yiddish cookbook. A 2011
German reprint edition made Mrs. Lederer’s work available again, thus
attesting to its lasting significance. I feel this outstanding work, which occupies
an important place in Hungarian gastronomic history and which can be used
even in today’s households, would deserve a Hungarian edition or perhaps
a Hungarian–German bilingual one.
Of the Jewish cookbooks issued in Hungary, Sarah Cohn’s work is the next
one I wish to present.69 She was a German and the first edition of her book
was printed in her homeland, but a publisher in Pozsony (Bratislava, at that
time part of Hungary, but today in Slovakia) also brought out her work in
about 1900, again in German. The work describes the rules for preparing meals
in harmony with kashrut, the required kitchen furnishings and equipment,
the way the table should be set for the Seder, and many other demands of
a kosher household. She must have been familiar with Mrs. Lederer’s work,
since—as I have mentioned—she borrowed a great deal from it. Cohn’s general
descriptions of the requirements for a Jewish household draw heavily on that
work, and her recipes for Jewish specialties are virtually indentical with the
ones in Mrs. Lederer’s volume. Hungarian recipes can’t be found in Cohn’s
book, but this is natural, since she was a German author whose work was first
published in Germany.
As is clear from all this, four of the first five Jewish cookbooks published
in Hungary were in German. These works were intended for the middle-class
and to a large degree urbanized section of Hungarian Jewry and not for the
huge number of poor Jews in the country, who mainly lived in rural areas and
preferred to speak Yiddish. Clearly, such people could afford neither the books
nor the dishes described in them. In those years most of the middle-class Jews
(like numerous non-Jews of that class) knew German, some of them even preferred to use it at home, and so the popularity of these works was in no way
diminished by the fact that they weren’t in Hungarian.

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39. The German author Sarah
Cohn`s cookbook, published
in c. 1900 in Pozsony (Bratislava,
Slovakia), at the time part
of Hungary.

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At long last in 1899 the first Jewish cookbook in Hungarian came out. It was
by Mrs. Rafael Rezső Hercz and its title was: Szakácskönyv vallásos izraeliták
háztartása számára. Beható utasítások, a melyek által mindenféle ételek, de különösen
az izraelita konyha ételei a legízletesebb módon elkészíthetők (Cookbook for the
households of religious Jews. Detailed instructions for the tastiest preparation
of all kinds of dishes, but especially those of the Jewish cuisine). The work must
have been popular, since in 1908 it was published again. Unfortunately, I wasn’t
able to find out a lot about Mrs. Hercz or Herz (the book’s cover has Hercz, but
in some documents her name is spelled Herz), only that her husband was
a restaurateur, the owner of a kosher reastaurant of citywide popularity that
for many decades functioned at 4 Váci Boulevard (today: Bajcsy-Zsilinszky
Boulevard). Later he led a coffeehouse operating on the ground floor of the
Erzsébet Square Kiosk, a large and beautifully ornate structure built in 1870,
where as late as in 1912 he was still listed as the lessee-manager.
When we study the wife’s book, on the one hand we can appreciate her
conscientious work and on the other her knowledge of German: most of the
recipes in the volume are translations from Therese Lederer’s work, of course
without any mention of their source. For example, the recipes featured in the
“Original Jewish Dishes” section of the book—bean cholent, meat kugel, rice
cholent, Polish kugel, and bread kugel—are all nearly identical with their
counterparts in Mrs. Lederer’s volume (and in Sarah Cohn, who also copied
them from Lederer). The only mistranslation I noticed is in the title of one of
those recipes, where Mrs. Hercz incorrectly translates Reis-Schalet mit Ganseljungs as rice cholent with young goose, since she doesn’t seem to know that the
word Ganseljungs means goose giblets. Like Lederer’s work, the one by Mrs.
Hercz includes some Hungarian recipes (tomato hen, chicken paprikás, chicken
pörkölt, veal pörkölt, veal paprikás with tiny dumplings, three versions of gulyás,
“Hungarian” carp, and seventeen different kinds of strudel), several of which
she borrowed from the earlier book, too. What’s more, a significant share of
the other recipes, such as brown soup, bread soup, French soup, and crushed
soup (tört leves), is also identical with the ones in the earlier volume, although
I must confess that I didn’t compare each and every recipe in both works. Of
course, it is quite possible that in addition to Julie Löv’s apple-filled dough
layers Mrs. Lederer also borrowed other dishes from earlier cookbooks. It is a
telling fact that Mrs. Hercz doesn’t call herself the writer of the book but the
person who selected the recipes: “Selected by Mrs. Rafael Rezső Hercz, née
Leonora Bauer, by relying on her many years of experience.”
This would be all right, if indeed it was she who compiled the volume. But
this is not at all certain. As the writer and gastro-historian András Cserna-Szabó
has also noticed, Ignácz Schwarz or Schwarcz (the spelling is different inside

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the book and on its cover), the publisher of the book, describes the work as
his own in the introduction, and he doesn’t even mention Mrs. Hercz: “The
demand caused by the lack of a Hungarian Jewish cookbook motivated me
when I decided to collect in this volume the dishes permitted in religious Jewish
life and to publish them, both for those who are used to simple but tasty home
cooking and for those who demand finer feasts.” In his introduction to the
second edition, he again writes about the book as his own work: “I know full
well that my work doesn’t reach the sought-for level of perfection, but I did
my utmost to improve this second edition by thoroughly revising it in order
to increase its usefulness.”
Strange, very strange. How could we know who wrote—or at least compiled
—this book, Mrs. Hercz or Ignácz Schwarz? By now it is unlikely that we could
unlock this mistery, but András Cserna-Szabó was probably close to the truth
when he wrote: “This could have happened here: the publisher in Király Street
sensed the demand for a Hungarian-language Jewish cookbook, so he pulled
out Therese Lederer’s—perhaps by then forgotten—book, let it be translated,
and then he tried to find a well-known Hungarian gastro-face for it, who could
make the ‘new’ book appear more authentic in the readers’ eyes. The wife of
the owner of one of the most famous Jewish restaurants in Budapest should
be authentic enough!—the publisher thought, and he made Mrs. Rafael Rezső
Hercz the author.”70 The reality, however, is even more complicated, since while
the bigger part of the work is indeed a translation virtually without any change,
it nevertheless includes a few recipes that can’t be found in Mrs. Lederer’s book.
But regardless of the uncertainties concerning the author and of the fact that
most of it was stolen from another book, it has the great merit of being the
first Jewish cookbook in Hungarian.
With this volume by Mrs. Hercz (or Mr. Schwarz? or someone else?) we
come to the end of the list of Jewish cookbooks published in Hungary during
the nineteenth century: merely six publications, and at least two of them not
even original works. This compares with eleven Jewish cookbooks published
before 1900 in Germany71 and nine in Britain. The difference is even greater
if we consider that, for example, Rebekka Wolf ’s work in Germany appeared
in no less than eleven editions before 1900, far more than its equivalents in
Hungary.72 In Britain, where in the middle of the nineteenth century Jews represented a much smaller share of the population but on the average were
somewhat better-off than in Hungary, Eliza Acton found it necessary in her
1845 non-Jewish cookbook (Modern Cookery for Private Families) to include
both recipes and advice on Jewish food. She also described how local Jews kept
or ignored the kosher laws. No Hungarian non-Jewish cookbook of the period
contained anything comparable. Presumably, most young Hungarian Jewish

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40. The front cover of Mrs. Rafael
Rezső Herz’s Jewish cookbook,
published in Budapest in 1899.
It was the first such publication
in Hungarian.

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women learned to cook from their mothers. In some of the more developed
countries, however, this situation had started to change by the middle of the
century as a result of a larger share of the Jewish population becoming middle
class, so there was a greater demand for cookbooks focusing on their cuisine
or at least devoting a short part to it, like in Miss Acton’s work.

EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY
PIONEERS OF JEWISH ETHNOGRAPHY

Before focusing on twentieth-century cookbooks, I would like discuss four
authors who wrote serious studies about the ethnography of Jewish cuisine in
the first years of that century. These days Bertalan Kohlbach is the best known
of them in Hungary, in part since a selection of his essays was reprinted a few
years ago, among them a 1914 piece about the ritual role of baked goods.73
But in my opinion the articles written about the subject by the now largely
forgotten Ede Vadász (originally: Weiss, 1842, Miskolc–1926, Budapest) are
equally, if not more significant. At the turn of the century, Jewish ethnography
counted as a novelty in Hungary, and Vadász published the largest number of
writings on the subject, twenty-one to be exact, in the “Folklore” column
introduced by the important scholarly magazine Magyar Zsidó Szemle (Hungarian Jewish Review) in 1901. The magazine, founded in 1884, focused on
various aspects of Jewish culture. While his earlier articles examined customs
and sayings, the later ones were frequently devoted to foods and their traditions. His studies are veritable gold mines for a researcher like me, since of all
the surviving sources they contain the largest amount of anthropologically and
sociologically accurate information about the eating habits of religious Jews in
the nineteenth century.
Vadász pursued initially medical, then legal studies. Following his studies,
he worked in the Bureau of Statistics and later he headed the archives of the
Mortgage Loan Bank (Jelzálog-Hitelbank), but mostly he was active as a journalist. He wrote well, although I find the frequent and unnecessary Latin
expressions and sayings in his articles to be a somewhat childish demonstration
of his classical erudition. He grew up in an Orthodox family in Miskolc and
Balmazújváros, two towns where the majority of Jews were Orthodox, and
there were several well-known rabbis in his family—for example, one of his
uncles was a son of the famous Pozsony rabbi Chatam Sopher (1762‒1839).
So, understandably, he was very familiar with the everyday lives of traditionally
religious Jews. Saphir, Ágai, and Haber, authors presented earlier in this
chapter, wrote lots of interesting things about the characteristically Jewish

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

dishes, but they practically never specified where, when, and under what
circumstances did they get to know them. Vadász, however, in most cases
included the sources of his data, described much important information
relevant to the dishes he mentioned, such as who consumed them and where,
and he frequently illustrated his themes with anecdotes he had heard from his
contacts or with stories he recalled from his own experience. His articles also
deserve attention for their depiction of Hassidic traditions. Although he
considered some customs of the Hassidim to be superstitions, he nevertheless
frequently described their habits and wrote about their sayings and foods. The
many Yiddish proverbs and sayings he included and explained in his articles
are not only able to evoke the Orthodox and Hassidic life for us, but frequently
they are highly amusing.
In spite of his meticulousness, Vadász wasn’t at all a dry, pedantic scholar,
but a journalist who was able to write about the details of everyday life in a
readable and entertaining way. His discourse about the origin of a pastry offers
us a taste of this: “Lemplach, the altajvner lemplach [lemplach of Óbuda, formerly a separate town, now a part of Budapest], is not a nickname, but a spiralor pocket-shaped pastry made of a kindli-type short dough, which is rolled to
the thickness of the back of a kitchen knife and filled with either jam or apple
butter or in its ancestral country with plum butter. It is about the size of a
bread roll, but of course of a roll from before the World War [Vadász wrote
this in 1916], and, like the kindli, it is most appropriate for carrying in a travel
bag, and, due to this, it is a favorite road snack for the traveling, wandering
Jews of a stricter lifestyle, more so than the pastries of flodn [flódni] and delkli.
The Prague ghetto is the ancestral home of this specialty, which in the 1820s
became also fashionable in Óbuda. Mr. Arnold Kohn describes in a poetic
letter he sent me how his father-in-law, Salamon Böhm, who had been born
in Óbuda and died at age eighty-two on October 27, 1891, managed to get to
the zlata Praha [golden Prague] of Libussa when he used to be a traveling
goldsmith apprentice, where in a kosher pub located in Beleles Street [one of
the streets of the later demolished Prague ghetto] he ate this pastry. Later he
taught his mother its preparation, and soon she was able to treat his sons to
perfect versions of this dessert that had migrated from the banks of the Vltava
River to the Danube, where it became popular, too.”74
Bertalan Kohlbach (1866, Liptószentmiklós, today: Liptovský Mikuláš,
Slovakia–1944, Budapest) studied to be a rabbi but held such an office only
for a short time. He was a founding member of the Jewish Hungarian Literary
Society (IMIT), and he played an important role in founding the Hungarian
Jewish Museum, but his highest achievements were in the new field of Jewish
ethnography. He wrote about Jewish food in only one essay, “Baked Goods in

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Jewish Rituals,” published in 1914 in the almanac of IMIT.75 But unfortunately
even this single essay contributes little new information to the research of
Hungarian Jewish cooking, since much of it consists of theories—frequently
rather strained ones—about the origin of various baked goods and about the
etymology of their names. For instance, Kohlbach claims that the tradition of
the braided challah had to do with German women of long ago who used to
cut off their hair plaits as a sacrifice and with Orthodox Jewish women who
frequently cut off their hair when they got married. Both theories are—to say
the least—questionable suppositions, though it is probable that the braided
version of the Shabbat loaves—known only in the Ashkenazi culture—is indeed
of German origin: German Jews started making it in the Middle Ages, according to some opinions, or in the seventeenth century, according to others,
because they wished to imitate a traditional braided egg bread of the Christians.
It is even less convincing when Kohlbach attempts to explain the origin of
kindli, one of the customary pastries at Purim, with a fertility symbol used by
ancient Germans in the celebration of their New Year in March. He seems to
be unaware that Jews started to make kindli only in the second half of the
nineteenth century, and that it is probably of Hungarian origin, not German.
Had he looked up some German, Czech, and Hungarian Jewish cookbooks
instead of convoluted speculations, he would have immediately seen that there
is no trace of kindli in the nineteenth-century works of this kind, while it is
mentioned in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Hungarian
Jewish press, indicating that it started to become popular in Hungary shortly
before that time. But in addition to strained theories, Kohlbach also offers
some interesting information. For example, he describes that, on the occasion
of a boy’s first exam in a cheder, Jews at some places baked a cake, called
Resegrüten (crunchy sticks), made of yeast dough in which several prebaked
sticks of dough reminded the boy of the stick used by the teachers for disciplining their students.
Samuel Krausz (1866, Ukk, southwestern Hungary–1948, Cambridge, England) was the third significant Hungarian Jewish scholar of the late nineteenth
century who was interested in food history. After receiving his PhD and
rabbinical diplomas, he was initially a religion teacher at a Budapest high school,
later at the Jewish Teachers’ College. From 1906 on, he taught in Vienna’s rabbinical school, the Jüdisch-Theologische Lehranstalt, but in the ensuing years he
also taught for a while in New York. In 1899, the magazine Ethnography printed
his first article about culinary customs, such as the feeling of disgust for certain
foods and the history of eating meat, but it was mostly a generalized discussion
and contained little about specific Jewish dishes. Jewish cuisine was, however, the main theme of a lengthy lecture he gave in Kolozsvár (Cluj Napoca,

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Romania) in 1904 and published two years later. In this, Krausz devoted only
a few sentences to simple weekday menus, and he focused mostly on the courses
customarily served at Jewish holidays and at family events (such as at weddings
and following the birth of a boy), but instead of citing Hungarian examples of
these, he presented them mainly as general Ashkenazi traditions. For me the
most interesting part of the lecture is the introductory section about the
Talmudic traditions, in which Krausz talks about the important role of food in
Jewish culture. He relates that in his opinion cooking is the area where Jewish
women can best develop their art, adding that they are “in very good company
in this field, since according to a pious tradition no lesser person than King
Solomon, the wisest of the wise, was the greatest artist of cooking. I [i.e., Krausz]
don’t believe that there is a nation in the world aside from the Jewish, which
would consider his greatest and wisest king as an artist of cooking.”76 Krausz is
referring here to a Talmudic story, according to which the exiled Solomon
prepared such a magnificent dinner in the court of the Ammonite king that he
asked him to become his chef.
The third essay by Krausz (by that time: Krauss) about Jewish cuisine was
featured in 1915 in the magazine Mitteilungen zur jüdischen Volkskunde (Publications About Jewish Ethnography), the most prominent scholarly journal
about the subject. The title of his article is “Aus der jüdischen Volksküche” (From
the Jewish national cuisine).77 For me this is the most useful of his three writings
about the theme, since it offers the most information about foods, and not only
about their role in Jewish tradition, but also about their various examples. The
study first describes the courses and culinary habits of the holidays and life-cycle
events, then it focuses on the history and characteristics of the various food
categories—fish, meat, baked and cooked dough, fruit, vegetables, etc.—in
Jewish cooking. The author endears himself to me right from the start, in the
section about Shabbat, by criticizing Bertalan Kohlbach’s strange theory about
the connection between barches, the Shabbat loaf, and the sacrificial hair braids
of women in ancient Germany: “How is it imaginable that people in Jewish
homes somehow would have even the slightest notion of heathen sacrificial
customs, nota bene in the German Middle Ages?”78
The forty-page study, complete with a huge number of footnotes, includes
some information I haven’t encountered elsewhere or only in a much sketchier
form. For instance, he describes a cake that Kohlbach also mentioned: parents
used to give it to their son who managed to successfully recite in front of invited
guests what he had learned in cheder. But Krauss offers more detail about this
cake, which he calls resche Gräten (crunchy thin sticks), a slightly different
German name from Kohlbach’s. He explains that it was prepared by placing
prebaked thin dough sticks in the fresh dough and then baking the whole thing

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again. Krauss also mentions that at some places people ate a similar cake to
celebrate a wedding or a circumcision. Without this information I wouldn’t
have been able to understand what the Resche Ruten-barches (crunchy stick
challah) was, a cake that the Freund pastry shop in Budapest used to bake for
weddings around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and which
I will describe in a later chapter.
Finally, I wish to mention yet another ethnographic essay about Jewish
cooking. Unlike the previously mentioned ones, it isn’t by a Hungarian author.
But Max Grunwald (1871–1953), although born in Upper Silesia, was the
rabbi of Viennese synagogues for decades, and it is clear from his piece that he
was familiar with the culinary traditions of Hungarian Jews. He was one of the
founders of the German–Austrian scholarly association dedicated to the study
of Jewish ethnography, and until 1929 he edited its magazine, the previously
mentioned Mitteilungen zur jüdischen Volkskunde. His essay “Aus dem jüdischen
Kochbuch” (From the Jewish cookbook),79 first published in 1928, is only
a quarter of the length of the last one by Krauss, but it contains perhaps even
more information as a result of its laconic, almost catalogue-like descriptions
of dishes. The cookbook mentioned in the title of the piece doesn’t refer to any
specific volume, but to an imaginary compilation of all the dishes in the Jewish
cuisine, including the cuisine of the Sephardim. In Grunwald’s opinion “our
first and most urgent task is to create a record of the individual dishes and their
methods of preparation.”80 He justifies the importance of this by reminding
us that in numerous works—and here he cites examples from the writings by
Krauss and others—quite different courses can be called the same way, and so
the name by itself doesn’t always give sufficient guidance about the nature of
a preparation. He seeks to achieve his goal by offering descriptions of an astonishing number of local variants of dishes and of the customs related to them,
thus providing an unusually rich source of data for researchers like me. He also
includes a copious selection of Yiddish sayings about specific dishes, and this
makes his essay even more valuable. To give you a taste of this, here is an
example of the unusual dishes he mentions: “It used to be customary in
Hungary to eat a sort of egg ‘matzo’ on Shabbats falling between Pesach and
Shavuot. These were round, thin flat cakes, made of eggs, flour, and sugar,
which the people punctured with a key that had a hole in it, so that the flat
cakes wouldn’t rise. For this reason they were also known as Schlüsselmazzes
(key matzo).”81

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A TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY RECIPE COMPETITION

After these not always uniformly interesting nineteenth-century essays and
some cookbooks of questionable originality, it is great pleasure to be able to
focus on the unusually rich, informative, and entertaining submissions received by the literary weekly A Hét (The Week) for the recipe competition it
announced in 1901. The competition had no Jewish character whatsoever,
but—as its announcement specified—merely wished to gather “recipes of unknown dishes that can’t be found in the cookbook literature but have been
tested in real life, as well as rare and unfamiliar versions of known dishes.”
While the competition itself wasn’t Jewish, a significant share of the magazine’s
readers was, and this was also the religious background of Hugó Veigelsberg
(1869, Pest–1949, Budapest), better known by one of his pen names as Ignotus,
who—while hiding behind the fictional name of “Madam Emma,” the supposed editor of the women’s column—wrote the announcement for the
competition and responded in the magazine to the competitors’ recipes and
letters. Emma’s fictitious “letters,” which had been appearing in the magazine
for years before the recipe contest and were usually addressed to József Kiss,
the editor in chief, depict her as a well-to-do, but not rich, middle-class woman
(at times she complains of not having money for this or that) who celebrates
Christmas. This, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that she was a Christian,
since lots of assimilated Jews in Budapest similarly celebrated the holiday.
Generally she is silent about her religious origin, but in one of her letters she
writes: “Since they have been telling me that I am Jewish, I don’t dare to use
foreign words in my writing, and I am learning true morality and graceful
usage from Messrs. Elek Benedek and Ödön Jakab [well-known Gentile
writers].”82 Perhaps it is no coincidence that it is equally possible to interpret
this as affirmation and as denial: Veigelsberg/Ignotus probably wished to keep
Emma’s religion ambiguous. The figure of Emma must have been very dear to
him. She was a female alter ego to Ignotus, and also something very personal:
Emma was his sister’s name, and according to Sári Ignotus, his niece, this sister
served in some ways as Madam Emma’s model.83 The real, by that time aged
Emma, a retired teacher, committed suicide when she was forced to move to
a yellow star house (houses assigned for Jews) in June 1944.
Obviously, it had to do with the many female Jewish readers of A Hét that
a significant share of the recipes the magazine received was for Jewish dishes,
and even when Jews sent descriptions of different types of courses, their choice
of what to send was probably indicative of what assimilated Jews ate. Although
this is not unambiguously clear from the recipes and letters, it seems that very
few came from Jews who kept kosher. A Hét szakácskönyve (A Hét cookbook)

41. Hugó Ignotus (originally:
Veigelsberg) (1869, Pest–1949,
Budapest). Photograph by Révész
and Bíró from around 1920.

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42. The front cover of the
1908 second edition of A Hét
szakácskönyve (A Hét
cookbook).

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is just as much a document of Hungarian Jewish cuisine as the other cookbooks
of declaratively this kind of religious orientation. The magazine issues, however,
in which the recipes were first published, are even more valuable documents
of the age than the cookbook, since when the recipes were reprinted in the
book, Ignotus, the volume’s editor, left out most of the letters that came with
them, as well as their senders’ names and places of residence.
Ignotus is the most endearing, wittiest female impersonator one can
imagine, whose letters, which he “ghostwrote” for the fictitious Emma, are
entertaining reads even today. In addition to enjoying the stylistic bravura of
the letters’ charming chatter, today’s reader can notice that Madam Emma was
something of an early feminist in the way she criticized women’s dependency
within marriage. But this is not all, since we can appreciate her gastronomical
knowledge from her responses to the readers’ recipes and letters. Of course, it
is possible that his friends and his wife advised Ignotus in culinary matters,
but we can also sense his own expertise from his printed comments.
Veigelsberg must have immensely enjoyed this multiple role-playing, which
is obvious from his decision to send recipes under the name of Ignotus, his
best-known pen name. He addressed his letter to Madam Emma, that is, to
himself: “Dear Emma, I—as women like you in Pest would say—know many
recipes, but I am not crazy enough to offer them, since you would only use
them to mock me, and I am becoming old and touchy.” In spite of this, he
included descriptions of the following three dishes in his letter: Chinese egg,
Jewish cholent egg (quoted further down in this chapter), and Ignotus soup.
His wife also sent recipes, though she stipulated that she didn’t wish to enter
them into the competition. She signed the recipes as Mrs. Hugó Veigelsberg,
of whom of course the readers didn’t know that she was the wife of both
Ignotus and Madam Emma.
Following are the titles of the first few in the long list of those recipes in
the book that their senders considered Jewish: Jewish matzo ball, Polish-style
goose liver, liver pörkölt, cholent egg, chopped eggs, Jewish liver cheese, mixed
chopped meat, turkey breast with almonds, Jewish fish, Polish–Jewish fish,
Polish-style sour tongue, and Jewish falshe fish.
It is hard to choose from the many recipes and letters sent to Emma, but the
three savory dishes and one dessert I am including here can give a taste of the
competition entries. One of them is the lowly, modest toasted bread, equally
appreciated by Jews and Gentiles. According to my mother, a fried version of it
was a frequent midmorning snack in my great-grandmother’s home in the
1910s. They called it penets, which means a slice of bread or toast in Yiddish.
My great-grandmother Riza didn’t speak Yiddish, but this was the name of
fried bread in many Jewish families. My mother frequently made such fried

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Toast (Pirítós)
Magda Weisz’s letter and Ignotus/Emma’s response from
the September 1, 1901. issue of the weekly. She lived in
Szilágy-Cseh (Cehu Silvaniei, Romania).
Dear esteemed Madam Emma,
We get the most divine dish if we cut the bread into evenly
thin slices, toast them to light brown on our range (we
must watch them so they don’t burn), brush them with
melted hot fat [a version in which the slices were fried in
fat or oil was even more common], sprinkle them with
grated garlic, and salt them. This so-called pirítós [toast]
reminds me that lots of people turn up their noses to it
and call it the national food of the Jews. This expression
always annoys me, since I deny that the Jews are
a separate race and also that they constitute a separate
nation. And in spite of this, it is true that the Jews have
always eaten more toast than others. The reason for this,
however, is not in their different sensitivity and taste,
but because the strict observance of Jewish traditional
rites restricts their menu choices so much that they eat
a hundred times more frequently those good things, which
are permitted to them. The person who can eat smoked
bacon, ham, sausage, and head cheese will have toast less
frequently. That’s the way we more enlightened Jews view

this: we endorse freedom and equality even for our
stomachs. Sausages are great, but toast with garlic is also
splendid.
With sincerely respectful greetings,
Magda Weisz (Szilágy-Cseh)
Emma’s response: Dear little Magda, you are so right that
one should kiss you, although: toast isn’t exclusively
a Jewish food, Hungarians eat it, too. … Jewish cuisine
became so inventive exactly because of the restrictions
placed on it.

Cholent Egg (Sólet-tojás)
This was one of the three recipes Ignotus sent to the recipe
contest of A Hét, a magazine, where he was one of the
editors. He included it in a letter he addressed to Madam
Emma, that is to himself, since he edited the women’s
column under this pen name. The letter quoted here
appeared in the July 20, 1901 issue of the magazine. His
cholent egg resembles the one Saphir described in his 1856
article about Jewish food.

Should you not know it, I will tell you that they placed the
uncooked cholent egg on a thick layer of ashes spread in
terra cotta pots, then they alternated layers of egg, ashes,
egg, ashes, until the pot was full. They poured cold water
over this, until everything was wetted all the way through,
but there was no water left on the top. They placed this in
a warm oven, and left it there to bake at a slow, moderate
fire until noon. (If the fire was stronger, they removed it
from the oven for about an hour.)

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Liver Cheese and Walnut Squares
(Máj-sajt and diós tészta)
Not everyone sent a letter with the recipes. For example,
Elvira Rosenberg, the sender of these recipes, who lived
in Csáktornya ‒ (Čakovec, Croatia) was one of those who
didn’t attach a letter to her descriptions of dishes. Her
two recipes were featured in the September 29, 1901,
issue of the weekly, where both were described as
Jewish dishes. Judging from the caviar she mixes into her
liver cheese (the Hungarian recipe title appears to be
a literal translation of the German Leberkäse pâté,
although that is a completely different preparation),
she must have been well-to-do. She was probably
related to Margit Rosenberg, who lived in the same town
and who had entered the competition two weeks earlier
with a recipe for “Jewish fish.”
Liver cheese: Grate a fairly large, lightly baked goose
liver, and press this through a sieve together with four
cleaned anchovies, two hard-cooked eggs, two dekas
caviar, two small spoons of French mustard, half of
a grated onion, and a little paprika. Prepared this way,
it is a very tasty spread on bread. [Of course, a Jew who
kept kosher wasn’t allowed to combine goose liver with
anchovies and caviar.]
Walnut squares: 84 dekas flour, 42 dekas goose fat,
42 dekas not very finely chopped walnuts, 42 dekas
raisins, 42 dekas sugar, a little cinnamon, lemon zest,
and enough wine to be able to knead a hard dough from
all this, which we then press into a well-greased, deep
baking dish to the thickness of three fingers. Bake the
dough slowly for 1½ hours, and cut it into square pieces
when it has cooled.
I respectfully direct your attention to these two recipes,
Elvira Rosenberg (Csáktornya)
Emma’s response: The liver cheese must be terrific,
especially for sandwiches. I know these walnut squares
as nusskuchni. The fat used is a bit much, and the large

amount of raisins could be made more varied if they
were mixed with tiny grapes.
It attests to the expertise of Emma or her advisors, that
in the cookbook she decided to substitute the above
recipe for walnut squares with the following slightly
different version, probably because she thought it was
better:
Walnut cake (Nusskuchen): In a bowl rub ½ kilo fat into
1 kilo flour. Add 60 dekas of walnuts to this (not very
finely chopped), 60 dekas of sugar, 30 dekas of raisins,
a little pounded cloves, 4 eggs, and a little salt. Knead
all this with wine to make a good dough; when it is
ready, transfer it to an ungreased baking dish, and pat
it by hand to the thickness of three fingers. When it is
baked, turn it out, wait 5 minutes, then cut it into
squares and sprinkle them with sugar. Keep the cooled
cake for two or three days in a cool place, so that it
becomes soft and crumbly.
Emma’s comment: You could use less fat, and it is good
to substitute tiny grapes for some of the raisins.

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bread for my family even after World War II, in part since we all liked it, but
also since it was cheap. We rubbed a clove of garlic over the rough, raspy surface
of the fried bread. As is clear from the following letter, included with the recipe
for toast on page 94, the sender was an assimilated, in her words “enlightened”
Jew, who was probably not the only person from that social group to blame
the ritual dietary rules for restricting the choices available in Jewish cooking.
But if this was a fairly common opinion in that group, the response of
Ignotus/Emma is typical of him/her: “Jewish cuisine became so inventive
exactly because of the restrictions placed on it.”
At the end of the cookbook Madam Emma/Ignotus tells who the winners
of the competition are and she/he lists the names of other participants. Following
this, the writer, poet, prolific journalist, superlative critic, editor, and literary
organizer Ignotus writes the following in Emma’s voice: “A Hét and I are grateful
to the participating ladies and gentlemen, and no doubt the readers will be
grateful to them, too. Undoubtedly, there are mistakes in this book, but they
are completely my fault, not theirs. Within this mea culpa, however, it should
be my excuse that I have never written a book and could never imagine what
a hard and time-consuming task it is to write one and, especially, to publish one.
My God, all those revisions and all that proof reading!” It is not the first time
that I read these lines, but I have never been able to keep from giggling over
them. This irresistibly charming Emma bewitched me, too!

FOOD AND THE INCREASING SECULARIZATION

In the last decades of the nineteenth century an increasing number of assimilating Jewish families started to ignore some religious rules. Many of them
continued to consider themselves emotionally and culturally Jewish, but at the
same time they ignored the prohibition of work during the Shabbat, ceased to
maintain a kosher household, and kept only three or four of the biggest religious
holidays, and even those only in a simplified way. Initially, they only neglected
those rules of kashrut which seemed less essential to them, but soon they also
came to ignore the prohibition of eating pork and mixing meat with dairy. In
spite of this, long after they had stopped observing the dietary rules, one could
find traces of the religious past in the way many of them cooked and in their
repertoire of dishes. My maternal grandmother, for example, held a Seder and
fasted on Yom Kippur, but at the same time she didn’t keep kosher: she cooked
pork and didn’t separate dairy foods from meat. On the other hand, like Riza,
her mother, who observed kashrut rules, she didn’t stir sour cream into a dish
she called chicken paprikás, which in her rendition resembled a chicken pörkölt,

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[ 97 ]

a related dish made without sour cream. This was clearly a vestige of the prohibition of mixing dairy and meat. Furthermore, both my grandmother and
mother, who also didn’t keep kosher, tended to cook savory vegetable courses
(like green beans and yellow summer squash), and various tomato dishes (tomato
soup, stuffed peppers in tomato sauce, etc.) more than a little sweet. They
instinctively followed the taste preferences of their ancestors in this, probably
without being aware of the existence of such preferences. Others—as we have
seen in the chapter about kashrut—didn’t hesitate to eat pork sausages, ham,
various sorts of crabs, and chicken paprikás with sour cream, but at the same
time, if possible, they avoided pork dishes. In spite of such contradictions, many
assimilated Jews continued to consume certain typically Jewish dishes (like
cholent, matzo balls, etc.), so much so, that frequently this constituted one of
their most important remaining links to Jewish culture.
Among the entries to the recipe contest of the magazine A Hét (The Week)
and in some handwritten collections of recipes, we can find numerous examples
for the evolution of how some Hungarian Jews ate: changes that were brought
on by the increasing secularization. “Disznótor a Lipótvárosban” (Pig-killing
feast in Lipótváros; Lipótváros was a Budapest district with a substantial
middle-class and upper-middle-class Jewish population),84 is the title of a
humorous story—told through a sequence of fictitious conversations and
letters—by Ferenc Molnár (1878, Budapest–1952, New York), the author of
popular novels and plays, among them the one on which the musical Carousel
is based. This story pokes fun of those upper-middle-class Jews who carried

43. The writer Ferenc Molnár
and Stefan Lorant, a filmmaker,
writer, and photograph editor
as they celebrate Molnár’s
birthday in the restaurant of
the cruise ship Rex on January
11, 1940. As far as I know, this
is the only photograph of the
author at the dining table.
Photographer unknown.

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assimilation to extremes. It is about a newly rich Jew, who wishes to do
something unheard of in order to outdo the many wealthy Jews in Lipótváros
who give elegant and idiosyncratic parties in their apartments: “We will have
a pig-killing feast! A pig-killing feast, a real Hungarian pig-killing feast, here
in Nádor Street, on the second floor!... A pig-killing feast, but a most elegant
one! I will order an expensive model pig from Yorkshire, from the original
breeder. We will let it be washed with scented soaps and we will build—here
in the entrance hall of our apartment—an Empire-style pigpen made of
mahogany. And when all the guests have arrived, we will start the pig-killing
feast. At a given sign, I will shoot the pig.”85
József Vészi (1858, Arad–1940, Budapest), a well-to-do writer, newspaper
editor, MP, and advisor to the royal court was Molnár’s father in law. But unlike
the central figure in Molnár’s story, he preserved his Jewish identity even after
he had ceased to be religious. According to his granddaughter, the writer and
magazine editor Márta Sárközi (1907–1966): “From all the religions they kept
only what was good in them: from the Jewish, the overly sweet pastries and
cakes, from the Christian, the fish dinner at Christmas. They plagiarized the
Italian catfish fried in oil and served in a tomato sauce, and from the Austrians
they stole the thin pancakes filled with bits of goose liver, brains, ham, and
mushrooms in a béchamel sauce. They decorated a tree at Christmas, bought
presents for the family, gave gifts to their deeply touched servants, but they
fasted on Yom Kippur, only to have a huge afternoon snack, including coffee
with whipped cream, before the fast, while after it they ate chicken soup
garnished with liver dumplings.”86

COOKBOOKS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Following the 1899 publication of the first Jewish cookbook in Hungarian,
one had to wait more than a quarter of a century for the next two such works.
Even those volumes came out in regions that by that time no longer belonged
to Hungary: Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld’s cookbook was published in 1927 in
Szabadka (Subotica, Serbia)87 and Mrs. Ábrahám Ganz’s a year later in Dés
(Dej, Romania). This anomaly pretty much continued to exist in the ensuing
years: with the exception of two works, all the Hungarian-language Jewish
cookbooks published from then to 1945 were brought out in the surrounding
countries. It is also a strange fact that only four of the twelve Jewish cookbooks
published before 1945 in the area of pre-1920 Hungary were from Budapest,
where far more Jews lived than in any other city of the country: nearly half of
Hungary’s Jewish population lived in the capital between 1920 and 1938, and

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

after Warsaw Budapest was the largest Jewish city in Central and Eastern
Europe. On the other hand, had those cookbooks been published in the capital
instead of regions lost to Hungary after World War I, we would know less about
the regional differences, as well as about the influence of ethnic minorities and
the neighboring countries on Hungarian Jewish cooking.
Like their nineteenth-century predecessors, all the twentieth-century Hungarian Jewish cookbooks were intended for the kosher kitchen, which was
strange since after 1920 about half of the country’s Jewry didn’t observe the
dietary laws. This was quite different from the US, where the majority of Jewish
cookbooks published before World War I was “treif.” An example of such cookbooks is Aunt Babette’s (Bertha F. Kramer by her official name) work,
published in 1889 in Cincinnati and Chicago and sold in at least ten further
editions during the subsequent twenty-five years. It was written by a Jewish
woman for Jewish readers—the book’s title page featured a Mogen David—but
it included recipes for dishes made with shrimp and ham. But at least its recipes
didn’t call for lard or pork. I am not sure why no book in Hungary tried to
cater to the tastes of the many Jews who no longer kept kosher. It can’t be the
only explanation that they could use the non-Jewish cookbooks, since American Jews could have done this, too. It probably has more to do with the fact
that the Neológ Jewish movement in Hungary, which sought to reconcile
religious traditions with moderate reforms, was more similar to Conservative
Judaism than to Reform Judaism in the US, to which most of the Jews of
German origin who wrote and used those treif cookbooks belonged.
Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld’s A zsidó nő szakácskönyve (The Jewish woman’s
cookbook), which first came out in 1927 in the formerly Hungarian town of
Szabadka (Subotica, Serbia) is a highly comprehensive work: its third, enlarged
edition, which was brought out in Budapest in 1938, contains nearly thousand
recipes and even the earlier editions have only about forty fewer. Aranka Span,
its author, was born in 1899 in a Szabadka family that probably observed
kashrut, since she thanks her mother in the book’s introduction for implanting
religious feelings in her and for introducing her to cooking. Initially, she indeed
learned cooking from her mother, known for her excellent pastries and cakes,
but later she also studied at the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris.
In the early 1920s she became the wife of Márton Rosenfeld and published
her cookbook under her married name. After the war she moved to Israel, and
so her second cookbook—a much less voluminous work than the first one—
was published in Tel Aviv in 1953.
Aranka’s three younger sisters were also excellent cooks. The husband of
Erzsébet, one of the sisters, died shortly after the war in an illness he had caught
when he had been deported, and so in 1947 she decided to move to Mexico

44. The third edition of the
cookbook that Mrs. Márton
Rosenfeld originally published
in 1927 in Szabadka, formerly
in Hungary but by then in
Yugoslavia and today in Serbia.
This 1938 edition was brought
out in Budapest.

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45. The title page of Mrs.
Ábrahám Ganz’s Jewish
cookbook, published in 1928
in Dés, a Transylvanian town.

City together with her three children. After teaching cooking for a few years
in her apartment, she opened a restaurant in 1950, called Elisabeth, the English
version of her name. She, too, wrote a cookbook: the Tres cursos de cocina
húngara y yugoslava (Three lessons in Hungarian and Yugoslav cooking), first
published in 1973 and then again in 1979.88
Aranka Rosenfeld’s book is a clearly written, well structured, and easy-touse work, in which the Jewish housewife can find a plentiful selection of recipes
for the various food categories, starting with fish dishes (twenty-six recipes)
and soups (forty recipes) and ending with preserves (nineteen recipes), canned
pickles (seven recipes), and canned vegetables (twenty-three recipes). In addition, there are chapters about running a kosher household, preparations for
the Shabbat, Pesach, and the other holidays, special Pesach dishes, rules of
hospitality, soap making, and many other useful things.
Her personal experience shines through every line of the recipes and the
household advices. For example, she writes the following about keeping food
warm for Saturday: “In winter, when we have to set a fire because of the cold,
we can ask a non-Jewish person that he or she should place an appropriately
sized piece of metal plate or a brick on the range or in the oven before lighting
the fire. … We can heat food on this plate by setting the dish into a larger pot
that is filled with water to the height of two or three fingers.”
While Mrs. Rosenfeld was a young, middle-class woman who ran her own
household, Mrs. Ábrahám Ganz, the author of a kosher cookbook published
approximately at the same time as hers, had been earning her living for some
thirty years as the housekeeper of middle-class Jewish families in Szamosújvár,
a town in Transylvania. While the previous volume went through several
editions and dazzled us with its rich choice of dishes, Mrs. Ganz’s work—published in only a hundred copies “at the urging and with the support of her
acquaintances and benefactors”—included far fewer recipes. As she wrote in
the introduction: “I didn’t gather hundreds of recipes, as is common in cookbooks, because I didn’t consider it necessary to include all the basic things that
are common knowledge.” It is good that she spells this out, otherwise I would
have no idea why so many well-known Jewish dishes are missing from her
volume, for example, cholent, kugel, matzo balls, and chopped eggs. On the
other hand, we can learn from it how to make flódni and kindli (Jewish pastry
specialties) and there is a chapter about Pesach dishes, including chremsel made
with either matzo flour or potatoes. She writes in an easily understandable,
straightforward style, made more flavorful by her occasional use of local dialect,
typical of Transylvania, her region. Some of the dishes she presents are also
local, for instance, candied slices of summer squash, yellow torte, and a dish
she calls “muszáka” were hardly or not at all known in other regions. Her

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46. The front cover of Mrs.
Lajos Venetianer’s Jewish
cookbook, published in 1931
in Újpest, a town adjacent
to Budapest.

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47. Jenny Ullmann’s Jewish
cookbook, published in 1933 in
Nagyvárad (Oradea, Romania).

muszáka is quite different from the usual moussaka, since the ground meat is
between layers of sliced potato instead of eggplant slices and the dish is not
made with a béchamel sauce.
Mrs. Lajos Venetianer’s little cookbook, consisting of only forty-five pages,
doesn’t seek to cover all food groups and secrets of cooking and baking, as Mrs.
Rosenfeld’s work does. The book’s limited scope is clear from its title: A befőttekről. Gyümölcs, főzelék és saláta épen való eltartása. Édes és sós sütemények (About
preserves: How to preserve fruit, vegetables, and salads: Sweet and savory baked
goods). The author was the second wife and widow of the rabbi and historian
Lajos Venetianer (1867, Kecskemét–1922, Újpest). Her work only features the
following few Jewish specialties: candied essrog, bread kugel, flódni, kindli, orange
torte for Purim, pfefferbejgli (rings made of braided peppery dough), and nussenkuchen (walnut slices).
Unfortunately, I was unable to locate any personal information about
Jenny Ullmann, the author of the chronologically next cookbook, though she
was probably related to the Ullmann family that occupied leading positions
in the Jewish community of Nagyvárad (Oradea, Romania), where the socalled Ullmann Palace belonged to one of the family members. This was the
city where her work A zsidókonyha művészete, a mai kornak megfelelő takarékossággal (The art of the Jewish cuisine, with a thriftiness appropriate to our
age), came out in 1933, not much after the Great Depression, to which the
subtitle of the work is a clear reference. Like the works of Mmes. Ganz and
Venetianer, her book is quite thin, nevertheless it contains surprisingly many
dishes due to its very concisely written recipes. We can find most of the Jewish
specialties in it: bean cholent, kugel, cholent egg, chopped eggs, stuffed fish,
Jewish “ham” made of veal or beef brisket, Pesach recipes (including several
kinds of chremsel), kindli, essrog preserves, and more goose dishes than one
would assume a volume of such modest size could accommodate. In addition
to offering ritually acceptable versions of many non-Jewish dishes, the book
includes descriptions for koshering meat, for cutting up poultry (mostly
geese), and even for boiling soap, which is a considerable achievement from
a book of merely seventy-nine pages. There are also some unusual courses in
it, such as a pear stew, as well as candied slices of tomato and candied summer
squash. Like in Mrs. Ganz’s work, some of the food names used come from
the local dialect.
The cover of the penultimate cookbook published before World War II
gives merely “Auntie Giti” as its author’s name, and Mrs. Aladár Adler, née
Gitta Rand, the person hiding behind this nickname keeps her full official
name secret inside the book, too. Her volume, called A zsidó háziasszony könyve,
hasznos tudnivalók, kóser szakácskönyv (The Jewish housewife’s book: Useful

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Walnut Slices (Nussenkuchen)
From Mrs. Lajos Venetianer’s Jewish cookbook,
published in 1931.
Comment: This was one of the traditional Purim cakes.
Mrs. Vilmos Vázsonyi mentions it in her newspaper
article about the Purims of her childhood, which I quote
on page 167. You can find another version of this cake
on page 93, which was sent to the recipe contest of
A Hét (The Week), a political and literary magazine.

1 Viennese pound flour, 10 dekas goose fat, a little
pounded cinnamon, 1 pounded clove, one piece of
finely chopped candied citron, 28 dekas raisins, and
28 dekas small, black grapes. Knead this with 2 whole
eggs and white wine into a soft dough. Press it into
a greased, small baking pan, so that the dough should
be three fingers thick. Brush the top with one whole
egg, and bake it for 2 hours. When it is ready, cool it
in the baking pan. It keeps for weeks.

1 Viennese pound (56 dekas, 560 grams) chopped
walnuts, 1 Viennese pound confectioners’ sugar,

Pear Stew (Körtefőzelék)
From Jenny Ullmann’s book published in Nagyvárad (Oradea, Romania) in 1933.
Comment: The combination of savory and sweet flavors, such as meat served
with a sweet side dish, was one of the characteristics of Jewish cooking. Jenny
Ullmann’s book lists this as a Pesach specialty (it uses matzomeal instead of
flour), but a 1935 Hungarian Jewish cookbook includes a version of this dish for
other times of the year, too.
Cook 1 kilo pears, peeled and cut into segments, in water to cover. Mix 2 spoons
of matzo meal, ½ cup water, 1 spoon sugar, and a pinch of salt. Stir this into
the cooked pears, add a small piece of cinnamon. In a bowl, beat 1 egg and
slowly pour it into the hot stew [it should be off the fire], stirring it all the
while. Serve immediately.

information: Kosher cookbook), which came out in Kecskemét (east-central
Hungary) in 1935, is nearly as comprehensive as Mrs. Rosenfeld’s work, and
concerning diets it is even more so. It features 619 recipes (including most of
the Jewish specialties) and has lots of information about the rules of kashrut,
the Shabbat preparations, the house cleaning before Pesach, the dairy days, the
table settings, and the diets for diabetics and people with gastric problems.
There are also suggestions about the ways to serve and store food. Although
Haman’s pocket (Hamantasche), a Purim pastry, was known in Hungary as
early as the nineteenth century, strangely, this is the first Hungarian Jewish

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cookbook to offer a recipe for it. In addition, the work recommends detailed
midday and evening menus for each day of Pesach, the dairy days before Tisha
B’av, Rosh Hasanah, meals before and after the Yom Kippur fast, Simchat
Torah, and for the other holidays.
The last Hungarian Jewish cookbook to appear before 1945 was published
by the Transylvanian branch of WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organization) in 1938 in Lugos, a town in Transylvania.89 According to Barbara
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett: “During the 1920s and 1930s, WIZO espoused a modern
approach to the kitchen. Encouraging emigration, WIZO cookbooks showed
readers how to cook with ingredients they would find in Palestine—for example,
eggplant—and appealed to Eastern European Jews in various languages. The last
WIZO cookbook to appear in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust was written
in Hungarian and published in Romania in 1938.”90 The book includes advice
for the Pesach preparations, but there are relatively few Jewish specialties among
its large number of recipes: bean cholent, cholent with pearl barley, floden, kindli,
matzo balls, fried matzo, fermented beet soup, as well as chocolate torte, orange
torte, palacsinta (crêpes), puddings, and wine vinegar for Passover.
There were only a dozen Jewish cookbooks published in Hungary before
1945, and even fewer if we disregard those volumes that were unchanged editions of foreign works or translations of previously published books. This is
a surprisingly small number compared to Hungary’s large Jewish population:
about 940,000 people before 1920 and about 480,000 after that date, when
the territory and population of the country was greatly diminished as a result
of the Trianon Peace Treaty. But even so, these works represent our most useful

Fish Roe Soup for Friday Noon
(Halikraleves péntek déli levesnek)
From the cookbook published by WIZO in 1938 in Lugos, Transylvania.
Ingredients (for 5 to 6 servings): 2 fish heads, roe from 2 fishes, 2 yellow onions,
1 tablespoon sweet paprika, 10 dekas fat [butter, kosher vegetable fat, or kosher
margarine], 8 dekas potatoes, 2 bread rolls, 3 dekas fat, ½ teaspoon salt, 1½ liters
water
48. The title page of the Jewish
cookbook by “Auntie Giti”,
published in 1935 in Kecskemét,
east-central Hungary. Her real
name was Mrs. Aladár Adler,
née Gitta Rand.

Sautée the onions in fat, add 1 tablespoon sweet paprika, then the potatoes,
1½ liters of water, the fish heads, and the roe. At serving time, add the rolls, cut
into small cubes and oven-browned, as well as a little salt.

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49. The front cover of A WIZO
kóser szakácskönyve (WIZO’s
kosher cookbook), published
by the Women’s International
Zionist Organization in the
Transylvanian town of Lugos
(Lugoj, Romania) in 1938.

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Pudding of Smoked Beef (Füstölt marhahúspuding)
From the cookbook published by WIZO in 1938 in Lugos,
Transylvania.
Ingredients (for 6 servings): 6 teaspoons fat, 6 teaspoons
flour, 6 tablespoons water, 6 eggs, 20 dekas smoked beef.
Sauce: 2 teaspoons flour, 2 spoons fat, 2 ladles of meat
soup, 2 spoons mustard, 1 to 2 sugar cubes, salt, 1 pinch
of pepper, 1 teaspoon lemon juice, 2 egg yolks
For each serving take 1 teaspoon fat, the same amount of
flour and 1 tablespoon water. Cook this into a thick,
smooth paste and cool it. Meanwhile, beat 6 yolks to
become foamy and add to the paste you made of

6 teaspoons of fat. Add to this 20 dekas of ground smoked
beef, and finally 6 whipped egg whites. Transfer this to an
appropriately sized pudding form, which you had
previously greased and sprinkled with bread crumbs, set
the form into a water-filled pan, and cook it over moderate
heat for 1 hour. Place it in the oven for 10 minutes, then
serve it with the following sauce:
Make a light roux of 2 teaspoons flour and 2 spoons fat,
dilute this with 2 ladles of meat soup, and cook this well.
Stir into this 2 teaspoons mustard, 1 to 2 sugar cubes, salt
according to taste, pepper, lemon juice, and 2 egg yolks.
Pour this sauce over the unmolded pudding.

sources for a history of Hungarian Jewish cooking—provided that we carefully
compare them with each other and examine not only their contents, but also
their omissions. It is fortunate that people eat dishes and not cookbooks, and
so the scarcity of historic documents can’t hurt Hungarian Jewish cuisine’s large
variety of fine flavors and rich selection of dishes.

POST-1945 COOKBOOKS ABOUT PREWAR COOKING

Although Aranka Rosenfeld’s and Margit Löbl’s Hungarian-language cookbooks,
which were published in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 1953, include recipes reflecting local
circumstances, traditions, and ingredients, the vast majority of the dishes they
include come from the prewar Hungarian Jewish cuisine. These volumes have
strong ties to this kind of cooking not only by their contents and language, but
also through a personal connection: as we have seen, Aranka Rosenfeld, who
immigrated to Israel from Szabadka (Subotica, Serbia), was the author of one of
the best prewar Hungarian Jewish cookbooks. While Mrs. Rosenfeld’s Israeli
cookbook—called Kis céna szakácskönyv (Small tzena cookbook; tzena, Hebrew
for austerity, was the expression used for the austerity measures and rationing,
including food rationing, that existed between 1949 and 1959 in the emerging
state of Israel)—consists of relatively few recipes, Löbl’s book, Főzni segítek (I help
to cook), published in 1953, includes far more dishes, and a second volume of
the work from 1957 adds a great many more.

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Soon after its publication in 1984, a small, thin, modest-looking paperback
cookbook became an overnight sensation among Hungarians interested in
Jewish culture and its traditional dishes. For more than three decades previously, no book or newspaper article had been published about Jewish cuisine
and traditions, and people only talked about such things in private: in family
circles and among their closest friends. Although the communist regime didn’t
officially forbid publishing books and talking publicly about those subjects, it
made such traditions into a virtually unmentionable taboo. This book, Magyarországi zsidó ételek (Jewish dishes of Hungary) by Mrs. Péter Herbst, née Zorica
Krausz,91 was one of the first works to break this taboo, and its focus on old
Jewish recipes was unprecedented. The author collected the recipes from elderly
people and from pre-1945 printed sources and published them together with
a lengthy introductory section about the Jewish holidays and celebrations of
life-cycle events, as well as with passages about the rules of kashrut. She felt it
necessary to include such general information before the recipes, the real core
of the work, since no publication about Jewish traditions was available at the
time. She undertook the task of collecting old Jewish recipes practically in the
last minutes when one could still find elderly people who were able to describe
this cuisine and provide examples of it, so her work not only filled a gap,
but it also tried to salvage a tradition. Unfortunately, she doesn’t offer any
information in her book about the sources of the individual recipes and about

50. Aranka Rosenfeld’s
Hungarian Jewish cookbook
published in 1953 in Tel Aviv,
Israel.
51. Margit Löbl’s Hungarian
Jewish cookbook published in
1953 in Tel Aviv, Israel.

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the regions from where the dishes came. But these are small deficiencies
compared to the importance and pioneering spirit of her volume.
Undoubtedly the most unusual Hungarian Jewish cookbook came out in
2013: its nearly 150 recipes were written by Hungarian Jewish women while
they were inmates in a Nazi concentration camp between December 1944 and
March 1945. The five starving inmates could rely only on their memory when
they recalled these dishes in order to distract themselves from their awful
circumstances and to retain their sanity. As Szilvia Czingel, the editor of the
volume, wrote: the women’s goal was to try “not to forget the better times they
had at home and by doing so to gain strength for surviving the horrors.
Working on their recipe collection was a form of resistance, a means for
survival.”92 The collection is mainly significant as a document of a horrible
period and less so as a useable and practical cookbook. It was the work of
assimilated women from Budapest who no longer kept kosher, which can be
seen, for example, from a recipe in it for potato dough biscuits that included
both sour cream and sausage slices. This loose connection to traditional
Judaism also explains why there is only one Jewish specialty in the collection:
derma (sausage casing, intestines) stuffed with beef or calf lung.
Cheaply available beef or veal lung was popular among Jews not only as
sausage filling, but also a dish by itself. Gyula Krúdy (1878–1933), one of the
greatest Hungarian novelists, describes an example of this in one of his works,

Egg Barley for Pesach
(Húsvéti tarhonya)
From Margit Löbl’s Hungarian-language cookbook published in Tel Aviv, Israel,
in 1957.
Comment: The name for egg barley in traditional Jewish cuisine is farfel (or farvli
or farfli), a Yiddish word derived from varvelen, the Middle High German name for
a soup with small clumps of noodles in it. Farfl is also a nickname in Yiddish for
a small man and a frequent name given to dogs.

52. A book of old, mainly pre–
World War II Hungarian Jewish
recipes collected and edited by
Mrs. Péter Herbst, née Zorica
Krausz, and published in 1984
in Budapest.

Make a hard, well-kneaded dough from 2 eggs, 2 spoons of water, a little salt, and
sieved matzo meal. Grate this dough on a fairly coarse grater and spread the
resulting little dough pellets on a pastry board to dry. Then lightly brown them in
hot oil, season them with salt and ground pepper, dilute them with 1 cup of warm
water, and cook them slowly, under cover, as you would do with rice.

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53. Hungarian female
prisoners in the Lichtenwörth concentration camp
in the Burgenland region of
Austria relied solely on their
memory to secretly write
these recipes during the
first months of 1945. They
had to do it in secret, since
possessing paper and pencil
was forbidden in the camp.
Focusing on these recipes
helped those starving
women to keep their sanity,
in a sense helped them to
survive. The recipes can
be found in the book
Szakácskönyv a túlélésért.
Lichtenwörth, 1944–1945
(Cookbook for survival:
Lichtenwört, 1944–1945),
published by Corvina Books
in 2013.

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though he confusingly and mistakenly refers to lung as tripe, which according
to the writer and gastro-historian András Cserna-Szabó was quite a common
error by him. In his novel, Boldogult úrfikoromban (literally: “In my late,
lamented youth,” but the title of its English edition is Blessed Days of My Youth),
Krúdy writes the following: “Tóni, please bring me tripe—he mumbled in a raspy
voice, as if this company had made him feel bored with his whole life—tripe and
beer, what a rural Jew gets in a restaurant.”93

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

What makes Jewish and Gentile cuisine different from each other? The traditional Jewish dishes—would be the most obvious answer. But even in observant
Jewish homes those dishes represent merely a small minority of the courses
served, and by and large only on holidays, not on regular days. The absence of
dishes made with pork and some other ingredients can’t be the whole story
either, since on regular days religious Jews eat mostly the same dishes as
members of the majority society, the only difference is that some of those
courses are slightly adjusted to conform to kashrut rules. And this doesn’t even
take it into consideration that in the homes of assimilated Jews who no longer
keep kosher even the forbidden pork dishes can be found. Should a Hungarian
Gentile examine the table of contents of a prewar Hungarian Jewish cookbook,
he or she would be familiar with 90 percent of the recipe titles, since they are
the same as those in the repertory of non-Jewish cuisine.
And yet, and yet. … Most frequently it is the subtle disparities, shifts of
emphasis, and slight variations in taste preferences that define a culinary style,
and not the drastic differences easily observable in each and every dish. The
fact that such taste preferences are more like tendencies than universal rules
doesn’t make them any less noticeable. This has been also true for Hungarian
Jewish cuisine. Naturally, not all Jews cooked the same way and liked to eat
the same dishes, there were nonetheless common characteristics that seemed
to be valid for substantial segments of them. Folks frequently based their
opinion about Jewish food on what they noticed among their acquaintances,
which was not always typical. But it was not even necessary to rely solely on
personal experience, since such opinions became social clichés, which people
heard from others and repeated. This way or that, a substantial part of society
knew that Jews in many cases preferred to eat slightly differently seasoned
versions of the usual dishes in the Hungarian culinary repertory.
A story I heard from one of my friends perfectly illustrates this phenomenon.
As he told me, in the 1950s or 1960s, a chief physician of the Army Hospital in

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Budapest asked the woman attendant behind the lunch counter at the in-house
cafeteria to give him the farmer cheese noodles with plenty of confectioners’
sugar sprinkled over them. Hearing this, the young woman asked him: “Is the
comrade colonel Jewish?”94 Although this happened after 1945, and I am writing
about the period before it, I am certain that the Jewish preference for sweet dishes
was fairly common knowledge even before World War II.
For a long time, honey was the most common sweetener among Ashkenazi
Jews, and although the German Andreas Marggraf had invented the way to make
saccharose from sugar beets as early as in 1747, its mass production didn’t start
until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The first beet sugar factory opened
in 1802 in Silesia, in today’s southwestern Poland, and it was soon followed by
others, mainly in Ukraine and in Galicia, a historical region in today’s southeast
Poland and western Ukraine. The price of sugar, which earlier had been a luxury
item, significantly decreased, so that the slightly better-off Jews of these regions
could afford to cook with it. Courses with flavors tending toward the sweet
became popular among them, including slightly sweet versions of gefilte fish,
stuffed cabbage, vegetable side dishes, and barches (challah). This fashion,
however, didn’t extend to northern Poland’s and Lithuania’s Jewry, who
continued to prefer the savory versions of these dishes. On the other hand, Jews
migrating south, for example, to Hungary, made the slightly sweet dishes popular
in their new country, too. This was accelerated in Hungary when in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century sugar production sharply increased there, too,
mainly due to huge factories owned by Jews, like members of the HatvanyDeutsch family. But depending on the social/religious groups and the location
where they lived, the list of specific dishes made to taste this way could vary.
With time, Hungarian Jews not descended from Galician and Ukrainian
ancestors ‒ for example, my own family ‒ also started to prefer slightly sweet
dishes. My mother carried this in some courses to extremes, and this was why
I didn’t like her tomato soup, tomato sauce, summer squash slaw with dill
(tökfőzelék), and string beans in a roux sauce (zöldbabfőzelék): they were all
awfully sweet to my taste. Not to mention her sweet milk soup, which I couldn’t
stand. The habit of adding sugar to dishes that non-Jews typically seasoned
only with salt and ground pepper appeared at about the same time when the
preference for the previously mentioned slightly sweet preparations evolved.
Farmer cheese noodles, noodles with toasted coarse semolina, and noodle squares
with sautéed chopped cabbage are examples of such dishes.
Pairing sweet and salty flavors occasionally occurs in Hungarian cuisine,
too, for example, in the fruit sauces served with boiled meat, but nowhere near
as frequently as in the way Jews cook. In Jewish homes boiled beef in a sauce
was one of the traditional courses of the Friday evening meal, and the sauce

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was frequently made with fruit or sweetened tomato. The explicitly sweet
tzimmes—long-cooked vegetables, most frequently carrots, stewed with honey
and at times with fruit or raisins—was also common on such occasions. But
there is also a kind of tzimmes that includes beef or chicken, which is a sweet
meat-and-vegetable dish, even sweeter than fruit or tomato sauce served with
boiled meat. Kugels served as side dishes to cholent are also often slightly sweet,
so they are further examples for the combination of salty and sweet flavors.
Sweet-and-sour courses could be considered as a subgroup of sweet dishes,
and they are also very characteristic of Jewish cuisine not only in Hungary, but
in many other countries as well. This is, however, more a shift of emphasis
than a radical difference, since, of course, such dishes also occur in Hungarian
cuisine. But they are far more ubiquitous among the Jews, and in addition to
some traditional courses and the foods typical of the holidays, the many sweetand-sour dishes represent another shared feature in the otherwise so diverse
Jewish cuisines of different countries. Examples of the sweet-and-sour dishes
frequent among Jews are pickled herring, green bean soup, summer squash
slaw, several sauces served with boiled beef, veal cutlet with onion–lemon sauce,
sauerbraten, some preparations of carp and also of tongue, as well as many
other courses.
According to Gil Marks, one of the reasons why sweet-and-sour courses are
so common in Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine has to do with dishes that had been
prepared ahead to be served cold during Shabbat, when cooking was prohibited.95 In former times, before the age of refrigerators, people kept such
dishes at some cool place, for example, in the cellar, until they could be served.
But to make doubly sure the dishes wouldn’t spoil, frequently vinegar was
added to them as preservative and sugar, honey, or some other sweet ingredient,
like raisins, to counteract the sourness of vinegar. As a result, the sweet-and-sour
flavors became one of the characteristics of Jewish cuisine worldwide.
Hungarian Jewish cuisine differed from the way Gentiles cooked not only
in flavors, but also in the greater role boiled and braised meat dishes played in
it. Although such courses can be found in Hungarian cuisine too, roasted, panfried, or dry-stewed (cooked in its own juices) meat is far more characteristic of
local cooking. Jews, on the other hand, consumed boiled beef on most Friday
evenings, and boiled or braised meat dishes were most common on their tables
at other times as well. My great-grandmother Riza’s recipe collection is a good
example of this: nearly half of the meat dishes in it are braised preparations.
In the nineteenth century, beef, as well as poultry, was less tender, although
more tasty than nowadays. Meat was more expensive, so people tended to use
the flavorful cheaper cuts, which are usually tougher. The slow, moist cooking
process of braising was ideally suited to this kind of meat. But beyond these

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factors, there were special reasons for the frequent use of braised beef dishes in
Jewish cooking. The hindquarter of the cow contains the most tender cuts,
such as the tenderloin and the porterhouse steak, but Ashkenazi butchers don’t
sell this part of the animal as kosher meat because it is too hard to remove the
forbidden sciatic nerve and certain fats from it. But the disadvantages are
coupled with advantages: meat from the front half of the cattle has some of
the tastiest cuts. Boiling meat in barely simmering broth or slowly braising it
under cover in a small amount of liquid can not only make the meat tender,
but is also able to intensify its flavors.
The large number of fish preparations is yet another characteristic feature of
Jewish cuisine. The Friday evening repast, the first religiously prescribed meal
of Shabbat, always starts with a fish course as do the meals on the eve of other
holidays. But even at other times, fish dishes played a significant role in Jewish
cuisine. Although Christians serve fish on some fast days and many of them also
on Fridays, when they traditionally abstain from meat, I am quite sure that such
courses were more usual on the tables of religious Jews, who ate fish at least once
a week and often more frequently. Consumption of fish in today’s Hungary is a
mere fraction of the European average, about 10 percent of it. Although in
former times this difference between Hungarian and European consumption
was not so drastic—and also granting that fish was a more significant part of the
diet in Hungary before the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Turkish
occupation of the country and the nineteenth-century regulation of riverways—
it is nevertheless probable that even before 1945 religious Jews in Hungary ate
more fish than the national average.

FOOD AND HUNGARIAN JEWISH IDENTITY

Though other parts of this book include brief references to the role food has
played in shaping and maintaining Jewish identity, I believe this important
subject deserves to be presented in a separate subchapter, one that discusses it
not only in generalities, but also through specific examples.
Food is not merely a necessity for physical survival, but it is equally crucial
to the survival of a culture, perhaps more than any other area of it. This is so
because of the way food traditions frequently reflect other areas of a culture.
As Roland Barthes wrote: “To eat is a behavior that develops beyond its own
ends, replacing, summing up, and signalizing other behaviors, and it is precisely
for these reasons that it is a sign.”96 Or as the common saying goes: “You are
what you eat.” Food is tremendously important in establishing and maintaining
collective identity, the cohesion of a group. It plays a powerful role not only in

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this, but also in image, the way others think of a group. Furthermore, it is
equally relevant to individual identity, the sense of the self, and also to the way
someone thinks of himself/herself in relation to a group.
This can be seen in any culture, but I believe not to the extent as in
Judaism, where food has been virtually the embodiment of a sense of being
Jewish, and where the observation of kashrut rules played a major role in the
very survival of Jewish culture. In addition to the dietary laws, the profusion
of food traditions and rituals has been crucial in maintaining the cohesion of
Jews as a group. As mentioned before, probably no other group has as many
rituals and taboos related to food as the Jews. Kashrut rules are good examples
for the taboos, while the more or less prescribed consumption of certain foods
and beverages on most holidays is typical of the rituals. Some of it, like the
symbolic foods of Seder, is more codified, others, like the fish dish on Fridays
or the cholent on Saturdays, are less mandatory, but nevertheless crucial parts
of traditions. The repeated rituals, the choreography of holidays are tremendously important in giving us a sense of continuity, a sense of connectedness
and they become building blocks of both our communal and individual
identities.
Food memories of our childhood are not only able to make us instantaneously feel the taste of those dishes of yore, but they can transport us to the
actual room where we tasted them and we can again see our loved ones who
were there with us at the time. As to the more distant past, the letters, diaries,
and artifacts we inherited from our ancestors, as well as the family stories about
them, can bring them to life in our imagination, but not as palpably—one could
say, sensuously—as when we taste the dishes we prepared from their old recipes.
This was certainly so in my personal experience. Up until my mid-forties,
I hadn’t been in the least interested in Judaism, and I had felt that being Jewish
was little more than a biographical fact, something not deserving too much
attention. This all changed when I started recording my mother’s recollections.
Listening to my mother’s stories about my religious great-grandmother and her
household in a small town near the Austrian border piqued my curiosity. Later,
the experience of reading her letters, studying her photographs, and examining
her few artifacts handed down to me complemented the image I had formed of
her in my mind. But only when I started preparing the dishes and baking the
cakes from her 130-year-old recipes did I feel an almost physical presence of
her. It seemed to me that I was in touch with her, that she and her world had
finally become an integral part of who I am, a part of my identity. This gradual
transformation of my relationship to my heritage is also a good example of the
shifting identities and the role food can play in that change. I am glad that this
tie to my heritage doesn’t stop with me, but it continues to the next generation:

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my older daughter also prepares some of my great-grandmother’s dishes a few
times a year, usually for Passover.
Food-related habits, however, play a role not only in transmitting traditions
and incorporating them into our identities; they are also sensitive indicators
of a process that runs in the opposite direction: the gradual disassociation from
the world of our ancestors. Stopping to observe the dietary laws is usually the
first step in this process, and lots of people don’t wish to go much beyond that.
Though they no longer keep kosher, they continue celebrating at least the
major holidays and being Jewish remains an important part of their identities.
Others don’t wish to stop there and become completely secularized, though
frequently they continue considering themselves as Jews, if not religiously, then
at least culturally. My parents belonged to this group, and I and my siblings
have followed their path in this, though my late-found intellectual interest in
Jewish traditions certainly goes far beyond that of my parents and siblings. But
even in me, this interest in traditions is more a shift of emphasis than a complete reversal, since I didn’t become a practicing Jew.
As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, my parents for all their atheism and
lack of interest in anything that had to do with Judaism continued to prefer
sweeter versions of some dishes than what was customary in Gentile households, thereby adhering to a fairly common Jewish taste-preference in Hungary.
They also practically never drank wine and pálinka (fruit brandy). This had
been typical of the vast majority of Hungarian Jews, regardless whether they
were religious or assimilated. Except for the tiny amounts of wine that were
parts of some religious rituals, they drank on the average less than the nonJews, and so alcoholism was nearly nonexistent among them. This seems to
indicate that certain cultural traditions related to food and beverages could
survive a complete break with religiosity and its rituals. Some of this adherence
to food traditions in my parents, like their preference for sweeter than usual
dishes, was instinctual, though they were quite conscious that their lack of
interest in alcoholic drinks was part of their heritage. I, on the other hand, as
a teenager wished to distance myself from the assimilated Jewish world of my
parents, whose circle of friends consisted almost exclusively of secular Jews,
and as a result I not only had mostly non-Jewish friends, but was quite fond
of alcohol. They noticed this and commented: “What kind of a Jew are you to
drink so much?,” which only shows how much they considered near abstinence
a Jewish tradition. But I must have considered it the same way, and this was
precisely why I rejected it in my instinctive effort to have a more open social
life than their fairly restricted existence.
As this shows, food and beverage traditions played a role in my family’s
identities, though I wouldn’t say that it was a crucial role. But all our ambivalence

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notwithstanding, we considered ourselves Jewish in spite of our conversion to
the Lutheran faith in 1944, when we hoped it would lessen the threat to our
lives. Of course, it didn’t help at all, but that is hindsight. Other Jews, however,
not only cut their ties to Judaism and not only converted to try to save their
lives, but they became deeply committed to their new religion. Some of those
former Jews became religious Catholics or Protestants, sometimes sincerely so,
and while they didn’t outright deny their Jewish past (though some of them did
that, too), they felt somehow embarrassed by it, wanted to forget it, and tried
their best to keep it secret.
The family of one of my friends in New York is an example of this. Both
his parents came from assimilated Jewish families in which everyone was an
enthusiastic Hungarian patriot. The parents together with their siblings and
cousins decided to convert to Catholicism in the mid-1920s, a few years after
a period of increased anti-Semitic pressure, even violence in Hungary, and they
became sincerely religious Catholics, especially my friend’s mother. They
wholeheartedly embraced their new faith and educated their children in this
spirit, wishing to live exactly the way Christians do. Instinctively, they didn’t
want to eat foods that were commonly associated with Jews, so cholent, kugel,
matzo ball soup, kindli, and the other Jewish specialties were missing from
their table, and they also followed Christian customs in the way they seasoned
their food: for example, they didn’t sprinkle sugar on their cabbage noodles
(like most Jews do), but flavored it with only salt and pepper, and didn’t use
more sugar in seasoning dishes than the majority society. To sum it up: they
wished to have food that tasted “Christian” and not “Jewish.” But this wasn’t
a conscious decision on their part; it was simply part of their effort to fully
assimilate into Christian culture, to become “normal,” and therefore the
preference for such foods might even have predated their actual conversion. They
wished to build a new Christian identity for themselves and tried to minimize
everything in it that reminded them of their Jewish past. Food was by no means
the most important element in this process, but it did reflect it.
As these examples show, food has always played an important role in
shaping the collective and individual identities of Jews, especially among those
who were religious and those in whom assimilation didn’t lead to complete
secularization. In some other families, however, like in the last mentioned
example, this role was less central.

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54. An advertisement from 1890
of the yeast factory founded in
the US by the Budapest native
Charles Louis Fleischmann with
his brother and James Gaff.

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HUNGARIAN INFLUENCE ON THE JEWISH X
CUISINE OF OTHER COUNTRIES

55. A 1960s photograph of
Berta and Sándor Herbst’s
Hungarian bakery, famous
for its strudels, at 1443 Third
Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper
East Side, near 81st Street. Their
shop window in the photograph
features, in addition to other
desserts, vanilla crescents
(delicate cookies made with
ground almonds and butter),
Hungarian filled pastry
roulades (bejglis), and Pressburger pastry crescents
(pozsonyi kifli). Sándor Herbst,
a cabinetmaker, and his wife,
Berta came to New York on
their honeymoon in 1903 and
they decided to remain there.
At the beginning of the
Depression, Sándor, by then
called Alexander, couldn’t find
work, and so he and Berta,
by then Bertha, a fine cook,
started to bake strudels in their
kitchen for sale. In 1935, they
opened a store on the Upper
East Side specializing in
strudel, pogácsa, and fluden.
It became popular, and in 1939
they became the suppliers for
the Hungarian Pavilion at the
World’s Fair. In 1947 they moved
to another location at 81st
Street and Third Avenue,
a neighborhood where many
Hungarian, German, and
Austrian immigrants lived. In
addition to pastries and cakes,
they also sold their homemade
apricot and plum lekvár (fruit
butter) in their store.
Photographer unknown.

The Jewish cuisine of many countries includes some Hungarian and Hungarian Jewish dishes. Though certainly one can’t call strudel such a dish, probably
the Hungarians were who figured out—perhaps in the late seventeenth century
—how to spread various fillings on dough that has been stretched to paperthin leaves (the making of which they had learned from the Ottoman Turks
who had occupied much of their country for about 150 years until 1686) and
how to roll up the filled dough. The high-gluten flour available in Hungary
also helped, since it made the stretching of strudel dough a little easier. Strudels
come with an amazing variety of fillings in Hungary, and some of those found
their way into Jewish and non-Jewish cookbooks published in Austria,
Germany, Bohemia, and in many other countries. We can also frequently find
gulyás (usually as a stew, not as a soup), a typical Hungarian dish, in other
countries’ Jewish cookbooks and also kindli, a Hungarian Jewish specialty.
Although according to the all-knowing Ignotus, Hungarians learned making
stuffed peppers from the Serbs,97 Ashkenazi cuisine probably got to know it
through the Hungarians. In any case, it is the only dish made with peppers
that became popular in virtually the whole Ashkenazi world. But since I have
been living in New York for fifty years and know American Jewish cuisine far
better than that of other countries, I will focus here mainly on the Hungarian
influence in it.
Hungarian Jewish immigrants very early had an influence on not only
American Jewish, but also on non-Jewish cuisine. In 1870, Charles Louis
Fleischmann, originally called Károly Lajos Fleischmann, a Hungarian Jewish
immigrant from Budapest, and his brother formed a partnership with James
Gaff to build a yeast-producing plant in Cincinnati, Ohio, the first such plant
in the US. In 1872, he was granted a patent for the first commercially produced
yeast compressed into fresh yeast cakes of uniform shape and weight. Within
a few years he founded several factories in various regions of the US and eventually made his product available throughout the country. Later, in the 1930s,
his factory was the first to introduce active dry yeast, a dehydrated granulated
product, sold in small packets, which can be reactivated when combined with
moisture.
As for the Hungarian influence in American Jewish cuisine: it is enough to
page through some local Jewish cookbooks to see how many recipes they include
for dishes adopted from Hungary. Generally, we can find recipes in them for
goulash (gulyás), cherry soup, chicken paprika (paprikás csirke), versions of crêpes
(palacsintas, also popular in other Central European countries, not only in

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HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

Hungary), lecsó (a vegetable stew), lekvár, strudels, apple fluden (almás lepény in
Hungarian), various kinds of pogácsa (round scones), and kindli, a Hungarian
Purim pastry. Jews, who were frequently forced by their history to relocate to
other countries, have always adopted dishes from their new homeland, but they
also preserved food traditions of the lands where they had come from, which
in turn influenced local Jewish cooking. This is especially true for the US,
where masses of Jewish immigrants arrived during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
Restaurants, pastry shops, and bakeries opened by Hungarian Jewish
immigrants became popular in numerous US cities. I myself can well recall
two famous New York pastry shops, both of them run by the family of their
original owners for more than thirty years. One of them was Berta and Sándor
Herbst’s pastry shop, best known for their excellent strudels, which functioned
between 1935 and 1982 on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, while the other one
was located on the Upper West Side, a few steps from where I live now. It was
owned by the Lichtmann brothers, who were related to the Herbsts by marriage
56. An advertisement of the
store H. Roth & Son – “Lekvár
by the Barrel,” which appeared
in 1974 in Menóra, a Hungarian
Jewish newspaper published in
the US. I visited this pleasantly
old-fashioned store on
Manhattan’s First Avenue many
times. The shop’s huge,
undecorated space was full of
imported kitchen equipment
(like walnut and poppy seed
grinders) and with a rich choice
of the kind of cooking and
baking ingredients one couldn’t
find in average supermarkets
(for example: ground poppy
seeds, several kinds of lekvár,
and paprika, all sold by weight
from containers, not
prepackaged). Usually on such
occasions I also stopped by a
comparably large store called
Paprikás Weiss, Roth’s rival on
Second Avenue, which sold
similar goods. Sadly, toward the
end of the 1980s Roth’s store
fell victim to the gradual
atrophying of the formerly so
lively Hungarian and German
neighborhoods on the Upper
East Side, followed by Paprikás
Weiss about ten years later.

HUNGARIAN JEWISH CUISINE

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and whose shop was famous for its pastries, coffee cakes, and tortes. Neither
of the shops sold kosher products, and I am sure that many of their customers
were neither Hungarian nor Jewish. I have especially fond memories of Mrs.
Herbst’s Hungarian Bakery, since any time I visited one of my two aunts living
in that neighborhood, I could never resist the temptation to stop by this attractively old-fashioned shop, its interiors decorated with motifs of Hungarian folk
art, in order to eat a few slices of their strudels, generally one with apple and
another one with poppy seed filling. It is an indication of the great role
Hungarian Jewish immigrants played in the New York food scene that not only
the owners of these two famed pastry shops, but also Messrs. Roth and Weiss,
who owned two of the largest stores in the city selling cooking and baking
ingredients imported from Europe, came from this group.

57. A 1974 advertisement of the
Lichtmann pastry shop, located
in Manhattan, from a Hungarian
Jewish newspaper published in
the US.

4
Regional
and
Cultural
Differences
The Northeastern Regions and the Galician/Polish/Ukrainian Influence
Western Hungary and the Austrian/German Influence
The Northwestern Regions and the Bohemian/Moravian/Slovakian Influence
The Southern Regions and the Serbian/Croatian Influence
Transylvania and the Romanian Influence

R E G I O N A L A N D C U LT U R A L D I F F E R E N C E S

I

n the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century
the Jews in Hungary, similar to a large share (perhaps the majority) of the
country’s general population, were mainly descendants of people who had
migrated from the surrounding lands after the end of the Ottoman occupation
in the late seventeenth century. People are generally forced by some compelling
reason to leave the place where their ancestors had lived. For example, one of
my Kauders ancestors, who had been born in Bohemia or Moravia, decided to
migrate to western Hungary around 1755 because Charles VI, the Holy Roman
Emperor (as Hungarian king: Károly III), in an effort to limit the size of the
Jewish population in the Austrian provinces, decreed in 1726 that only the
firstborn son of a Jewish family could marry locally, and so the younger sons, if
they wanted to start their own families, had to leave the places of their birth.
Jews in other regions felt compelled to relocate as a result of a different set of
discriminating measures or because of the dearth of local economic possibilities,
which thrust many of them into misery. In most instances they could hardly
carry personal possessions with them, but they brought the traditions of different
dishes and ingredients, since in their minds the flavors of their childhood
remained vivid memories. At the same time their whole way of living was also
shaped by the Jewish culture of the land of their ancestors. There were great
differences in their ancestral cultures since the Jewish population’s dominant
language, types of settlements, level of urbanization, and degree of modernization was by no means the same in the western regions, like in Austria or
Bohemia, and in the eastern ones, such as Galicia or Ukraine.
Austrian, Moravian, and Bohemian Jews represented the majority of
immigrants to Hungary in the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the
nineteenth. They came from regions where the first signs of modernization
could be already perceived, where many of them were urbanized, and where
they frequently used German instead of Yiddish in everyday life. In contrast,
Jews who came in a slightly later immigration wave from countries farther to
the east had mostly grown up in religiously very strict, frequently Hassidic
communities, which had hardly been touched by modernization and urbanization, and Yiddish tended to be their mother tongue. Even many decades
after these groups had arrived to Hungary, their divergent culinary traditions
could be detected in families of their descendants and in communities of people
with a similar background.

58. (page 122) The newspaper
editor József Vészi and Margit,
his daughter in Paris, in 1905.
(Detail of Fig. 60)

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Such traditions occasionally also affected Jews with a different kind of
ancestry and living in a different region of Hungary, at times to the extent that
they became perceivable in the Jewish cuisine of the entire country. The
repertory of dishes in a region was primarily influenced by the land of origin
of the local Jewish families, by the cuisine of the neighboring country, and by
the cooking of other minorities of the area, but it also included dishes of more
distant places. In my opinion, the only easy-to-comprehend way to present the
Jewish cuisine of different regions is to examine them separately, even though
in reality the factors shaping them were rarely so confined to a specific place,
since there was a great deal of overlap among them, and they could be frequently detected in other areas of the country, too.
At first I will present the culinary cultures shaped by the two most important Jewish cultural traditions in Hungary: the Galician, Polish, and Ukrainian
influence, mainly characteristic of the northeastern regions, and the Austrian,
German, Bohemian, Moravian, and Slovak influence dominant in the central
and western areas. Following this, I will focus on the Serbian and Croatian
influence, typical of the southern parts of the country, which was less perceivable in distant regions, and finally on the Transylvanian Jewish cooking
that displays Romanian and Sephardi influences and to a degree represents
a world of its own.

THE NORTHEASTERN REGIONS AND THE
GALICIAN/POLISH/UKRAINIAN INFLUENCE

The love of sweetened dishes, already mentioned while discussing the characteristics of Hungarian Jewish cooking in the previous chapter, is perhaps the
best example of a situation when an influence—originally transmitted by
foreign Jews who migrated to Hungary—becomes common throughout the
country, even among Jews of different ancestry. Gefilte fish (Yiddish: stuffed
fish), on the other hand, is an example for a foreign influence remaining by
and large local.
Gefilte fish has been a traditional first course of Friday evening meals and
on the eve of other holidays in most of the Hungarian Jewish families in the
northeastern part of the country and at those who lived elsewhere but whose
ancestors had come from countries to the east, like Galicia and Ukraine. At
the same time, however, fish prepared this way was hardly known in western
Hungary, and it wasn’t customary among people descended from western
immigrants. The anecdote with which this book starts illustrates this well: while
at Laurent Stern’s paternal grandparents, who had immigrated from Galicia,

R E G I O N A L A N D C U LT U R A L D I F F E R E N C E S

gefilte fish was frequently served, his mother, born in Nagyvárad (Oradea,
Romania), preferred to start the festive meals with poached slices of fish. Gefilte
fish was also missing from the meals of my family of Moravian or Bohemian
ancestry, and none of the about a dozen handwritten recipe collections I inherited include it. I know from the late George Lang, the noted restaurateur
and culinary expert, that it was never eaten in his superficially religious family
in Székesfehérvár, western Hungary, and that only after arriving in 1946 as
a new immigrant to New York did he first hear of gefilte fish and tasted it. It
was, on the other hand, a frequent dish in the Ungvár (Uzhhorod, Ukraine)
family of Iván Moskovics. “My mother cooked traditional Jewish holiday fare
for Pesach. On the table there was always gefilte fish, chicken soup with matzo
meal noodles, and boiled chicken.”98
Gefilte fish had wandered long and made a huge detour before reaching
Hungary. The Babylonian Talmud mentions chopped fish in the context of
the Shabbat (Shab. 118b) and according to the German rabbi Jakob ben Moses
Halevi Mölln, also known as the MaHaRil (c. 1360–1427), who lived in Mainz
and Worms, “vinegar could be added to fish hash on the Shabbat.”99 This latter
thing was probably done to “cook” the fish, as is done today in the Latin American seviche. Regardless whether these were direct predecessors to gefilte fish or
not, they prove that chopped fish has long been associated with the Shabbat.
The tradition of stuffing the removed fish skin with chopped fish meat comes
from medieval Germany, where a c. 1350 manuscript of non-Jewish recipes (Das
buoch von guoter spise [The book of good food], the oldest “cookbook” in German) includes instructions for making stuffed pike. Local Jews probably adopted
this type of fish preparation relatively early, though for long the most common
first course of the Friday evening meal remained carp or pike, poached whole
or in slices and served warm or cold and jellied, and only rarely as stuffed fish.
Later, Jews instead of the labor-intensive stuffed fish started to make dumplings
from a mixture of chopped fish, matzo crumbs and eggs, albeit they didn’t yet
call them gefilte fish. Though both stuffed fish and the dumplings made of
chopped fish became popular among Polish Jews and those in other regions of
Eastern Europe in the seventeenth century, only toward the end of the nineteenth century did they extend the term gefilte fish to the dumplings, too—
till then only the real stuffed fish was called that way. The dish was introduced
to Hungary by Yiddish-speaking Jews immigrating from the east, from Galicia
and Ukraine, and this is the reason why gefilte fish was only eaten in certain
regions and only by Jews of a certain cultural heritage.
Though stuffed cabbage was a favorite of Jews everywhere in the country,
they tended to prepare it differently depending on their cultural background.
The savory version favored by descendants of western immigrants was similar

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R E G I O N A L A N D C U LT U R A L D I F F E R E N C E S

Egg Cake
(Tojásos
lepény –
Eierkuchen)
From the 1935 cookbook
of Mrs. Aladár Adler,
who called herself
Auntie Giti in her book.
The book’s recipes are
meant for four people.
We mix ½ kilo flour
with bicarbonate of
soda or baking powder
to fit the tip of a knife,
4 eggs, sparkling water,
a little Ceres [vegetable
fat], and salt. We knead
a fairly soft dough of
this. We roll it out to 1
cm thickness and bake
it on a baking sheet
which had been
previously greased with
Ceres. We brush the top
of the dough with egg
yolk. Should we wish to
make a sweet version
of the cake, we use less
salt and add sugar
according to taste.

to the widely known non-Jewish variety: they seasoned it with salt, pepper,
and paprika. A few of them perhaps also added a little sugar, but this was
nothing compared to the decidedly sweet version of some people whose
ancestors had come from the east. Polish Jews frequently added chopped or
grated apples, raisins, and honey to their stuffed cabbage. This flavor combination is the reason why sweetish dishes containing raisins, apples, and
perhaps chopped almonds are frequently called “Polish” in Hungary; a typical
example of this is the Hal lengyelesen (fish in Polish style) in Régi zsidó ételek
(Old Jewish dishes),100 a cookbook by Zorica Herbst-Krausz. Stuffed cabbage
could differ not only in flavor but sometimes also in shape among Jews whose
ancestors had come from different regions of Europe. The paternal grandmother of Ivan Sanders, who had been born in Chołojow, Galicia, and moved
to Budapest with her husband around 1900, made small ball-shaped cabbage
packages for her sweet version of the dish instead of the about 3"-long
elongated usual ones.101
Laurent Stern’s paternal and maternal grandparents, who came from different Jewish cultures, not only had divergent opinions about what kind of
fish course to serve at their Seder and on Fridays, but—as we have seen—they
disagreed about matzo balls, too. The Galician-born grandparents were not
willing to eat matzo balls at Seder, since they considered it gebrochts, not appropriate for Pesach. In the introduction I described their reasons for this and
mentioned that this was most common among the Hassidim in Galicia and
among the Orthodox they influenced in this respect. Ede Vadász describes that
even if Jews of Galician origin ate matzo balls at Seder, their dumplings were
much smaller than the usual: “Our dumplings are usually the size of a fist, but
those of the Poles are barely the size of a walnut. The Hassidim eat ninety-one
dumplings, which they divide into several meals. I am no expert in the Zohar,
but as I heard they do this for some kabbalistic reason in reference to the sum
of the numbers in the ‘Ehad mi yodea’ [Hebrew: ’Who knows one?,’ a hymn
with a series of thirteen riddles]. When, for example, they eat fifteen dumplings
corresponding to the first five numbers [1+2+3+4+5=15], which wasn’t more
than three regular-sized dumplings, then if on the next occasion they ate
twenty-one, corresponding to six, seven, and eight [6+7+8=21], this was
already thirty-six out of the ninety-one. Two of my uncles of blessed memory,
Kszáv Szofér [1815–1879] and Simon Fischmann, a rabbi in Kecskemét, had
wives who had been born and raised in Galicia. Their walnut-sized dumplings
usually provoked the ironic comment that one could eat as many as seventy of
them all at once.”102
Jews in eastern and northeastern Hungary were also fond of cornmeal
mush, which Miklós Rékai considers “the most popular mushy food in the

R E G I O N A L A N D C U LT U R A L D I F F E R E N C E S

eastern regions of Hungarian speakers.” According to him: “Jews in Munkács
eat both the variety in which fine cornmeal is sprinkled into simmering water
while steadily stirring it and another sort that uses coarse cornmeal. They call
the first one puliszka, the second tokány [probably from the Romanian toca, to
break into small pieces]. They make it either for breakfast or as food for the
sick by sieving cornmeal directly into hot salty water. [The sieving is necessary
to remove the empty hulls of the kernels.] They drink cold or warm milk with
it, but occasionally they eat it with either onions sautéed in goose fat or with
lekvár [fruit butter]. It can also be served by placing cut-up pieces of it on
cabbage first sautéed in goose fat with onions and then baked. In sweet versions
the first variety, made with fine cornmeal, is more common, in savory preparations the second sort, made with coarse, ‘broken’ cornmeal.”103
Ede Vadász relates that “on the basis of Genesis IX. 2, according to which
‘...all the fishes of the sea, into your hand are delivered’, the Hassidim who are
so numerous in northeastern Hungary … take the fish in their hands when
eating it. The stricter of them don’t even place any knife on the table, which
their kabbalistic notion considers an altar, so when they eat on it implicitly
they are making an offer to God. Exodus XX. 25 forbids placing a carving tool
on the altar: ‘And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build
it of hewn stone; for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou has polluted it.’”104
In the first example mentioned by Vadász the Hassidim don’t notice that “into
your hand are delivered” is a metaphor, which means simply that God gave
Noah and his descendants the right to consume the meat of beasts (animals),
birds, and fishes. In the second example the original text clearly refers to a tool,
probably a chisel used for hewing stone, which the Hassidim misinterpreted
as a sword. Since the Talmud indeed regards the dining table as an altar, many
among the Hassidim remove the knife from the table before saying the blessing
after a meal, or at least cover the knife, because it reminds them of a sword.
In his book about the cooking of the Munkács Jews, Miklós Rékai mentions
eier kichli (kichli means “cookie” in Yiddish), which existed in both savory and
sweet versions. People mostly ate it at the Kiddush following the Saturdaymorning synagogue service, but also at bar mitzvahs and other occasions when
people wished to give a guest something to go with tea or coffee. Its dough
was always prepared with some vegetable fat or oil to make it pareve. Rékai
also describes lekach (a honey cake or cookie) and its variation the aleph-bazyn
lekach (A-B honey cake). The first one was customary for Purim and yahrzeit
(Yiddish: time of the year; anniversary of death), the second when young boys
first went to cheder, religious Jewish elementary school.

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59. A poor Orthodox Jewish
family’s lunch in their home in
eastern Slovakia around 1930.
This region was part of Hungary
before 1920. (Detail of Fig. 62)

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Ginger-Flavored Soup Biscuits
(Semmelfanzeln für Suppe)
A nineteenth-century recipe of Mrs. Bernát Berger,
née Teréz Baruch
Translation of the original German text: Stir 1 kitchen
spoon [this was about three times the size of
a tablespoon] poultry fat, then add 3 eggs, 1½ soaked
bread rolls, 1 meszely (c. ¾ pint) flour, paprika, [dried]
ginger, and salt. Following this, stir this mixture until it
is foamy, pour it into a well-greased baking pan coated
with bread crumbs, then bake it until it turns yellow.
Cut it into shapes of your preference.
Modern version:
Ingredients (for 4 servings): 1 teaspoon oil or rendered
poultry fat (to grease the pan), 1 tablespoon dry bread
crumbs, 1 egg, 1 egg white, 2 slices of white bread
(c. 2 ounces) cut into ½” cubes and dried for 5 to
7 minutes on a baking sheet in a 400°F oven, soaked
for 1 minute in water to cover, and squeezed out,
1 tablespoon oil or rendered poultry fat, 10 dekas flour,
1 tablespoon very finely chopped fresh or
1½ teaspoons dried ginger, 1 teaspoon sweet paprika,
½ teaspoon salt
Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease a c. 3½” x 8½” loaf
pan or baking pan with oil or poultry fat and coat it
evenly with crumbs.
2. Place the egg and the egg white in a bowl, whisk
them, then add the rest of the ingredients. Mix it with
a fork to make a thick, sticky dough. Transfer this into

the loaf or baking pan and with the back of
a moistened spoon spread it in an approximately 1”thick layer. Let it rest for about 10 minutes. Place it on
a baking sheet and bake it in the preheated oven for
about 25 minutes.
3. Turn it out onto a cooling rack to cool for 10 minutes.
The dough, which has puffed up in the oven, will
slightly deflate during cooling. Using a serrated knife,
cut it into ½”-thick slices. Use about four slices for
each serving. Add the slices to the soup only at the last
minute before serving.

R E G I O N A L A N D C U LT U R A L D I F F E R E N C E S

WESTERN HUNGARY AND
THE AUSTRIAN/GERMAN INFLUENCE

Like the Yiddish-speaking Jews who migrated from Galicia and Ukraine, those
who came from the Austrian, Moravian, and Bohemian regions to Hungary
after the beginning of the eighteenth century also belonged to the Ashkenazi
culture, but they represented a tradition in many respects different from the
first group. They came from regions where urbanization, the evolution of a
middle class, and its attempts to assimilate—initially mainly confined to clothing and choice of language, but later also to schooling—had started significantly
earlier than among Jews belonging to the Eastern Yiddish culture. Although
most of the western immigrants knew Yiddish, they preferred to speak German
and except for religious literature, which was in Yiddish or Hebrew, they tended
to read German books, including cookbooks. It is no coincidence that most of
the Jewish cookbooks published in nineteenth-century Hungary were in
German. Not only their language tied these works to the German/Austrian

Baked Doughnuts (Csehpimasz)
From Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld’s Jewish cookbook, published in 1927.
Comment: This type of doughnut can be also found in several non-Jewish
Hungarian cookbooks, sometimes as csehpimasz, its strange Hungarian name,
which means “impertinent Bohemian,” at other times as tarkedli, which comes from
Dalken, the way it is called in German, but ultimately from the Czech vdolek (plural:
vdolky), meaning “small trough.” It is easy to see that the first half of its Hungarian
name (cseh, which means Bohemian) refers to the geographical origin of these
doughnuts, but I have no idea what is impertinent (pimasz) in them. They are baked
on the stove top in a specially shaped pan that has seven small, round
indentations.
Rub 1½ dekas yeast with 1 spoon sugar until smooth, mix this with 4 egg yolks,
a little salt, 1 teaspoon rum, 25 to 30 dekas flour, and when the mixture is
completely smooth, dilute it with as much lukewarm water as is necessary to get
a soft dough. Knead it until the dough is smooth, and let it rise at a warm place.
When it has risen, mix in 2 to 3 egg whites whipped to form firm peaks. On a lightly
floured work surface make small rounds from it with a small doughnut cutter, cover
them, let them rise again, then bake them in hot fat in a Tarkedli pan. Since it
quickly absorbs the fat, have additional hot fat ready in a separate pot for
replenishing the fat in the pan. Transfer the finished doughnuts to a serving plate,
sprinkle them with sugar, and serve them with apricot jam.

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culture, but also the majority of the recipes in them were typical dishes of the
German and Austrian cuisine, although of course they were adapted to conform
to Jewish dietary laws.
Austrian influence was also dominant in my great-grandmother’s nineteenthcentury collection of recipes, which can be explained by the proximity of Vienna
to her town on the Hungarian side of the border and by her preference for
German as her everyday language. This influence is detectable in many recipes
of her collection, including the wonderful soup biscuits intended as a garnish
for meat soups (Semmelfanzeln), pan-fried clumps of flour mush (Mehlsterz),
Sacher torte, Pischinger torte, and biscotti in memory of the late Crown Prince
Rudolf (Weiland Kronprinz Rudolf Theebäckerei), to mention only a few.
THE NORTHWESTERN REGIONS AND THE
BOHEMIAN/MORAVIAN/SLOVAKIAN INFLUENCE

The Austrian/German orientation very frequently mixed with a Bohemian/
Moravian/Slovakian influence in the culinary culture of those Jews whose ancestors once had come from those regions. The greatest number of such Jews

Djuvece (Gyuvecs)
From Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld’s Hungarian Jewish cookbook, published in 1927 in
Subotica, Yougoslavia, a town that until 1920 was called Szabadka and belonged to
Hungary.
Comment: Djuvece is a popular Serbian casserole, typically made with a variety
of vegetables and some meat, though meatless versions also exist.
Take as much goose giblets, goose drumstick, or duck as necessary and braise them
in fat and water until they are half tender. Meanwhile, sautée 3 to 4 sliced onions in
a little fat and reserve them for later use. Also meanwhile, cut 5 to 6 (possibly more)
tomatoes into pencil-thick slices, quarter 5 to 6 cleaned green peppers, and rinse
20 to 30 dekas of rice. Place the sautéed onions in a baking dish or in an enameled
baking pan (should you like it, you may include 1 to 2 cleaned and sliced potatoes
and perhaps also eggplants), and evenly distribute over them the braised meat, the
peppers and the rice. Spread the sliced tomatoes on top. Pour the meat juices and
the braising liquid over this so that they barely cover the ingredients, and add water
if the liquid isn’t enough. Salt it according to taste, and bake it in the oven, without
stirring it, until everything in it is tender, but the tomatoes have barely started to
brown. Serve it in the dish in which you made it.

R E G I O N A L A N D C U LT U R A L D I F F E R E N C E S

lived in the central and northwestern parts of the country. The Bohemian and
Moravian influence is easiest to detect in the many kinds of dumplings and yeast
cakes they made. On the other hand, preparations using curded cheese made of
sheep’s milk, for example, the thinly stretched bread dough topped with such a
cheese (juhtúrós lángos) in Auntie Giti’s 1935 cookbook, probably show Slovakian influence. My family was also originally from Bohemia or Moravia and
moved from there to western Hungary and Slovakia (at the time still part of
Hungary) in the eighteenth century. The cooking of great-grandmother Riza
was shaped by both Viennese and Bohemian/Moravian cuisine: her recipe
collection contains a great many such dishes. In addition to the many kinds of
dumplings, it includes recipes for Bohemian tongue (Böhmische Zunge) and
cookies from Brno (Brünner Kichel). The slightly sweet milk soup, made with a
little roux and garnished with narrow noodles can be found in German Jewish
cookbooks, but probably it reached Hungary through Slovakia, since all the
families that served it have such roots. My father, whose parents had moved from
Slovakia to Budapest, liked it, I, on the other hand, was much less fond of it.
I know from Szilvia Czingel, originally from Bratislava, that it was frequently
served in her parental home and that she disliked it as much as I do.
THE SOUTHERN REGIONS AND
THE SERBIAN/CROATIAN INFLUENCE

One can detect this influence in some of the dishes Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld
included in her Hungarian Jewish cookbook, published in about 1927 in Szabadka (today: Subotica, Serbia), which was part of Hungary until 1920. The
1938 third edition of the work features several such recipes: alvé slice (Serbian:
halva or alva, similar to the Turkish halva, a confection), oily salad, gyuvecs
(Serbian: djuvece, Bosnian: duveč, Turkish: güveç), tikvica (Serbian, literally:
“little squash”), padlicsan (Serbian: patlidžan, Turkish: patlican), and razsnica
(Serbian: ražnijci, literally: “spit,” similar to the Turkish șașlik). In addition,
the book contains far more recipes for lamb and ewe dishes than other
Hungarian Jewish cookbooks, and in my opinion this is also attributable to
the Serbian, Southern Slavic influence, since in those regions such dishes are
much more common than in Hungary. Although dishes made with poultry
meat and beef dominate in Mrs. Rosenfeld’s work—like in other Hungarian
Jewish cookbooks—the fourteen kinds of lamb and ewe preparations she
includes is significantly more than the three such recipes in Mrs. Rafael Rezső
Herz’s and the five in Auntie Giti’s volume. But even those few seem many
compared to the works of Mrs. Ábrahám Ganz and Jenny Ullmann, which
feature not a single such dish.

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TRANSYLVANIA AND THE ROMANIAN INFLUENCE

60. Margit Vészi and her father,
the newspaper editor József
Vészi, in Paris in 1905.
Photographer unknown.

In Transylvania, where Hungarians, Romanians, Germans, Armenians, and Jews
have coexisted for centuries, many old gastronomic traditions survived better
than in other parts of Hungary. For example, the large variety of spices (like
dried ginger, cinnamon, saffron, etc.), commonly used in Hungarian cooking in
former times, wasn’t so much supplanted in the nineteenth century by paprika,
and the range of fresh herbs used (like tarragon, basil, thyme, savory, marjoram,
etc.) hasn’t been as much reduced as elsewhere. In the seventeenth century, Jewish
migration to Transylvania came mostly from Moldavia, from Ottoman-ruled
parts of the Balkan, and from Turkey itself, and these settlers brought their own
culinary traditions with them. While elsewhere in Hungary the Jewish population was almost exclusively Ashkenazi after the end of Ottoman occupation in
the late seventeenth century, in the Transylvanian towns of Gyulafehérvár and
Temesvár (Alba Iulia and Timișoara, Romania) Sephardic communities continued to exist, and at times Sephardic influences could be felt in the basically
Ashkenazi-type Jewish cuisine of Transylvania.

R E G I O N A L A N D C U LT U R A L D I F F E R E N C E S

Eggplant was a fairly frequent part of the diet in Transylvania and in the
southernmost regions of Hungary—clearly as a result of Turkish, Bulgarian, or
Serbian influence—but elsewhere in the country it was hardly known before
1945. One of the earliest memories of Laurent Stern, born in 1930 in Budapest, is about the popularity of eggplant in Transylvania. When in 1933 or
1934 he and his parents arrived to Nagyvárad (Oradea, Romania) to visit his
maternal grandparents there, a noisy scene greeted them. Stern’s grandmother
was screaming at the servant: “Don’t you know that one must peel eggplant
with a wooden knife?” People used wooden knives for this task, since the eggplant turned black when it was cut with the steel knives available at the time.
Though eggplant was virtually unknown elsewhere in the country, there were
exceptions. For example, Margit Vészi, a writer of Jewish origin, who was the
first wife of the playwright and writer Ferenc Molnár, responded with eggplant
dishes to the recipe contest the magazine A Hét (The Week) announced in
1901. It is indicative of how little eggplant was known in Hungary at the time
that Margit Vészi, who learned to like eggplant dishes in one of her frequent
trips abroad, wasn’t familiar with the word padlizsán, the Hungarian name of
this vegetable (though to be precise, it isn’t a vegetable but a fruit), and so she
called it aubergine, its French name, in the recipes she sent to the contest.

Beet Soup
(Céklaleves)
From Mrs. Ábrahám Ganz’s kosher
cookbook, published in 1928 in Dés (Dej,
Romania), a Transylvanian town.
Simmer lots of bones in a pot of water.
Clean the red beets, cut them into thin
slices and cook them in the bone soup until
tender. When it is ready, strain it, and
remove the meat from the bones. Salt it
well, make it slightly sour with citric salt
[citric acid], and add a few sugar cubes, so
it should be also slightly sweet. At serving
time thicken it with an egg.

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R E G I O N A L A N D C U LT U R A L D I F F E R E N C E S

Like eggplant, beet soup was rarely made by Hungarian Jews outside
Transylvania, though cibere, a soup made with the liquid of fermented beets,
mainly for Pesach, was popular elsewhere, too. Jews elsewhere in Eastern
Europe usually called such beets and their sour juice rosl or rosl burik (Yiddish,
from the Slavic rosól). The fleshy red variety of beet was developed in Italy or
Germany in the sixteenth century, but it became common in Northeastern
Europe only about two hundred years later. Then, however, it became immensely popular, and soon Ashkenazi Jews in those northeastern countries made it
into a staple of their diet. Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian Jewish and nonJewish immigrants introduced borscht, a kind of beet soup, to the US, where
the menus of kosher restaurants usually feature either its cold, milchig variety
or its warm, fleishig version, or both, provided that they are kept separate.
Although beets were known in Hungary too, they were typically served sliced
as pickles, but rarely as a soup outside Transylvania.
In a similar way to gefilte fish, beet soup was introduced into Hungarian
Jewish cuisine by immigrants from the east, and therefore it became best known
in northeastern Hungary and in Transylvania. This is why most of the cookbooks featuring it are from those regions. For example, it is included in Mrs.
Ábrahám Ganz’s 1928 Jewish cookbook and in the 1938 WIZO (Women’s
International Zionist Organization) cookbook, both published in Transylvania,
and Paul Kovi’s Transylvanian Cuisine also has a recipe for it.105 The borscht
version of beet soup became popular primarily among Jews who moved to
Hungary from Galicia and Ukraine, and—as it has been mentioned—they
frequently called even the fermented beet soup that way, while other Hungarian
Jews called it cibere. Max Grunwald, a Viennese rabbi, one of the pioneers in
the field of Jewish ethnography, also mentions this in his excellent essay “Aus
dem jüdischen Kochbuch” (From the Jewish cookbook), published in 1928:
“Borscht in Hungary is only common among those who had migrated from
Galicia.”106
It seems that in Hungary beet soup to a certain degree counted as a Jewish
specialty, since while it was common among the Jews—especially cibere—it was
left out from most of the best-known comprehensive non-Jewish Hungarian
cookbooks of the mid-twentieth century, for example, from the works of
Mariska Vizvári, Ilona Horváth, János Rákóczi, and József Venesz. Only the
journalist Elek Magyar (1875–1947), perhaps the greatest Hungarian gastronomic writer, included a recipe for it in his Az Ínyesmester szakácskönyve (The
Master Gourmet’s cookbook), first published in 1932.
At times the Romanian influence could also be detected in the cooking of
Transylvanian Jews. For example, Anna Gáspár, who had grown up in that
region, told the interviewers of the Centropa organization that her mother had

R E G I O N A L A N D C U LT U R A L D I F F E R E N C E S

learned from Anna’s Romanian teacher how to make dulcsásza (Romanian:
dulceață), a fruit dessert of Turkish-origin.107 It is also attributable to Romanian
influence that Transylvanian Jews ate much more corn mush (in Hungarian:
puliszka) and knew more varieties of it than their brethren who lived in the
central and western parts of the country. That this was indeed a sign of such
an influence is obvious from the Romanian name they sometimes used for this
dish: mămăligă. Laurent Stern’s mother also used this name for the corn mush
that she occasionally made for her family in Budapest to remind her of Transylvania, where she had been born.
The diversity of Jewish cuisine in Transylvania and in other regions of
Hungary shows well how Jews were able to adopt everywhere to the customs in
the area. Jewish cooking was on the one hand very closed and archaic, on the
other, however—as I hope this chapter makes it clear—unusually open and ready
to accept all kinds of influences.

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5
Weekdays
and
Holidays
Dishes for Weekdays
Shabbat Dishes
Dishes for the Holiday of the New Moon
Dishes of Rosh Hashanah
Yom Kippur—Dishes for Before and After the Fast
Dishes of Sukkot
Dishes of Simchat Torah
Dishes of Hanukkah
Purim Dishes
Dishes for Pesach
Shavuot Dishes
Dishes for the Dairy Days and for the End of the Tisha B’av Fast
Dishes for the Birth of a Boy
Cakes for the First Day of Cheder
Cakes to Celebrate the First Exam in Cheder
Dishes for Bar Mitzvah

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

[ 141 ]

W

hat were the dishes served on regular days and holidays in the
households of Hungarian Jews? Most of the books about Jewish
dishes and the majority of recollections touching on this subject
focus mainly on the courses customary on holidays. Although these writings
include recipes also prepared for the weekdays, or at least mention such dishes,
they virtually never describe systematically the repertory of courses on regular
days: what people ate in the morning, at noon, and in the evening. It is
conceivable that the relative randomness of such choices attracted the attention
of researchers less than the codified, in part religiously prescribed food
traditions of the Jewish holidays. Compared to the unusual Jewish dishes of
the holidays, some of them characteristically Jewish specialties, the courses of
regular days, which were frequently dishes adopted from Gentiles and only
adjusted to conform to Jewish dietary rules, could have seemed to the researchers a bit uninteresting, not worthy of serious study. But of course the
weekdays were just as much parts of life as the holidays, and the dishes adopted
from non-Jews were just as much parts of Jewish cuisine as the specialties.
Aside from the Shabbat, the Torah mandates refraining from work only for
six days: the first and seventh day of Pesach (the festival of sparing and exodus),
the first day of Shavuot (the festival of receiving the Torah), Rosh Hashanah
(the beginning of the Jewish calendar year and the Day of Judgment, which
later became a two-day holiday), the first day of Sukkot (the Festival of
Tabernacles), and Shemini Atzeret (the concluding day of the autumn series
of holidays), although these are generally supplemented by the also biblically
mandated Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when even cooking is forbidden. Religious Jews, though, observe far more holidays than this, and each
of those has its own traditional customs and foods. I have never seen a table of
comparison about it, and I myself haven’t prepared one either, but I find it
likely that—if we include the rituals performed at home for the Shabbat—the
Jewish way of living includes more holidays, religious ceremonies, and especially more customs and foods belonging to a religious life than the Christian.
Of course, a Christian also celebrates the end of the week by going on Sunday
to church and having a nicer midday meal than on weekdays, and the most
religious among them avoid meat dishes on Friday evenings, but the tasks
awaiting a religious Jew on weekends are far more numerous. In addition to
the synagogue services on Friday night, Saturday morning, and Saturday

61. (page 138) Early-twentiethcentury greeting card for Rosh
Hashanah, the beginning of the
Jewish calendar year. (Detail
of Fig. 64)

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W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

afternoon, he must participate in a series of ceremonies at home: in the Friday
evening lighting of the candles and Kiddush, the three mandatory Shabbat
meals, and the Havdalah ceremony of saying farewell to the Shabbat, after
which the family sits down to another traditional meal. These meals have
several customary, in part religiously prescribed courses, and this is yet another
difference between the Shabbat of the Jews and the less regulated weekend of
the Christians. The scenario of other Jewish holidays contains similarly many
religious customs and traditional dishes. The foods, which recur year after year
in the celebration of holidays and which are known by every member of the
community, represent a certain permanence in the changing world. This helped
to make newer and newer generations understand the continuity of life and
culture, which reaches back to the past and extends into the future.

DISHES FOR WEEKDAYS

For the previously mentioned reasons it is a more thankful task to describe the
courses and culinary customs of the holidays than those of regular days, but
an overview of Jewish cuisine would remain unacceptably incomplete if we
didn’t discuss the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners of weekdays, and if possible
also the ways those meals differed in Hungary’s regionally, economically, and
socially diverse Jewish population, some of whom were religious but followed
different movements in Judaism, while others observed religion only superficially, perhaps not even at all. Unfortunately no exact, scholarly ethnographic/sociological study exists of the repertoire of dishes the various kinds of
Jews consumed on weekdays in the period before 1945, and so I can present
only those examples of which we have fairly detailed information. Both examples describe the dishes of small-town families that kept a kosher household,
but at least they are from different regions, so they can give some faint idea of
the regional differences. Hopefully, these examples will be later supplemented
by material about the foods of other families representing different lifestyles.
Although my great-grandmother’s household and cooking have been much
discussed before in this book, I wish to return to her here, too, since I know
most about her repertory of dishes. This is so since it is more or less possible
to distinguish the weekday courses in her collection of recipes from those of
the holidays, and since I am also familiar with her everyday meals from what
I heard from my mother, who had been raised in great-grandmother Riza’s
house until age six and who later on frequently returned there for days, weeks,
or months. At Riza’s the grownups rose around seven in the morning and my
very young future mother at eight. They didn’t eat breakfast together but

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

separately, when each of them got up. Their breakfast was quite simple: they
drank coffee with milk, once in a rare while cocoa, but never tea. Usually, they
ate bread with butter, homemade preserves, or honey. Frequently, the family
had a ten o’clock snack, although there was hardly enough time between
breakfast and lunch to get hungry. Such a snack could be a sandwich, hardcooked eggs, penets or, as it is spelled in Hungarian, pénec (Yiddish: slice of
bread or toast), which was Riza’s name for fried bread, or prósza, a sweet
corncake, made from cornmeal with goose fat and raisins. On bread-baking
days, they baked lángos, a flatbread similar to focaccia.
Lunch, the main meal in Hungary, was exactly at noon, when the church
bells rang. It was served in the family’s informal living room next to the
kitchen. The formal dining room and the formal living room were used only
on holidays, for example, at Seder, or when there were visitors. Every day they
started the meal with a soup, mostly some kind of vegetable soup or perhaps
one made with beef, which they served with some soup garnish. According to
my mother, they never made beet soup and chicken soup was generally
reserved for the Shabbat. The main dish was usually meat or poultry, but
sometimes Riza served some offal, such as veal tongue or calf ’s lung. She also
made vegetable dishes, such as layered or stuffed cabbage, stuffed green pepper,
or stuffed kohlrabi. Potatoes, rice, or some dumpling from Riza’s seemingly
endless repertory of them accompanied the meat dishes. Frequently, they had
freshly picked vegetables from the garden along with the meat, for example,
fresh peas served either puréed or in a flour-thickened sauce, and diced
kohlrabi was also made with this kind of sauce. On the other hand, according
to my mother, they rarely made pörkölt, one of the most common dishes in
Hungarian cuisine, and if they prepared it, they did so in the old-fashioned
way, without tomato, only with onions, cubes of meat, and paprika. With the
exception of stuffed peppers, they used tomato—a late arrival into Hungarian
cuisine—infrequently, which was typical of Riza’s archaic style of cooking.
Lunch ended with fresh or stewed fruit, or with some simple, home-style
dessert, such as a warm, sweet noodle dish or sweet dumplings. Cakes and
pastries, however, were mostly made only for Shabbat. On Fridays lunch
consisted of only light, simple courses, mostly dairy dishes—in part since none
of them wanted to be too stuffed before the substantial evening meal, and also
since Riza and Paula, her servant, were so busy preparing food for Shabbat
that they wouldn’t have been able to produce a labor-intensive midday meal
on Friday.
At times Riza invited her friends for afternoon conversation over tea and
dessert. When the friends arrived around four, Riza greeted them at the front
door and showed them to the nicely furnished szalon, the formal living room.

[ 143 ]

[ 144 ]

HÉTKÖZNAPOK ÉS ÜNNEPEK

62. The midday meal of a poor
Orthodox Jewish family in their
home in eastern Slovakia in
around 1930. This region was part
of Hungary until 1920. After
1918/1919, the Polish-born
Abraham Pisarek (1901, Przedbórz, Poland–1983, West Berlin),
who took this picture, lived
mostly in Germany, though he
spent the years between 1924
and 1928 in Palestine. He spent
World War II under very difficult
circumstances in Germany.

I

[ 145 ]

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W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

After they sat down she offered her visitors some cookies, biscuits, or small
pastries, all of which she baked herself.
Dinner, which in Hungary is a lighter meal than lunch, was always at seven
o’clock sharp. The bachelor Frigyes, Riza’s eldest son, who lived with his parents
and who after the 1910s took over from my aged great-grandfather the
management of the family insurance agency, sometimes couldn’t be home for
lunch, since he had to travel to villages to sell insurance, but he always came
back for dinner. Usually, there was warm food at this meal, and it was always
something different from what they had had for lunch. But the dinner courses
were simpler than the ones at noon. For a meat dinner they might get a stew,
boiled beef served in its own cooking broth, goose cracklings with mashed
potatoes, scrambled eggs with little bits of smoked beef in them, or noodle
squares with sautéed chopped cabbage. For a dairy dinner they might get
cauliflower topped with bread crumbs and sour cream, rice cooked in milk
and sprinkled with cocoa, or noodles with farmer cheese. Once in a while, they
had cold dinners and ate homemade sausage made of minced beef and veal,
chopped calf ’s liver, pickled herring, or anchovy-stuffed eggs. Riza copied the
recipes for most of these courses into the notebook I have from her, so
fortunately I know how she made them. Sometimes in winter they had inarsz,
a kind of goose “bacon.” Riza cut this lump of hard fat from the goose breast,
which she then rubbed with garlic and rolled in paprika. They ate it well chilled
and sliced thin.
But of course my middle-class great-grandmother, who in the last quarter
of the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth centuries led a kosher
household in a small town of western Hungary, represented merely one type in
the diversity that characterized Hungarian Jewry. Unfortunately, little information exists about the weekday meals of Jews living in other regions of the
country and differing from my great-grandmother in their economic situation
and religious orientation, and the few descriptions we have of such people are
not as detailed. József Farkas presents the most interesting such account in a
study he published about the lives and eating habits of the Jews in Mátészalka,
a town in northeastern Hungary.108 In his study, he quotes at length from the
recollections of György Braun, born in 1929 in Mátészalka, who describes his
mother’s household and cooking and—what counts as a great rarity—illustrates
it with his mother’s recipes, which he recalls from memory. As Farkas writes,
“most of the Mátészalka Jews—even when their financial situation would have
permitted to spend more—had a very modest household. A lavish lifestyle would
have been inconsistent with their puritan, self-restraining way of existence and
system of values. They refrained from carousing and getting drunk, and they
despised any frivolous and easy way of life. They counted every penny, and they

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

Cabbage Dumplings (Káposztás gombóc)
Comment: This recipe – a version of a now largely
forgotten nineteenth-century Austrian dish – was
preserved in the recipe collection of my greatgrandmother Riza’s daughter (my grandmother), where
the designation “mother” after the recipe title
specifies its original source. Supposedly, Emperor
Franz Joseph liked to eat a similar dish as a main
course, accompanied by cucumber salad.109
Geographically the emperor and Riza were not so far
from each other: Moson is only about forty miles from
Vienna. In social standing, however, they were lightyears apart, but this didn’t keep them from liking
essentially the same dish.
Ingredients for 6 servings: One very small (about
1 pound) green cabbage or ½ of a medium-sized one,
2 tablespoons salt, 2 slices of stale white bread, cut
into ½” cubes, soaked in water to cover for 1 to
2 minutes and squeezed out, 1 egg, lightly beaten,
1 tablespoon oil or unsalted margarine, 1½ cups flour.
Preparation:
1. Core and very finely chop or grate the cabbage to
become almost like a pulp. In a large bowl, mix the
cabbage with salt, place some weight on an upsidedown turned small plate to press down on the
cabbage. After about 30 minutes pour off the juices,
put the cabbage into a strainer and rinse out most of
the salt under running water. Squeeze out the cabbage
and put it into a large bowl.
2. Add the soaked bread and all the remaining
ingredients to the cabbage in the bowl. Knead it by
hand in the bowl for a few minutes, until it forms a
ball. If the dough is too sticky, knead in a little more
flour. Let the dough rest for 15 to 30 minutes. Boil
plenty of lightly salted water in a large pot. Place the
dough on the lightly floured work surface and with
floured hands form it into a roll of about 1½” to
2” diameter. Cut the roll into 5 parts and make four

1½" balls of each part. You should have 20 dumplings.
3. Place as many dumplings in the boiling water as you
can in one layer. Don’t overcrowd the dumplings;
rather, cook them in batches. Move them around
a little with a wooden spoon to keep them from
sticking to the bottom. Let the water come back to
a boil, lower the heat, partially cover the pot, and let
the dumplings simmer for about 12 minutes. Use
a perforated spoon to remove the dumplings to
a colander and briefly rinse them under cold running
water.
4. Serve the dumplings as a side dish, or take your cue
from Emperor Franz Joseph and serve them with
cucumber salad as a light luncheon dish. They are also
terrific with arugula leaves, which I would arrange
around the dumplings to form a “nest.”
Variation: Briefly brown the cooked dumplings in some
rendered chicken fat or oil.

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W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

Bean Broth Soup with Tiny
Dumplings (Csiperkeleves)
An excerpt from György Braun’s description of his mother’s cooking, who lived
in Mátészalka, northeastern Hungary.
“My mother [that is, Braun’s mother] made this when smashed beans was our
second course at the midday meal. The night before the meal we had to get the
beans ready for cooking, which consisted of rinsing them, removing foreign
matter from them, and soaking them in water to cover. The beans swelled up
by the morning. We rinsed the beans again, then started cooking them in plenty
of water. We added salt, bay leaves, and 2 to 3 heads of onion to the water and
cooked them over moderate fire until tender. At this point we poured off some
of the plentiful broth to make the soup with it. Meanwhile, we made a fairly hard
noodle dough with 2 eggs. When this was done, my mother used two of her
fingers to pinch off tiny dumplings from the dough. We stirred a little roux into
the broth we had reserved for the soup, added ground pepper, bay leaves and
onions to it, then cooked the tiny dumplings in it. At serving time, we removed
the heads of onion, and my mother gave them to the person who liked them.”

Sauces (Mártások)
György Braun’s account of his mother’s cooking.
”My mother made three kinds of sauces. The most common of them was tomato
sauce. She placed the tomatoes on the range, let them boil, then added a little
sugar, and finally stirred either some roux into it or a smooth mixture of water and
flour, to which she first added some of the hot tomato juices before adding it all
to the simmering tomatoes. That was what we always ate with boiled meat. We
also had gooseberry sauce quite frequently, but this could only be thickened with
a mixture of water and flour. Our mother made quince sauce for the holidays,
mostly in winter. We kept the quince in the room, on the top of our wardrobe.
It had a very pleasant smell, which could be felt in the whole apartment. We liked
it raw, too, though it was a bit sour. Our mother always added a a bit of cloves
to the quince sauce, which lent it a pleasant smell. Sometimes she added vanilla
or cinnamon to the sauce, which made it taste even better. She gave us stewed
quince to go with roast meat. This was our favorite; we almost fought over it. Our
mother made this by placing the pot with the cut-up, but not peeled, quince and
a little water on the range, then adding sugar to this and carefully cooking it, so
it shouldn’t break up into a pulp. She made this too with a little clove or vanilla.”

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

checked the purpose, the timing, and the extent of their spending. They were
mostly religious Jews: there were many Orthodox and Hassidim among them.”
As Braun recalls them: “Blum, the tailor worked at home in his apartment, but
he always kept the yarmulke on his head.... Only the Hassidim, who lived in
Temető Lane, wore caftans [long, black cloaks, called kapotes] and broad-rimmed
hats as they went to their synagogue in Zöldfa Street.” Many of the Mátészalka
Jews earned their living as tradesmen. György Braun’s father was, for example,
a shoemaker. The Braun family probably kept a kosher household, since none
of the recipes include pork or lard and none of them mixes dairy and meat
ingredients. They couldn’t have been well-off, since in Braun’s account there is
not a word about a domestic servant. “In my childhood I always liked to watch
my mother working in the kitchen,” Braun recalls. “She never stopped for a
minute. If she had nothing else to do, she swept the floor. I especially liked to
watch how she got everything ready for the daily cooking. Even when I was very
small, she could rely on my help in this. I brought her vegetables, like carrots
and kohlrabis, from our vegetable garden. I washed them, cleaned them, and
even cut them up, just as my mother asked me to do.” The recipes Braun included in his account obviously represent a mere fraction of the mother’s
repertoire of dishes. But judging from the relatively numerous soup recipes
among them, it appears that soup was the most important, virtually indispensable course of their midday meals: soups made with hen, goose, duck, potato,
mixed vegetables, kohlrabi, cabbage, or a combination of beans and cabbage. In
addition, they frequently prepared a soup of tiny dumplings in bean broth
(csiperke leves) and another kind made with small pieces of goose or duck meat
and finely cut vegetables (becsinált leves). “The soups were chosen to share
ingredients with the main course. For example, if we had tiny dumplings in bean
broth then the second course consisted of beans from that broth, smashed,
thickened with a little roux, and mixed with some onions sautéed in goose fat
(törtpaszuly). Of the other weekday main courses he includes recipes for potato
dumplings, noodles, stuffed cabbage (which they made with chopped goose meat
and with white or green cabbage, not sauerkraut), fried meatballs made of goose
breast, and chicken stew (pörkölt). The only side dish recipe he includes is for
homemade egg barley (tarhonya), though clearly they had many other kinds in
their repertoire of dishes. He also provides recipes for several desserts: doughnuts,
pastry fritters, a Linzer-like pastry, poppy seed or walnut crescents, poppy seed
or walnut pastry packages (kindli, a Hungarian Jewish specialty), yeast dough
buns filled with poppy seeds, farmer cheese, or walnuts (béles, delkel or delkli),
and crêpes (palacsinta) filled with lekvár or walnuts. But it is likely that in their
home, just like at Riza’s, meals frequently ended merely with stewed fruit.

Yeast
Dough
Buns
(Béles)
György Braun’s account
of his mother’s cooking.
“This was made with
a yeast dough. The
kneaded, risen, and
rolled-out dough had
to be cut into squares.
After spooning some
poppy seed, farmer
cheese, or walnut filling
onto the dough
squares, one had to
fold their four corners
over the filling and
transfer the buns to the
baking sheet. The tops
of the buns were then
brushed with egg, after
which they were left to
rise again and finally
baked.”

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Marinated Fish. A Polish Jewish Recipe.
(Pácolt hal. Lengyelzsidó változat)
From A Hét szakácskönyve (A Hét cookbook), published in
1902. The term “Polish Jewish version” in the Hungarian
title of the recipe doesn’t refer to Poles, but to
unassimilated Hassidic or Orthodox Hungarian Jews, who
were often called this way informally.
From Máramaros [a region in Transylvania], where it is an
indispensable appetizer on Friday evenings. Heat honey to
become light brown, and cook lemon, bay leaf, cinnamon,
2 to 3 spoons of strong wine vinegar in the water [added
to the honey?]. Soak the salted and sliced fish in plenty
of water, then salt it again. Place in the bottom of a glazed
ceramic baking dish vegetables, sliced onion rings, then
on top of them the fish, again onions, vegetables, black

pepper, allspice, then fish again, and continue this until
there are no ingredients left. Pour the simmering liquid
over this, and cook it first on slow, then on strong fire.
Initially, the fish will soften, then as we continue cooking
it will harden again, until it becomes almost crunchy,
which means that it is done. One should know that this
is only made from galóca [huchen, a fish belonging to the
salmon family that used to be plentiful in the Danube, but
now is a protected species]. It keeps practically for ever
if it is immersed in its strained liquid in a sealed glass jar.

Jewish Fish (Zsidóhal)
From A Hét szakácskönyve (A Hét cookbook), published
in 1902. Margit Rosenberg sent this recipe from
Csáktornya (Čakovec, Croatia) as an entry to the recipe
contest of the weekly, which originally featured it in its
September 15, 1901 issue. This dish is similar to Walnut
fish, a recipe for which is on page 328.
The cleaned, but not salted fish should be poached in
the following broth: cook various vegetables, half an
onion, a little salt, paprika, and potatoes in water, then
strain it, saving the broth. Place the fish in a clay pot,
and pour over it enough broth to cover. Cook it for
a while. Now mix chopped almonds (or walnuts) with
flour and water in proportions to get the consistency
of thick sour cream, and stir this slowly with as much
sugar as you like into the broth. Pike-perch (fogas) and
pike can be also prepared this way, only in those cases
we must use blanched almonds in the sauce and serve
it with grated horseradish.

“Madam Emma,” the columnist of the weekly and the
editor of its cookbook, made the following comment
about this recipe:
As far as I know, only white-meat fish (pike, pike-perch)
is prepared this way, since their flaky meat is really
good in this slightly rich preparation, which is not
really an original Jewish dish, but–as a large
percentage of Jewish cuisine is–of Provençal origin.
International French cuisine also knows a similar dish
of fish and vegetables; it is called à la Colbert on the
menus. [This is not correct: fish à la Colbert doesn’t in
the least resemble this dish.]

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

SHABBAT DISHES

Shabbat is a time of joy for religious Jews, not only because of the absence from
work, the intimate rituals performed at home, and the nicer, more festive dishes
eaten than those on weekdays, but also since they believed that this day offers
a taste of the Messianic Age. It is a day when according to the Talmud a special
Shabbat soul moves into the Jews. This also means that the celebrants should
eat more than usual, since they are consuming food for two: for themselves
and for the second soul. Traditional Jews spend virtually the whole week with
preparing for this day. Poor people rather lived in want during the week only
to be able to celebrate the Shabbat with fine foods. We can see this from a newspaper article, published in 1864, about a poor Jewish peddler, once a common
sight in Hungarian villages: “For more than sixty years he has been blowing
that whistle and yelling as he goes from one fence gate to the next: ‘What is
for sale?’ … He has to cover four villages in a day to satisfy the hunger of the
curly haired kids at home, and to earn enough money for the Shabbat. He
gladly toils to exhaustion and tolerates all the mocking, and he gladly subsists
on dry bread and onions during the week, only to be able to sit at the head of
the table on Friday evenings, … when the room is filled with the wonderful
smell of the carp in walnut sauce on the table.”110
Preparations for the Shabbat started as early as on Thursday. In the morning
my great-grandmother Riza went to the market, which was held along the edge
of the sidewalk, not far from her place on Main Street, but on the opposite
side. There, she bought a carp from Árpád Gróf, a Jewish fishmonger, who
sold live fish from a bag, in which they can survive for a few hours. When she
got home she placed the fish in water in the bathtub of her kitchen (the old
house had no bathroom, and the family bathed in the kitchen), so it should
get rid of the slightly muddy taste acquired in the river. Then she asked Paula,
the servant, to take a chicken from the coop in the courtyard, tie it up, and
give it to my very young future mother so that she could take it to the shochet
for slaughter. When she returned with the killed bird, Paula koshered it, then
in the afternoon she prepared the dough for barches (challah), so that it could
rise during the night. On Fridays, Paula and Riza rose even earlier than usual,
since they had a lot to do in order to have everything ready for the Shabbat
meals by the evening, before the beginning of the holiday. Riza tore off a small
piece from the risen dough of the barches, threw it into the fire in the kitchen
stove, and murmured a blessing over it, then Paula braided four elongated
barches loaves from strands of the dough, and placed them in the oven. Unlike
the loaves of bread, which they kneaded at home but took to the baker, they
always baked the barches at home. In addition, a great deal more had to be

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accomplished before late afternoon: they had to prepare for the evening meal
the chicken soup, the boiled beef, the tzimmes (a sweet vegetable side dish
usually made of carrots), some dessert, and who knows what else. Furthermore,
they had to kill the fish and poach it in a broth flavored with vinegar, onions
and spices, plus they had to prepare the cholent and the kugel for the Saturday
midday meal and place them in the wood-fired oven of their kitchen so they
could start to slowly bake.
In Budapest, in the family of Hermann Stern, the secretary of the Autonomous Orthodox Jewish Community, they also did nearly all their shopping
for the Shabbat and kneaded the dough for the challah on Thursday. Mrs.
Stern purchased the live poultry in the large indoor market on Klauzál Square,
which she then took to the shochet in Dob Street. They bought the live fish
also on Klauzál Square and they too let it swim for a day or two in the bathtub.
Like at my great-grandmother’s, they baked the challah at home, but not the
cholent, which they took to the baker, from where the servant carried it home
on Saturday at noon. While Riza didn’t add pearl barley (gersli) to her cholent,
Mrs. Stern included it in the dish. I know from Laurent Stern, Hermann Stern’s
son, that at their Saturday midday meal they served the following appetizers:
a spread made of the mixture of chopped hard-cooked egg, chopped onion,
and goose fat and another spread made of chopped beef liver or goose liver. At
Riza’s, however, they probably didn’t eat such appetizers on Saturdays or at least
my mother failed to mention them to me.
But in spite of the not too significant differences, the preparations for the
Shabbat at the Sterns were quite similar to those at my great-grandmother’s in
Moson, and there was also a good deal of similarity in the dishes served at the
Friday evening and Saturday midday meals, as well as in the sequence they
were served—although the two families lived far from each other and, since
Riza was born nearly fifty years before Mrs. Stern, they represented different
generations. This was typical of virtually all religious Jews of the country, since
they were connected by the traditions that to a large extent determined the
Shabbat meals: the challah, the first course of fish on Friday nights, the chicken
soup and the boiled beef that followed it, and the cholent on Saturdays at noon.
On Friday nights, Paula, Riza’s maid, covered the dining table with a white
tablecloth, and placed on it two candlesticks, a saltcellar, and two loaves of
barches (challah), which Riza covered with an embroidered cloth. As the family
gathered around the table, she lit the candles, moved her hands around the
flame, covered her eyes and said a benediction to greet the Shabbat. After my
great-grandfather returned from the synagogue, he blessed the children and
then performed the Kiddush ceremony: he said a blessing over the wine, cut
off one end of a loaf, broke it to smaller pieces, dipped each into salt, gave one

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

to each member of the family, and finally blessed the barches pieces, too. The
tradition of salting has to do with the command that no sacrifices can be
offered without salt,111 and this is valid for the Friday evening ritual, too, since
the table symbolizes the altar of the destroyed Sanctuary in Jerusalem and the
barches stands for the twelve loaves once given to the kohens, the priests. After
eating the barches pieces, everyone sat down to the festive meal.
The symbolic meaning of fish, the traditional first course, explains its
important and ancient role in Friday’s dinner, the first Shabbat meal. Fish is a
symbol of fertility, good fortune, and the coming of the Messianic Age, of
which, it is believed, the Shabbat gives a prior feeling. Fish is connected to this,
because, according to legend, at the arrival of that age the righteous will feast
on the flesh of the Leviathan, the enormous sea monster. Perhaps it also
contributed to the tradition of the Friday night fish dish that the numerical
value of the letters in the Hebrew word for fish is seven, so it refers to the
seventh day of the week, when God rested after finishing the creation. In some
families they made enough of the poached slices of carp, which they served
steaming hot on Friday nights, to have some left for Saturday, when they ate
it cold, as jellied fish. Others, though, ate cold fish (gefilte fish, jellied fish,
etc.) on Friday nights, too.
After the fish course they had some soup, typically chicken soup, which
was in many families followed by boiled beef, served with a sauce. This was
also the perpetual main course on Friday nights at Hermann Stern’s in Budapest
and at Gyula Spitzer’s in Pécs, southwestern Hungary. It perhaps contributed
to the ubiquity of beef on Fridays that meat purchased at the butcher was more
expensive than chicken, which rural and small-town Jews raised in their own
backyard, so it better fitted the festive nature of Shabbat that demanded a bit
of luxury.
In some families, though, instead of boiled beef a chicken or in some rare
cases a duck course followed the soup. This was what they ate in the parental
home of Magda Fazekas, born in 1920 in Gyergyószárhegy (Lăzarea, Romania),
a Transylvanian town. As she recalled: “My mother made beef soup for Friday
evening. She garnished the soup with narrow noodles. But my mother also
cooked other things for the evening meal. She used a duck instead of a hen to
make a special kind of dish, which wasn’t of Transylvanian origin but came from
the Moldavian, Dobrudjan regions, and that was what we had for dinner on
Friday. It was a roux-thickened meat-and-vegetable soup, made with duck
giblets. My mother made the sauce from a very light roux, to which she added
lemon slices and raisins.”112
On Saturdays the breakfast was also more delicious than on weekdays. At
my great-grandmother’s and in the Stern family they generally ate cheese delkel,

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Cholent (Csólent)
György Braun’s description of his mother’s cholent in
Mátészalka, northeastern Hungary.
“This was our most important dish, it was obligatory on
Saturdays. Our mother assembled its ingredients in the
cholent pot. The previous night she rinsed the white
beans, then soaked them. She made the bottom layer
with these soaked beans. She placed the smoked goose
meat on top of this, sprinkled it with rinsed and pickedthrough pearl barley, then added cleaned and finely
sliced carrots, onions, and garlic. She placed the kugel
on top, and poured as much water over all this as was
necessary to cover the ingredients. After she tied the pot
closed, we took it to the baker, where it slowly baked in
the oven. Kugel is a sausage-like preparation stuffed into
skin removed from the goose’s neck. [Most people don’t
call this kugel, but stuffed goose neck, also known as
halsli.] This kugel was made by mixing c. 20 dekas flour
with 2 tablespoons goose fat, a little salt, crushed black

pepper and noble-sweet paprika. They kneaded this to
a consistency that could be stuffed into the skin of the
goose neck, which then was tied at both ends. This was
our favorite, which our mother cut into as many slices as
we were at the table and added it to the cholent on our
plates. We always reserved some cholent for taking it to
our Gentile neighbors and acquaintances, since they
liked my mother’s cooking and they were always ready
to eat some cholent.”

similar to a cheese Danish, or perhaps slices of gugelhupf, a rich yeast cake baked
in a deep tube-form with a fluted pattern on its sides, and drank coffee with
milk. Breakfast was quite late on Saturdays, only after the men had returned
from the synagogue. Károly Gerő (1856, Hévízgyörk–1904, Budapest), an
author of plays about village life, recalls these breakfasts with great fondness:
“And those nights from Friday to Saturday! Oh, those sweet dreams of my childhood, where have you gone? You were not feverish like my later dreams, in which
ambition painted dream images. No, you were quiet and happy, and the
slumbering child could smilingly anticipate Saturday breakfast, the square
pastries of the thickness of two or three fingers, which were hiding farmer cheese
filling. I ate the part of them around the filling the same time when I drank the
coffee but left the filling for later, to be savored by itself. On such occasions,
I didn’t even give the gugelhupf its deserved appreciation, I ate it almost out of
mercy.”113
Jews in nearly all nations know some form of cholent, the customary main
dish of midday meals on Saturdays, but in some regions it was not as obligatory
and popular as in Hungary, where non-Jews liked it, too. This was why the
Globus factory in Budapest was producing canned cholent as early as around
1930, and although they ceased to manufacture it for a long while after World

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

War II, the factory started making it again in the 1960s. The choice of canned
food in the stores was very limited in those years, and there simply wouldn’t
have been enough Jews in the country to make marketing canned cholent
feasible. Clearly, the general popularity of the dish was what made this worthwhile, and therefore canned cholent is a good example of the influence Jewish
cuisine has exerted on Hungarian culinary culture. Its popularity is nothing
new, since as early as in 1896 an article published in Egyenlőség (Equality), a
Jewish weekly mentions it: “Even the cult of cholent changed denomination,
and followers of the pope in Rome eat it more frequently in a restaurant on
Andrássy Boulevard than we ourselves do.”114 There were, however, some Jews
who weren’t familiar with cholent—though this was a rare exception. Laurent
Stern’s Orthodox Jewish paternal grandmother, for example, first heard of
cholent when she moved, together with her husband and grown children, from
Galicia to Budapest in 1914. They rented an apartment in Dob Street, in Pest’s
old Jewish quarter, and she looked for a maid, preferably an ugly one, so that
her sons shouldn’t be tempted. She indeed found a young Jewish servant
woman, originally from the provinces, who was suitably unappealing. When
Margit started to work for them and saw that they didn’t make cholent for the
Shabbat, she said: “No cholent, not Jewish!” This settled the matter: from then
on there was cholent at the Sterns, too.
It seems that cholent was not as near-obligatory in the Ashkenazi cusine of
some other countries of Western and East-Central Europe as in much of Hungary. For example, one can’t find it among the nearly one thousand recipes in the
cookbook the widow of Joseph Gumprich published in 1888 in Trier,
Germany115. Although there is a recipe for it in the similarly comprehensive
cookbook Marie Kauders brought out in Prague in 1886116—interestingly a version made with dried peas, not with beans—none of the three alternate menus
she recommends for the Saturday midday meal includes cholent of any kind.
Even if it wasn’t as an indispensable part of the Shabbat meals as the fish dish
or the cholent, calf ’s feet served hot or cold and jellied was also a typical course
in some families on weekends. In Hungary it was usually called pce, in Poland
p’tcha or petcha or some other variant of the name, all of which derive from the
Turkish paca, foot. Samu Haber mentions it as one of the characteristic Shabbat
dishes in a volume of short stories he published in 1893 about the Jewish
holidays: “At this time [Friday forenoon] mother Gitl returns with a full
shopping basket. … They remove from it the stuff needed for the Shabbat: calf ’s
foot with its skin on, a pound of fatty meat, fresh or dried beans, vegetables,
carrots, small fishes, brown flour for bread, white for kolach [yeast cakes], and
lots of potatoes. … In the evening the master of the house blesses each of the
boys, even the one who sits in grandma’s lap. … They wash their hands and sit

P’tcha
(Pce)
From Régi zsidó ételek
(Old Jewish dishes),
a collection of recipes by
Zorica Herbst-Krausz.
Ingredients: 2 calf’s feet,
2 slices of barches
(challah), 2 bigger cloves
of garlic, salt.
Cook the koshered calf’s
feet in 1 liter water. When
the meat separates from
the bones, lift it out of
the water, and remove
the bones. Rub the
toasted barches slices
[of course, these had to
be toasted before the
Shabbat] with crushed
garlic and place them in
the bottom of the soup
bowl, then strain the
broth over them and
finally add the meat to
the broth. Serve it hot.

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63. Members of the community
eating lunch in the Munkács
house of the Hassidic rabbi
Baruch Yehoshua Rabinowicz
(1914–1994) in 1938. The rabbi
taught the Talmud to his
students in this room, the largest
in his house. At noon, the room
was rearranged for a communal
lunch. Photograph by Roman
Vishniac.

down to the table. They cut the loaf and break off small pieces, which they hand
out to everyone, since soon it will be the turn of the small fish and the cooked
calf ’s feet on the table. They like them so much that they lick their lips after
them.”117
Another tradition of the Shabbat meals was the custom of Hassidic rabbis
to invite their students and the poor of their communities to their houses for
the Saturday midday repast. In addition to the students and the poor, the rabbi’s
family and friends also participated in these lunches, but many other members
of his community came too, because to get scraps of food from the rabbi counted
as an honor. It was believed that the touch of the tzaddik (Hebrew: “righteous
man”), the leader of the Hassidic community, had endowed those bits of food
with holy power. As Ernő Galpert—born in 1923 in a Yiddish-speaking Hassidic
family in Munkács—recalls: “I remember Rebbe Spira very well [Chaim Eleazar
Spira, 1868, Strzyżów, Galicia, today in Poland–1937, Munkács, today: Mukacheve, Ukraine]. My father and I used to go for shirayim to his house. Shirayim
means “remainders” in Hebrew. Among the Hassidim it is customary that the
rebbe invites them for Saturday lunch. On such occasions, he himself hands out
the leftover food he didn’t consume. People thought these scraps would bring
luck. I can recall when I was five and crawled on my fours under the table to the

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

rabbi so that I could grab the shirayim. My father didn’t always go to these
gatherings, but I tried not to miss a single Saturday.”118
My great-grandfather in Moson, a town near the Austrian border, ate the
Saturday late afternoon meal, the Seudah Shlishit (literally: “third meal”),
shaleshudes in Yiddish, in the synagogue, together with the other men of the
community. In Budapest, however, Hermann Stern and the men in his family
stayed home for this meal, which at them usually consisted of cold fish. The
shaleshudes was only a very light meal in many communities, though according
to a 1934 newspaper article it was quite generous in the Csáky Street (today
Hegedűs Gyula Street) synagogue in Budapest, consisting of challah, hardcooked eggs, rolled herring fillets, crackers, and fruit.119 As can be seen from
the herring in the list and the fare at the Sterns, fish was sometimes also served
for shaleshudes, not only for Friday evening and Saturday noon.
The end of Shabbat was closely followed by another religiously prescribed
meal, the Melaveh Malkah. “Escorting the Queen” is the meaning of its
Aramaic name, since Jewish liturgy metaphorically speaks of Shabbat as a
“queen” or “bride,” and the meal marks the figurative escort of her. Foods had
to be freshly prepared for the Melaveh Malkah, since before the Shabbat it
wasn’t allowed to cook ahead for meals after it, but some people were willing
to eat leftovers of courses served during the Shabbat. Most people, though,

Rolled Herring Fillets (Hering-rollni)
A recipe of Mrs. Ármin Nádas (originally: Neubauer). Mrs. Nádas was the grandmother of Tibor Rosenstein, the chef-owner of one of the best restaurants in
present-day Budapest.
Rinse well a herring that has milt and place it in milk to soak for 24 hours. Cut off its
head and tail, pull off its skin, and lay it with its inner side up on the work surface.
Mix the milt with black pepper, finely chopped onion, capers, and spread this
mixture on the herring. Now, starting from its tail end, roll it up tightly and pierce it
with a thin wooden stick. Place it in a glazed ceramic pot and pour boiled but cooled
vinegar over it. The vinegar must cover the herrings. It is a delicious dish.

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weren’t hungry after the filling, heavy foods of the Shabbat, and according to
tradition it was sufficient to eat a piece of bread, challah, or cake at this meal.
For example, in Hermann Stern’s family in Budapest they merely drank freshly
brewed coffee or tea and ate some bread or challah, the latter ones not only to
fulfill the mitzvah, the religious obligation, but also because the blessings before
and after this meal required it.

DISHES FOR THE HOLIDAY OF THE NEW MOON

The first day of each month in the Hebrew calendar, determined by the birth
of a new moon, is called Rosh Chodesh (Hebrew: “head of the month”).
Though only a minor holiday, it has its traditional customs, one of which is to
honor the holiday by eating a special meal consisting of dishes better than the
everyday ones. Mrs. Hermann Stern, for example, made a cake or at least some
pastry for this day, even if the holiday fell on a weekday.

DISHES OF ROSH HASHANAH

Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew: “head of the year”), the Jewish New Year, which
usually occurs in late September or early October, starts—like all other Jewish
holidays—at sunset. It lasts two days and is closely connected to Yom Kippur,
the other holiday of repentance occurring eight days later. Religious tradition
describes Rosh Hashanah as the day of remembrance and judgment, since that
is when God examines the deeds of people, and judges the wicked, the
righteous, and those in between. But Rosh Hashanah represents not only
introspection and repentance, as well as the start of the sequence leading to
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but also the rejoicing in a new beginning, a celebration in which consuming certain symbolic foods could augur
for a good and lucky future.
According to tradition, one should eat sweet things at this holiday, for
example, apples, honey, and carrots, so that the new year should be sweet, and
at the same time one should avoid sour dishes, like any course made with
tomatoes. In addition, people don’t add walnuts to dishes, because the Hebrew
words for “walnut” and “sin” have the same numerical value: seventeen. Instead
of the elongated challah customary for the Shabbats during the year, people
serve either a round challah loaf during this holiday to symbolize the
completeness, roundness of the year and the continuity of life or a spiral-shaped
one standing for the ascent to heaven. Challah made for Rosh Hashanah

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

frequently includes raisins and Jews dip a piece of the challah not into the
customary salt, but into honey after the Kiddush, the blessing said at the start
of the holiday. People mostly serve poultry and fish with their heads intact at
the New Year meal, in the hope that those who get the head will become
“bosses,” people occupying leading positions.
The Rosh Hashanah midday meal at my great-grandmother’s started with
a fish dish, complete with the head of the fish, followed by a hen, goose or beef
soup. For the next course they selected something sweet, for example, boiled
meat with raisin or fruit sauce and perhaps a side dish of stewed fruit. They
always served a vegetable dish of carrots cooked with honey, since carrots are
not only sweet, but also associated with gold, and therefore they hoped this
vegetable would bring them prosperity in the new year. In addition, carrots
are also symbols of fertility and increase in value, which is explained by the
similarity of meren, the Yiddish word for carrots, and mern, that is, “to multiply.” Dessert at the end of the meal was usually apple strudel, stewed apples,
apple fluden, or honey cake.
The beliefs about carrots and fish heads could be considered as superstitions, since although logically they have nothing to do with the coming year,
people are using them to affect it. At the same time, though, they are also
symbols, since the sweet, golden yellow carrot represents prosperity devoid of
any bitterness and the fish head stands for a leading position in society. Of
course, religious Jews didn’t see these customs as superstitions, but considered

64. Early-twentieth-century
greeting card for Rosh
Hashanah, the beginning of
the Jewish calendar year. The
Hungarian text of the card
is wishing a happy New Year.

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them simply as parts of the holiday tradition. All religions include traditions
that can be seen as symbols or superstitions, and such customs can be even
more frequently found in the daily lives of religious people than in the
teachings of the religions themselves. Although theoretically Jewish religion
opposed superstition—for example, the Talmud was against anything that it
deemed related to idol worship—yet it wasn’t completely free of superstitious
beliefs. The lifestyles of traditional Jews include even more such elements,
indeed some of them found their ways into the Shulchan Arukh, the
compendium of rules about the Jewish religious way of life. As a result, such
lifestyles include some culinary customs that are rooted in superstition, and an
even larger number that possess symbolic meanings.
The connection between Rosh Hashanah and apples is very old: it is first
mentioned in the Machzor Vitry, a prayer book assembled around 1100, which
describes that in France it was quite common to eat red apples on this holiday.
The custom of dipping apples into honey is also ancient: Jacob ben Asher, a
rabbi who had been born in Germany but fled to Spain in 1303, mentions in
Arbach Turim, a legal work he wrote around 1310, that many German Jews
liked their apples this way.
On the first day of the holiday, Laurent Stern’s family went to his paternal
grandparents’ home for a festive lunch after the end of synagogue service. Other
relatives were also invited, so about thirty people participated in this midday
meal, which started around two in the afternoon and lasted until four or five.
When they served the initial fish dish they tried to give a fish head or at least
a part of it to each head of a household. After this, they generally ate chopped
liver and then meat with some sweet vegetable course and stewed fruit as side
dishes. The family members, however, went home for dinner. At midday on
the second day of Rosh Hashanah they also ate at home, but since—like on all
two-day holidays—it was forbidden to prepare food on the first day for the
second, they could only start to cook when they got home from the synagogue.
On such occasions—who knows why—they typically made liver pudding or
roast chicken, in spite of both requiring about an hour to prepare.

YOM KIPPUR – DISHES FOR BEFORE AND AFTER THE FAST

The day of “sealing” is one of the traditional names for Yom Kippur, since God
“seals” the verdict brought at Rosh Hashanah about each person’s fate, that is,
when his judgment becomes final, but it is also called the Day of Atonement
(the literal meaning of Yom Kippur) and forgiveness. While Rosh Hashanah
has numerous symbolic foods, Yom Kippur is a fast day, and no traditional

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

dishes are associated with it. As mentioned before, the prohibition of work
during Yom Kippur also extends to cooking.
Perhaps it is worthwhile to discuss not only the Yom Kippur fast here, but
also to briefly explore the general subject of fasting in Judaism, since abstinence
from foods is as much part of the culture of eating as eating itself. Like in
Christianity and Islam, fasting plays an important role in Judaism. The fasts
at Yom Kippur and Tisha B’av last from evening to the next evening, but the
other fasts of the Jewish religion last only from daybreak until nightfall. Every
religious Jew observes the best-known fast days, but there are fasts limited to
certain groups, even to individuals. Although the purposes of the various Jewish
fasts can differ, generally three themes dominate in them: mourning, repentance, and cleansing. Fasting means total abstention from eating and
drinking in Judaism, but of course there are partial fasts, too, even if they are
not called that—for example, the days preceding Tisha B’av, when one is only
allowed to eat dairy dishes.
Returning to the subject of Yom Kippur: special traditions evolved for the
meals before and after the daylong fast. On the eve of the holiday, the first
course of such meals—similar to ones on the eve of other holidays—was a fish
dish, for example, jellied fish, although according to Miklós Rékai some people
in northeastern Hungary avoided fish, since “it demands water” and so it makes
one thirsty. But nearly always there was chicken soup, followed by stuffed or
boiled chicken with a side dish of sliced carrots, since courses made with
chicken were parts of the holiday traditions. For dessert, there was stewed or
fresh fruit. In general, they prepared the dishes for this meal with less salt than
usual and with no spices so that the fasters shouldn’t get thirsty.
According to Ede Vadász, “on the eve of Yom Kippur, at Shaino Rabbah
[Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day of Sukkot], and at Purim, people garnish
the soup with pasta triangles [kreplach in Yiddish] filled with chopped meat.
Venn me kapores erum shlogt, venn me shaynes un Homen klapt, kocht me
flaishkreplach in de supp [Yiddish saying meaning that when one performs the
kapparot ritual, i.e., swings a chicken above the head in order to transfer the
sins to the bird, when at Hoshana Rabba one beats the shaynes, the bundle of
willow twigs, against the ground and at Purim beats the synagogue bench with
his or her hands upon hearing the name of the evil Haman, that is the time to
cook meat kreplach in the soup]. There is also a proverb attached to this custom.
They say of a man who wants only the pleasant things of life, but refuses to
carry its burdens: Tsu de flaishkreplach setzt er zach, beym klapen un shlogen fehlt
er aber [Yiddish: He is there for the meat kreplach, but he is missing for the
beatings at Hoshana Rabba and Purim and the swinging around at the kapparot
ritual before Yom Kippur].”120

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Frequently, when after the end of the fast people got home from the synagogue they first drank a small glass of slivovitz (distilled spirit made from
plums) and then coffee with milk, accompanied by some cake prepared in the
afternoon before the holiday. At Riza’s in Moson, for example, gugelhupf was
the fare at such times. In some other families the dinner after the fast consisted
of dairy courses, mostly cakes, which were similarly prepared in advance.
Others, like the members of Hermann Stern’s family in Budapest, ate a chicken
dish for dinner, though at first, when they got home from the synagogue, they
too squelched their hunger with tea and some cake.
Adolf Ágai (1836‒1916) describes the end of Yom Kippur in a small-town
synagogue and after it at home: “Some impatient folks keep glancing at the
window, to see whether the first star can be seen. Finally! The shofar blower
sounds his instrument. It makes one, long toot, and at once the white burial
gowns [kittel] come off the people. … They divide into groups as they are heading
home. The son of the Jew called Szivárvány proudly carries his father’s prayer
book on the way home. He and his parents enter through the low-headed front
door, so they can eat breakfast [since they couldn’t eat it in the morning because
of the fast]. They are greeted by coffee on the table and ‘bole’ sprinkled with
powdered sugar [these are yeast-dough spirals, which were originally a Sephardic
specialty], and half an hour later they can enjoy the dinner in which goose breast
is the main course, accompanied by their neighbor Ájseg’s festive wine.”121

DISHES OF SUKKOT

65. An Orthodox rabbi and his
family in their sukkah in
Budapest in 1906 during the
holiday of Sukkot. The elderly
rabbi sits at the head of the
table, surrounded by his wife,
daughter-in-law, sons, and
perhaps also his grandson.
Photograph by an unknown
photographer from the
collection of the Museum
of Ethnography in Budapest.

Some families in the provinces—as is prescribed by the Shulchan Arukh—started
building the sukkah, the main requisite of Sukkot, immediately after Yom
Kippur. Sukkah is a hut constructed of plant material in such a way that here
and there one should be able to see the stars through the roof made of branches
or reed. It was an urgent matter, since only four days separated Yom Kippur
from Sukkot, a holiday generally held in early October. Urban dwellers set up
their sukkahs in the inner courtyard of the houses where they lived or in a
Lichthof (German: light court), a spacious walk-in airshaft typical of many
older houses in Budapest. But regardless where they constructed it, they
decorated its insides nicely, and during the seven-day holiday they ate and
greeted their guests there; some Jews even slept there, although this was rare
because of the climate and the weather. The sukkah, the hut, became the
symbol of the holiday to remind Jews of their ancestors who lived in such
temporary shelters in the wilderness during the forty-year transitional period
after the Exodus from slavery in Egypt.

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

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During the joyous week of Sukkot Jews not only recall the divine protection
the Israelites received during their wandering in the desert, but they also express
their gratitude for the new harvest. Befitting the theme of harvesting the new
crop, it is customary to eat lots of fruit and vegetable during the holiday. This
is why stuffed vegetables, cabbage noodles, stewed or stuffed cabbage, layered
cabbage (a casserole of layers of rice and ground meat alternating with that of
sauerkraut or leaves of Savoy cabbage), cabbage strudels, fruit strudels, and
fruit-filled dumplings are common at such times. On the last day of Sukkot
people traditionally eat chicken soup with meat-filled kreplach in it. Like at
Rosh Hashanah, it is customary for the Kiddush during Sukkot to dip the piece
of challah, the majci (from the Yiddish form of the Hebrew hamotzi, the first
word of the blessing told over bread) into honey instead of salt.

DISHES OF SIMCHAT TORAH

Simchat Torah comes immediately after Sukkot. Its Hebrew name means
“rejoicing of the Torah,” since it celebrates those holy books. It marks the
completion of the year-long cycle of reading the Torah scroll aloud in the synagogue and the beginning of the new cycle. Like Purim, Simchat Torah is
a joyous holiday, full of singing, dancing—and feasting. Roughly the same
dishes are associated with it as with Sukkot. The stuffed dishes customary on
this day supposedly symbolize the Torah scroll, since that is also kept wrapped
and its essence is also concealed inside. Perhaps it is so, perhaps not. Stuffed
cabbage is especially frequently served during this holiday, and indeed its
elongated packages slightly resemble a Torah scroll in its bag.
Ede Vadász, though, knows it differently: “Cabbage (white, red or Savoy
cabbage – savory or sweet, but not stuffed) is one of the interesting plats du jour
[French: “dishes of the day”] of Simchat Torah, which follows the last day of
Sukkot. It is to remind us that plants related to cabbage are the first ones
mentioned as the products of the earth in the eleventh and twelfth verses of the
passage that is recited from the Genesis on this day.”122 I have tremendous respect
for Vadász, but he is mistaken here. Those sentences in Chapter 1 of the Genesis
refer to grasses, not plants in the cabbage family, though he might be right in
his contention that some Jews avoided making stuffed cabbage for this holiday.
My mother fondly remembered this holiday of her childhood at her grandmother’s in Moson. At this time the Torah scrolls were taken out of the ark and
paraded around the synagogue by the dancing and singing male congregants.
They even took the scrolls up to the women’s balcony. She recalled that on this
occasion girls were also allowed to enter the main part of the synagogue to

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

participate in the joyous procession, where she and the other kids carried flags
mounted on sticks. The congregation selected two hatanim (Hebrew: “bridegrooms”) of the Torah, since according to tradition, the Torah is the bride with
which Jewry is engaged. One hatan read the last words of the Torah, the other
the first words of Genesis, thus initiating a new cycle in the annual reading.
While the two “bridegrooms” hosted a Simchat Torah party for the whole congregation, the children gathered in the courtyard of the synagogue and waited
excitedly until one of the balcony windows of the temple opened and the
shammas (synagogue beadle) leaned out to shower them with unshelled walnuts.
This custom, in tune with the wedding symbolism that permeated so much of
the Simchat Torah festivities, borrows a feature from a wedding tradition, in
which the bridegroom was showered with walnuts, a symbol of fertility.

DISHES OF HANUKKAH

Although the liberation of Jerusalem by the Maccabees from Seleucid occupation and the rededication of the defiled Temple in 165 BCE—the events
which provide the background in the story of the holiday—are historical facts,
the miracle of the oil is probably a legend invented several centuries later.
According to this legend—first described in the Talmud in about 400 or 500
CE—when the city was recaptured the one-day supply of ritually appropriate
olive oil used for lighting the Temple miraculously lasted eight days, until new
oil could be readied. But much before the recapture of Jerusalem people had
been celebrating the end of the olive oil harvest at this time, and for long light
has been an important theme of this holiday, which seems appropriate for
winter solstice, when the days start to get longer. This is why Josephus Flavius,
the first-century Jewish historian, called the holiday the “Festival of Lights,”
and even today some people use the Hebrew version of this: hag ha-urim.
Hanukkah (Hebrew: “dedication”), which lasts eight days and occurs sometime between late November and late December, was considered to be a less
important holiday before the twentieth century, and until the Middle Ages no
specific dishes were attached to it.123 A fourteenth-century Spanish rabbi was
the first to associate dairy products, especially cheese, with the holiday, and
roughly at the same time Kalonymus ben Kalonymus, a Jewish author from
Provence, mentioned frying cheese pancakes in oil for this festival. While
initially dairy products were more typical during this holiday, in later times
foods fried in oil, such as doughnuts and latkes (pancakes usually made from
grated potatoes), became dominant, since they reminded people of the miracle
of oil. Some dairy dishes also used to be popular at Hanukkah in Hungary,

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especially farmer cheese palacsintas (similar to crêpes), cheese delkel (similar to
cheese Danish), and cheese torte. Fried dishes are also common, but they are
more or less the same as in other countries: doughnuts and latkes. The Spanish
Jewish poet and religious scholar Abraham ibn Ezra (1089‒1164) listed goose,
too, as a typical Hanukkah fare, and indeed roasted or stuffed goose used to
appear at such times on the tables of not only Spanish, but also Ashkenazi Jews,
who frequently fattened geese for similar festive occasions. In more recent times
this has become rare, and instead of goose they roast some other poultry.

PURIM DISHES

Purim (Hebrew: “lots”), which falls generally in March, is a joyful, merry holiday,
when it is traditional to dress children in fanciful costumes, hold masquerade
processions, perform brief humorous plays, the so-called Purim spiels, organize
costume balls for the grown-ups, and—last but not least—send a tray with
cookies and pastries to acquaintances and relatives. Such presents are called
mishloach manot (lit.: “sending of portions”) in Hebrew and shlach mones (or
shalach manos or shalech manes) in Yiddish. The central rituals of Purim consist
of reciting the Scroll of Esther in the synagogue in the eve and morning of the
holiday, sending shlach mones, donating charity gifts, preferably money, to the
poor, and finally eating a celebratory meal, the se’udat Purim. The holiday
received its Hebrew name from the story according to which Queen Esther,
who was of Jewish origin, foiled the plans of Haman, an official of the Persian
king, to kill the Jews who lived in the Persian Empire on a day he chose by

Pepper Rings (Pfeffer beigli)
From a cookbook by Mrs. Lajos Venetianer, published
in 1931 in Újpest.
The dough is the same as the one used in the fladen and
kindli recipes. [Take 50 dekas flour and 24 dekas goose
fat, and, using your hands, rub them into each other.
Add 3 egg yolks, a little salt, 10 dekas of sugar and
enough white wine to make the kneaded dough easy to
roll out.] Those who like it greasier, could use 30 dekas
fat to the 50 dekas flour, and only 1 tablespoon sugar,

plenty of crushed black pepper, white wine, and a little
salt. When it has been well kneaded, cut it into small
pieces, and shape each of them into narrow sticks of
equal length. Make braids from three such dough sticks
and bend them either into wreaths or leave them
straight but pinch the ends of the braids, so they don’t
open up during baking. The straight braid will look like
a little barches loaf [challah].

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

casting lots. The feast (se’udat) eaten in the late afternoon and the sending of
edible gifts are essential parts of the holiday. People not only eat during Purim,
but also drink, and—what is more—drink a lot, and by no means only water.
At such a time it is a duty to drink as much wine as possible, although in other
parts of the year Jewish tradition opposes any excess like this.
The poet and editor József Kiss (1843‒1921) describes how people in the
Jewish quarter of Pest celebrated Purim in the late 1860s: “The year has a night
when Király Street and Két szerecsen Street (today: Paulay Ede Street), which
runs roughly parallel to it, offers a more piquant sight than usual by infusing
the harsh colors of some remnants of the Middle Ages into modern life. We
see the night of the Jewish carnival, the night of Purim. Every step of the way
we bump into children carrying pastries and cookies, whose radiant faces reflect
the joy of this day. When two caftans (kapotes, traditional long black coats of
Orthodox and Hassidic Jews) meet on the sidewalk, they cordially greet each
other: Gut Purim! (Yiddish: “Good Purim!”) before continuing on their
ways.”124
People made lots of baked desserts for Purim, not only for their families,
but also as presents. The preparations for this started much before the holiday.
This was also the case in 1884 in Mátészalka, northeastern Hungary, at the
parents of Mrs. Vilmos Vázsonyi: “My dear mother ordered the old Mrs. Sálmi
to bake kindli, flódni, Nussenkuchen [see its recipe on page 103], and Pfefferkuchen [see its recipe under the name of Pfeffer-kugli on page 287], since Purim
was approaching. Who was the old Mrs. Sálmi? Probably her real name was
Sáli. She was a small, frail woman who covered her head with a kerchief. She
helped my mother with shopping. … A week before Purim she came to us to
prepare the fine pastries for the holiday. They readied the pots of goose fat and
the huge, splendid baking pans, and they started to bake.”125 Arnold Kiss, the
chief rabbi of Buda (1869, Ungvár, today: Uzhhorod, Ukraine–1940, Budapest), offers even more details in his recollection of Purim preparations in a
small town of his youth: “Exactly a week before Purim old Mrs. Mandelbaum,
widely known for her knowledge of baking and cooking, showed up in the
rabbi’s house. … The children called Mrs. Mandelbaum ‘Auntie Chocolate,’ in
part because of her amazingly perfect chocolate cakes, in part because any time
she compared her long-vanished and wonderful youth with the bleakness of the
present, she said with a sigh: ‘Sok a lád, my children, sok a lád’—which sounded
a bit like Schokolade, the German word for chocolate. [The sentence means “the
burdens are great,” provided that lád is a distortion of the German die Ladung,
burden. But the word could also be a distortion of Leid, “suffering” or “pain.”]
On the huge kitchen table there were heaps of different flours, lots of eggs, black
pepper, dried ginger, walnuts, hazelnuts, raisins, and various lekvárs [fruit

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butters]. And so the fairytale of One Thousand and One Nights began. … The
tender sponge cake roulades sprung to life and smiled with their pale yellow
faces and fillings of red jam. They were kept company by the dark brown
hazelnut tortes, the Linzer tortes, the creams quivering like jelly, the angry-dark
bodas-kuchen [honey slices], the snow-white almond crescents, the fragrant
vanilla pretzels, the little salt sticks, anise slices, marzipans, the divinely tender
flódnis, the kindlis shaped like swaddled babies, and the pepper rings
[kranzli].”126
“Purim was wonderful!” E. G., born in 1922 in Nagyenyed (Aiud, Romania), recalls. “For a week before it we cracked walnuts so that the baking should
be able to begin. Mother made three to four cakes. She made walnut torte,
yellow torte [a sponge dough torte popular in Transylvania], torte with cream,
and honey torte. We chopped the walnuts for the honey torte. And she baked
kindli. Kindli is a Jewish specialty. She rolled out the dough, which included
wine, honey, and fat, and she rolled it to become very, very thin. She placed
a great deal of walnuts on it. … It also included lots of raisins, spices, honey,
and sugar. … Then she rolled them up. It is like a bejgli [Hungarian filled
pastry roulade] brushed with honey. We also made macaroons and baked
humentas. … Mother baked for four days. A big table was full of the things
she baked. And we took a selection of them as gifts to people we knew: we
placed the yellow torte on a fairly large plate, since it looked very beautiful,
and surrounded it with kindli and other pastries.”127
Mihály Kertész—who was born in 1888 in Szolnok, east-central Hungary—
recalled the Purim sweets and dishes in an article he wrote for the March 1938
issue of the Jewish weekly Egyenlőség (Equality): “The yearly Purim evenings
in Reb [Mr.] Nóte [Nátán] Hirsch’s old manor house in Somkút were famous
not only around Kővár, but in the counties of Szatmár and Máramaros, too,
even in Kolozs [all of them formerly in eastern Hungary, today in Romania].
He was a well-to-do, religious and generous person. … Preparations for the
joyful holiday started days, even weeks ahead. The chimney of the house was
smoking from dawn to late night while all the different sweets were baking.
There was kindli [pastry packages filled with either walnuts or poppy seeds],
fledli [pastry with a different filling in each of its four layers], eierkuachli [egg
cookies], honey tortes, strudels, pite [filled pastry squares], pogácsa [round
scones], gugelhupf intended to go with coffee—each of them according to old,
tried, and by now hardly known recipes. Of course, Purim took its toll among
the poultry, too. Turkeys fattened on walnuts, tender young geese, capons
meant for gourmets all fell victim to the holiday, only to reappear in the form
of crispy roasts, accompanied by carefully selected side dishes on the ornately
set tables, which awaited the end of the Megillah reading [Megillat Esther, the

HÉTKÖZNAPOK ÉS ÜNNEPEK

Hebrew name for the Scroll of Esther]. Yes, the plural is correct here: on Purim
evening they set not one table, but several in the house of Nóte Hirsch, since
there were many more guests than family members. The majority of them were
either admirers of the balbos [master of the house] or poor people who once
a year could feast at the table of Nóte Hirsch. … The first course was always
fish paprika. Although they brought the fish from distant regions—from the
river Szamos or from the Máramaros branch of the river Tisza—it was the
perpetual introductory course at the Purim dinner. The fish was followed by
roasts, in a sequence determined by the stomach’s past experiences, interspersed
by the also highly respected stuffed cabbage and by pasta dishes to go with
certain courses. In addition, there was freshly baked ‘kürtős fánk’ [chimney
cake], so light that it could have almost flown away. Perhaps it is not even
necessary to mention, but there was plentiful wine to go with all this, brought
from the region of Nyírség.”128
The Purim feast usually started with fish and continued with chicken soup
garnished with chopped meat-filled pasta triangles (kreplach), boiled beans (the
Prophet Daniel ate this in Persian captivity) and stuffed cabbage or stuffed
roast chicken. In many families they ate not only beans but also some dish of
green vegetables to remind them that in the house of the Persian king Queen
Esther refused to eat foods forbidden for Jews and she nourished herself only

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66. Sending edible gifts
(mishloach manot in Hebrew,
shlach mones in Yiddish) was
one of the important rituals
of Purim. As is clear from the
Hamanowe ucha (Haman’s ear,
a Purim dessert, similar to
fritters) caption under the
drawing, this picture postcard
is from Poland. Although
I haven’t seen a Hungarian
version of this card, there are
numerous examples of
Hungarian editions of Jewish
picture postcards originally
published in Poland.

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Yellow Torte
(Sárga torta)
From Mrs. Ábrahám
Ganz’s kosher cookbook, published in 1928
in Dés (Dej, Romania).
Comment: The recipe
calls for potato starch
instead of flour. This
makes the cake not
only unusually tender
and softer than when
wheat flour is used, but
also appropriate for
Pesach. The recipe
could also be made
with regular flour for
other occasions. It was
most popular in
Transylvania: Jenny
Ullmann’s work, the
only other Jewish
cookbook that features
it, was also published
in that region.
Mix 10 egg yolks,
50 dekas sugar, the zest
and juice of 1 lemon,
and stir this until
foamy. Whip 10 egg
whites, and add this
to the previous mixture.
Stir 24 dekas potato
starch into this. Bake
it over low fire.

with vegetables and fruit. But the emphasis during this holiday was on the
various sweets, some of them bearing a reference to Haman in their names:
Haman’s ears (a kind of fritter) and Haman’s pockets or Hamantaschen (poppy
seed- or lekvár-filled triangular cookies). Typical sweets made for Purim
included kindli and flódni (a fluden in which thin sheets of a dough separate
four different fillings: chopped apples, ground walnuts, poppy seeds, and plum
lekvár). Other pastries made for Purim included honey slices (lekach), egg
cookies (eierkichli), sponge cakes (piskóta), pepper rings (kráncli), and a large
flat round cake (smalcbájgli or nussenbeigel), which some people used as an
edible tray on which they carried the other sweets as mishloach manot to fellow
Jews. According to some opinions, the reason for the many kinds of stuffed
preparations customary at Purim has to do with the fact that God’s name never
appears in the Scroll of Esther, thus it is hidden, which can be seen as analogous
to the way the “more valuable” part is concealed in filled foods.129
Several of the Purim pastries contain poppy seeds. This is generally explained
by the similarity in the pronunciation of the German Mohntaschen (poppy seed
pockets) and Hamantaschen (Haman’s pockets, frequently filled with poppy
seeds), but I don’t find this convincing, since poppy seed’s connection to Purim
predates the time when people started to make these cookies. While as early as
in the twelfth century Abraham ibn Ezra describes in one of his religious poems
that poppy seeds mixed with honey were served as Purim sweets,130 any information about Hamantaschen comes from many centuries later.
My great-grandmother Riza also baked lots of sweets for Purim, both for
her family and for sending them as gifts. She made kindli, flódni, and the same
kind of spice cake (she called it Gewürzkuchen) that she occasionally prepared
for the Havdalah ritual, which signifies the end of Shabbat. She always baked
all the sweets herself. It was not only that she liked to bake, but that she didn’t
quite trust Paula, her servant of decades, in this respect and wanted to make
sure that her recipes were accurately followed. For dinner she mostly served
fish in a sauce made of puréed vegetables and chopped walnuts, and a meat
soup with kreplach, meat-filled pasta triangles, in it. After my mother had
started school in Budapest and was no longer living with her grandmother in
Moson, she rarely could travel to her for Purim, since it was only a one-day
holiday, but Riza never missed an opportunity for sending a big package of
kindlis to the family in Pest.

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

DISHES FOR PESACH

There isn’t any Jewish holiday that is controlled by as many religious rules as
the eight-day Pesach, usually occurring in April. This is the reason why even
those Jewish cookbooks that don’t focus in detail on other holidays find it
necessary to devote at least a chapter to Pesach. These works frequently write
about the preparations for this holiday, first of all about the complicated and
labor-intensive task of cleansing the home from all chametz, anything made of
grains that could ferment when combined with water. Foods made with the
five most important grains—wheat, barley, spelt, rye, and oats—are considered
chametz, although originally only the five grain species native to the Land of
Israel fell into this category. Ashkenazi rabbis, however, extended this prohibition to other ingredients consisting of small granules, “small things”
(kitniyot) as they called them, such as rice, corn, and legumes like lentils and
beans, but the exact list of foods they considered chametz varied in different
periods and places. People had to remove not only these things and foods
containing them from their homes, but also all other food ingredients, cooking
pots, and kitchen equipment that could have come in contact with items on
the list and products made with them. But since the customs related to the
removal of chametz are only loosely related to the culture of eating, I will
concentrate on the foods and menus customary during Pesach.
Instead of bread, one is allowed to eat only matzo during the days of Pesach,
so it is no surprise that making matzo for the holiday was considered an
important activity in all Jewish communities. With the unleavened matzo,
quickly made of flour and water before the dough could ferment, Jews
remember their ancestors who during their Exodus from Egypt didn’t have
time to wait for their bread dough to rise. As Gil Marks relates, the original
matzo—vaguely similar to pita bread—was softer and thicker than the modern
one, and the thin, cracker-like version is an Ashkenazi development from the
Middle Ages. It had to be made of flour that had been ground in chametz-free

67. Stamp of rabbinical
approval: Kasher shel Pesach
(kosher for Pesach). Jewish
authorities probably used this
stamp on the sealed bags of
food.
68. The Hungarian text of the
stamp: “Bring your ration
stamp changeable to a stamp
for fine flour.” In periods of
food rationing religious Jews
couldn’t use the bread ration
stamps issued for the days
of Pesach. Therefore, before
the holiday they exchanged
the bread stamps for those
of fine flour.

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69. A matzo bag shaped to
correspond to the handmade
round matzo sheets. It was
sewn and embroidered in
c. 1876 by Mrs. Bernát Berger,
née Teréz Baruch, and it is
today in the collection of the
Jewish Museum in New York. My
great-grandmother must have
followed a design preprinted
on cotton and available in local
shops, since the embroidery on
the fabric cover the Hirschler
family used for their Seder
platter in Csepreg ‒ not far
from Moson, where she lived ‒
had a virtually identical layout.
The charmingly naïve picture
on her bag depicts a Seder
table complete with some of
the symbolically significant
traditional foods. This is
surrounded by an Aramaic text:
“This is the bread of affliction,”
a quotation from the ritual text
to remind the evening’s
participants of their ancestors’
long wandering in the desert
following their escape from
Egyptian slavery. I have no way
of knowing whether my greatgrandmother’s distractedness
or her imperfect knowledge
of Aramaic is to blame for the
little mistake in the short word
near the upper edge of the bag,
where she mixed up two
similar-looking letters. People
used such bags for the three
matzo sheets that were parts
of the ceremony.

mills and kept under supervision after the milling. Furthermore, virtually all
handmade and some machine-made matzo used flour milled from grains that
had been “guarded,” supervised from the time of their harvesting. The matzo
was prepared either at home or at a place determined by the community or in
a matzo factory, and—at least in Hungary—it was usually made by men or by
women under male supervision. Matzo dough must be baked within 18
minutes after adding water to the flour, so the dough has no time to begin the
leavening process. “In a room where sunlight doesn’t penetrate, men, standing
next to each other, knead the dough from flour and cool well water that had
been strained through a cloth and allowed to stand overnight, using the least
amount of water necessary for kneading. Women assist the men to speed up
the work. They roll out the dough for each matzo sheet separately, perforate it
all over, so it shouldn’t bubble up too much, since that would be a sign of fermentation, transfer them to the oven to bake, and, after the sheets have cooled,
they fold them into dry kerchiefs to carefully take them home. Matzo used to
be round, the rectangular shape came with the machines. … For the sick and
the elderly they bake ‘enriched’ matzo [matzo ashirah], which is made with
eggs or fruit juice instead of water.”131

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

70. Children holding sheets
of matzo on a Pesach greeting
card from the early twentieth
century.

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71. Matzo had to be perforated
all over before baking to
prevent it from forming too
large bubbles in the oven heat.
People frequently used such
nail-studded rolling pins for
perforating the dough.
Although this c. two-feet-long
implement is from nineteenthcentury Bohemia, similar rolling
pins were used in matzo making
in Hungary, too. Other people,
however, used a metal utensil,
resembling a wide fork with
many tines, to perforate the
dough.

Though Jews supervised the milling and storing of the flour used for any
matzo appropriate for Pesach, as well as the baking of the matzo itself, even
the harvesting of the wheat had to be supervised by religious Jewish experts if
it was to be used for the “most kosher” shmurah or guarded matzo. The wheat
was harvested on a sunny day, and from then on not even a drop of water was
allowed to touch it. The matzot mitzvah was also a special kind of matzo. Those
people made this in the afternoon before the holiday who wished to express
their love for the religious commands, the mitzvot, through the process of
making matzo. Dressed in festive black, all the men and boys from the family
gathered for this occasion. The matzot mitzvah was always made by men, who
sang psalms praising God during their work.
Adolf Ágai, who was born in 1836 in Jánoshalma, southern Hungary, described how people made matzo in a small town in the 1860s: “There is much
laughter and singing in the house. Standing in two rows right and left strong
women are stretching the dough, while the dough maker keeps beating the
unleavened dough with his palm, so it wouldn’t rise under his fingers. …
Borech, the dough maker, is a strict man, who keeps an eye on the women,
and although here and there he might joke a little, he seriously scolds them
when they start slowing down.”132 From Samu Haber, born in 1865 in Komárom, northwestern Hungary, we learn that in his childhood the water of the
Danube was clean enough for using it to make the matzo dough: “Our flour
was ready for use and so was the cool water that had been standing since they
had brought it from the Danube before sunset on Thursday or Friday. The
kneading trough was so clean it almost sparkled. They didn’t hesitate to make
use of it. A woman with a melodious voice mixed and kneaded the dough.
Others were cleaning the rolling pin and the perforating tool, while old Mr.
Fajsli was firing up the oven until it was so hot that sparks flew in it. And the
work kept going without interruption. As soon as a sheet of matzo was rolled
out, they perforated it and placed it on a shovel. This was indeed feverishly
fast work. The perspiration was running down on old Fajsli, but he kept
cracking jokes.”133
The wheat used for making matzo preferably had to be grown by Jews, and
before it could be milled any insect-damaged kernels had to be removed from it.
Árpád Csiszár describes in his study of Jews in the villages of Szatmár and Bereg
counties in northeastern Hungary that “in my childhood one late afternoon

I found the Katz family in Tatárfalva sitting around the table and examining
wheat grain by grain. They told me that this was necessary before milling the
flour for matzo, so that all worm-infected kernels could be removed.”134
“There was a Jewish bakery in Munkács: that was where they baked the
matzo,” Ernő Galpert, who was born in 1923 in that town, recalls. “Before
they would start baking it, first they cleaned the whole workshop of chametz,
then the chief rabbi checked the place and gave permission for matzo making.
Each family placed orders for the amount of matzo they needed, which they
then carried in big woven baskets to the houses. … The poor received free
matzo paid by the community, but only very little. Therefore, they were always
hungry during Pesach. They couldn’t eat bread and there wasn’t enough matzo.
… The most religious Hassidim went to the bakery on the day before Pesach,
since they wished to bake the matzo by themselves [this was the matzot
mitzvah]. Nowadays special machinery produces the matzo, but at the time
everything was done by hand. … There were Jewish farmers who grew wheat
especially for making matzo. There were also Jewish-owned mills, and only
those were used for milling such wheat. Non-Jewish hands couldn’t touch the

72. Pesach greeting card from
1901 depicting a sheet of matzo.
The sender wrote the following
humorous text on the card
about the different ways matzo
is called in Hungary: “Do you
know what this is? It’s mazzes,
laska, mazzoth, pászka,
ungesäuertes Brod [correctly:
ungesäuertes Brot. German:
“unleavened bread”]. Perhaps it
has even more names.” Instead
of the factory-produced rectangular matzo common nowadays,
Jews formerly ate round, handmade matzo sheets, approximately 9 inches in diameter. Jewish
communities – including the one
in Moson, where my great-grandmother lived between 1876 and
1932 – appointed some of their
members to make those sheets.
Contemporary postcard.

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73. A wooden Seder platter
with three lower shelves for
matzo from the middle of the
nineteenth century. People
placed the small portions of
symbolic foods for the ceremony in the containers on the
top shelf and set a sheet of
matzo, necessary for the ritual,
on each of the lower shelves.
This multilevel Seder stand is in
the collection of the Hungarian
Jewish Museum.

Passover matzo. One way or the other, everyone had matzo for the holiday.
But we weren’t rich, so we children were constantly hungry during Pesach.”135
Galpert also recalled how they had prepared the goose fat intended for
Pesach long before the holiday, during the previous winter. “We purchased
geese raised by Jews, took them to the shochet, and then removed their skins
and fat. Previously we carefully cleaned the kitchen, and removed all chametz
from it. Not even a single bread crumb could be on the table where we worked
with the goose. We cooked the fat for Pesach in a special pot, which we didn’t
use otherwise. We kept the rendered fat in an enameled tub in the attic of our
house, next to the Pesach dishes. Even the poorest in our community tried to
have special goose fat for the holiday.”136
In the hours between the burning of the chametz required by religious
tradition and the first Seder on the eve of Passover one can’t eat bread but is
not yet allowed to eat matzo. The simple midday meal at such times frequently
started with cibere (soup of fermented beets) or potato soup, followed by
poultry skin cracklings, goose liver, perhaps sliced meat with mashed potatoes,
and it ended with stewed or fresh fruit. The first Seder, which marked the
arrival of Pesach, started with an introductory ritual and the tasting of the
symbolic foods that were part of it, after which people ate hard-cooked eggs
dipped in salty water followed by chicken soup with matzo balls in it. In those
families, however, where they considered the matzo dumplings gebrochts, they
served the soup with small fried dough pellets in it, which were made with
potato starch, or they garnished it with narrow strips of thin pancakes, also
made with such starch. Such pancake noodles were also part of the Seder meal
in the childhood home of Ernő Galpert in Munkács: “The soup was garnished
by special Pesach noodles, made with starch. To make this, we mixed the starch
with egg, then added a little water and salt. Now, using this rather liquid batter

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

we made thin palacsintas [similar to crêpes] in a pan coated with goose fat.
Then we rolled up the palacsintas and cut them into narrow slices. The noodles
made this way were delicious.”137
Boiled meat served without a sauce followed the soup (it was traditional
to avoid roasts at the Seder meal except for the small piece of roast that was
one of the symbolic foods at the ritual), and finally a torte—for example, a
walnut torte made with matzo meal—or fruit closed the meal. At Laurent
Stern’s grandparents in Budapest a fish dish preceded the chicken soup, and
stewed fruit was the last course instead of a torte. Drinking a little wine four
times during the Seder is an important part of the ritual. The Stern grandparents set the table for their grandchildren with small silver beakers, and, as
the children grew, they exchanged the small beakers for bigger ones at a silversmith in Király Street.
On the first day of Pesach, when all other work was prohibited, cooking
was allowed, unless the day coincided with the Shabbat. The midday meal
again started with chicken soup, followed by roasted young goose (the tradition
of avoiding roasts applied only to the Seder meals) or by some similarly festive

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74. A Pesach greeting card
depicting a Seder meal and
ritual. Participants at Seders
were symbolically waiting for
Prophet Elijah, who was to
announce the arrival of the
Messianic Age. Therefore, they
placed an extra cup of wine for
the Prophet on the table, and
at the end of the meal they
opened the door of their dining
room to make it easier for him
to enter. On this card, the
Prophet seems to actually
appear and enter the room, but
the portraits of Emperor Franz
Joseph and Crown Prince Franz
Ferdinand on the wall look also
so alive that one would think
they too are there to celebrate
Pesach with the family.
Contemporary greeting card.

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Scrambled
Eggs with
Matzo
(Maceszos
rántotta)
From the handwritten
recipe collection of
Mrs. József Schein, née
Erzsébet Löwentritt.
Throw broken bits of
matzo into hot oil, then
mix them with eggs
beaten for scrambling.

Matzo Farfel
(Macesztarhonya)
From the handwritten
recipe collection of
Mrs. József Schein,
née Erzsébet Löwentritt.
Continuously stir the
same mixture you would
use for making matzo
balls in hot fat or oil until
it starts to brown and
becomes like tarhonya
(egg barley). You should
roast it in about the
same amount of fat
as you would do with
tarhonya.

dish, and it ended with Pesach sweets or fruit. One such dessert was the Pesach
apple “strudel,” which in reality wasn’t a strudel at all, but consisted of layers
of grated and sweetened apple between sheets of wine-soaked matzo. At other
times they made a carob cake. It was made from the slightly sweet ground meat
of the pods of an evergreen tree that is native to the Mediterranean region but
can also be found in Hungary. It was known in ancient Egypt and Palestine,
though it isn’t mentioned in the Bible. The brown meat of the pods is edible
when it is fresh (as a child I used my teeth to scrape out the meat from the
pods fallen to the ground), but when it is dried, ground, and frequently also
toasted, it serves as an alternative to cocoa powder. Carob torte was a rarity
among non-Jews in Hungary, but in Jewish families it was perhaps slightly
more customary—at least during Pesach—since several Jewish cookbooks
published before 1945 recommend making it for this holiday. The second
Seder, held in the evening of the first day of Pesach, also started with hardcooked eggs and continued with meat soup. This was followed by the meat
from the soup served with some vegetable or with matzo tarhonya (matzo farfel,
which is egg barley made of matzo meal), and the meal ended with stewed
apples or some other fruit.
On the first day it was forbidden to cook in advance for the second day,
therefore only after sunset could they start preparing dishes for the next day.
Although the tale of Esther, the Jewish-born Persian queen, is mostly known
in the context of Purim, according to it Esther’s feast happened during Pesach.
This is the reason why Ede Vadász (and János Oláh, who perhaps followed
Vadász in this) wrote that on the second day of Pesach “one of the courses at
the midday meal was boiled smoked beef tongue in order to remember that
on this day with God’s help fate turned, and—instead of the murder of the
Jews of the empire—they hanged the evil Haman and his ten sons, who stuck
out their tongues on the gallows.”138
The next four days of Pesach counted as only minor holidays, so people
were allowed to work and only the prescribed prayers distinguished those days
from the regular ones, but of course—as in all the days of Passover—the
prohibition of chametz remained applicable. Matzo coffee was frequently made
in this period, and it was one of my mother’s favorites during her childhood
spent in her grandmother Riza’s house. People made it by placing broken pieces
of matzo in a cup, sprinkling them with sugar, pouring hot milk and coffee
over them, and finally laying another piece of matzo on top. Chremsel or
kremzli, made either from grated raw potatoes or from matzo meal was also
common on this holiday. Laurent Stern’s mother prepared only savory potato
chremsels for Passover, but the ones made with matzo meal exist in both savory
and sweet versions.

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The Stern family frequently ate fermented beet soup during this holiday,
which others called cibere, but people of Galician origin, like the Stern grandparents, tended to call borscht. Jews in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia usually
called the fermented beets and their vinegary juice rosl, sometimes spelled rosel,
rossl, or rossel. The Sterns started preparing it about a month before Passover.
At that time they peeled the beets, cut them into slices, placed those in a large,
roughly 5-liter canning jar, which they used only for this purpose, salted them,
and poured enough water over the beets to generously cover them. They loosely
covered the glass jar, and placed it to a warm place, generally to the top of one
of the kitchen cabinets, where after a while the beets fermented. Every week
or so they skimmed off the white foam that had gathered on the surface. For
the Passover cibere they cooked the beets in their juice and adjusted the
seasonings. They ate this either cold, in which case they mixed it with sour
cream and added segments of hard-cooked eggs to it, or served it as a warm
soup, which they made by stirring beaten eggs into the fully cooked beet soup
and adding warm slices of boiled potatoes to it. The Sterns made so much
fermented beets before Passover that they could never finish them all during
the holiday. The soup made with the leftover fermented beets became the first
course of numerous lunches between Pesach and Shavuot at the Sterns, since
some soup was always part of their midday meal.
75. A painting depicting a family
celebrating Seder. This is the
central image on a Seder platter
made in the Herend china factory
around 1870 (the whole plate is
reproduced on page 239). The
family members in the painting
have copies of the Haggadah open
in front of them, so they can follow
the recitation of the elderly head of
the family, who is wearing a white
gown, a kittel, which is traditional
at this ceremony. Each of them has
a cup of wine on the table, required
at the Seder ritual. The empty chair
is awaiting the Prophet Elijah, who
they hope would come to join
them. The depiction is based on
a c. 1860 oil painting by Moritz
Oppenheim (1800‒1882), a famous
German Jewish artist. This picture
soon after its creation became
widely known in Hungary through
lithograph copies, making it likely
that the china platter was made
about a decade after the painting.

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Carob Torte (Szent-János torta)
From the Jewish cookbook written by Auntie Giti and
published in Kecskemét, east-central Hungary, in 1935.
The book’s recipes are meant for four people.

4 egg yolks. Add 8 whipped egg whites and 4 dekas
matzo crumbs. Pour it into a paper-lined form and bake
it. Coat it with an orange glaze.

Mix well 14 dekas carob [grated and sieved, to separate
its fibrous shell], 14 dekas ground almonds, 15 dekas
sugar, the juice and zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange, and

The glaze: 25 dekas sugar, the sieved juice of 1 orange,
½ egg white, 1 teaspoon water. Stir this for 15 minutes,
spread it on the torte and allow it to air dry.

Apple “Strudel” for Passover
(Húsvéti almás rétes)
From the April 7, 1938 issue of the Jewish weekly Egyenlőség (Equality).
Grease a round cake form and line it with wine-soaked matzo. Mix finely grated apples
with sugar and a little cinnamon. Place this in the form, cover it with soaked matzo,
spread more grated apple over this and continue alternating layers of matzo and apple
until the form is filled. Place wine-soaked matzo on top as the last layer. Bake it. Serve it
hot, sprinkled with sugar.

The Passover lunches in the Stern family always started with some warm
appetizer, mostly with liver pudding. Cold baked goose liver and a mixture of
grated beets and horseradish were also common at them during the holiday.
Stern’s mother baked some torte for each midday meal, but not the matzo torte
or walnut torte made with matzo meal that were customary in other families,
but one of the Austro-Hungarian type of flourless cakes, made with ground
walnuts or almonds. She gave those tortes as presents to acquaintances and
relatives. When she was buying almonds before the holiday, she always asked
the shopkeeper how much she should buy to make opening a fresh bag of
almonds necessary. She did this not only to make sure the almonds were fresh,
but also since she believed this made it less likely that the bag included some
forbidden bread crumbs, accidentally dropped into it by someone.
The seventh and eighth days of Passover counted again as major holidays,
when working was prohibited. People ate similar things on those days to what
they had on previous ones, though the prohibition of chametz still had to be
observed. But on the eighth day, which is celebrated only outside Israel, even

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

those could have matzo balls who on the previous days of the holiday didn’t
want to eat gebrochts. The reason for this is that the eighth day isn’t a command
included in the Torah, but was ordered later by the rabbis. The Hassidim add
a spiritual explanation to this: the last day reminds Jews of their future
salvation, their release from all kinds of bondage, when nothing bad can
happen to them, and therefore they can eat gebrochts, dampened matzo without
any fear that it might turn into chametz.
SHAVUOT DISHES

Shavuot (Hebrew: “weeks”), which is a one-day holiday in Israel and a two-day
one elsewhere, is celebrated at the end of a seven-week period starting from the
second day of Passover. It occurs in May or June. In biblical times it marked
the end of the grain harvest, but today it mainly commemorates the day when
God gave the Torah to the Israelites. King Solomon’s “Song of Songs” compares
the Torah with milk and honey, and Jewish tradition elsewhere speaks of the
“sweet” Torah. Therefore dairy and sweet dishes dominate in the meals of this
holiday. Accordingly, potato or green bean soup with sour cream, vegetable
salads, also with sour cream, farmer cheese delkel, farmer cheese fladen, noodles
with farmer cheese, and thin pancakes with a farmer cheese filling are common
in these days. But lokshen kugel was also frequently served, and so were kreplach
filled with ground meat or farmer cheese.
In an article she wrote for a Jewish weekly, Mrs. Vilmos Vázsonyi, née Margit
Szalkai Schwartz (1877, Mátészalka, northeastern Hungary–1949, Budapest),
the widow of an important Jewish politician, recalled the Shavuot of her
childhood and its foods: “I remember that in my dear parents’ house we always
had the same lunch during Shavuot, though I don’t know why. As early as at the
end of Passover we started to look forward to this, perhaps because those two
days brought us the first vegetables and fruits of the year, as well as the first
goose. I will tell you the menu of those days. … On the first day we had meat
soup with meat-filled pasta, which we called kreplach. After this we ate the first
young goose of the year, accompanied by small new potatoes and fermented dill
pickles, which were products of my mother’s greenhouse, and at the end of the
meal we had cherry strudel. On the second day we had a dairy menu [most
families had this on the first day, not on the second], this was what we, children
liked the most. It started with green bean soup with sour cream, a specialty of
Szatmár County [the local region]. They prepared it early in the morning and
kept it in the ice pit until the meal. This was followed by asparagus with
mayonnaise, which had been also chilled in the ice pit. Next came a nice big
fish, caught in the river Tisza at nearby Vásárosnamény, finally farmer cheese

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delkel with lots of tiny grapes in it. My parents [her father was a well-to-do
landowner in Mátészalka] came home at noon from the synagogue, where they
participated in a maskir service [service commemorating the dead], and we
children could hardly wait until they washed their hands and sat down to the
table, so we hollered like Sioux Indians to demand the cold soup made of young
green beans with sour cream stirred into it.”139

DISHES FOR THE DAIRY DAYS AND FOR
THE END OF THE TISHA B’AV FAST

Tisha B’av (Tisha Bov in Yiddish), which generally falls in late July or early
August, is a day of mourning and a major fast day, when Jews remember the
destruction of Jerusalem and their ancient Temple there, as well as the other
calamities of their history. As a sign of their despair over this, they fast from
evening till evening on this holiday, but already the previous eight days
constitute a kind of fast, since except for the Shabbat they are not allowed to
drink wine in this period and can eat only dairy, fish, and vegetarian dishes.
These days are known as the Nine Days (nine, since in addition to the eight
days they include Tisha B’av), Nayn Tog in Yiddish. The puritan nature of the
dinner before the Tisha B’av fast, called Seudah Maphseket (Hebrew: “the meal
which separates”), is also meant to express the sadness felt over the destruction
of the Temple and the other tragedies: it must consist of only one dish, and in
accordance with the dietary restrictions during the Nine Days no meat, animal
fat, or wine can be part of the meal. In some families the single dish is a simple
casserole, but most Jews eat only a piece of bread and hard-cooked eggs dipped
in ashes or sprinkled with ashes, since eggs are, in addition to other associations,
the symbols of mourning and pain. Even after the end of Tisha B’av it is customary to refrain from eating meat and drinking wine until next noon, since
according to tradition the Temple kept burning until midday.
Between 1933 and 1943, Hermann Stern and his family spent the summers
in the Orthodox kosher boardinghouse of the Jewish teachers’ organization in
Balatonfüred, a town on Lake Balaton. They always purchased a pike-perch
(fogas) before Tisha B’av, and asked the cook at the boardinghouse to roast it
for them after the end of the fast.
While Tisha B’av itself—being a fast—has no traditional dishes, the task of
assembling sufficiently varied menus for the Nine Days has been one of the
hardest tests of Jewish cuisine. On those days they ate dishes like green bean or
dried bean soup with sour cream, potato soup with sour cream, pea soup with
milk, milk soup, layered potatoes and eggs (rakott krumpli), farmer cheese ravioli

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

(túrós derelye), in addition to vegetables, like boiled corn on the cob, egg dishes,
thin pancakes (palacsinta), floating island (madártej), fruits, various cheeses,
and fish dishes.
In 1901 Linus G., who lived in Bátorkeszi (Bátorove Kosihy, Slovakia),
participated with a description of a Tisha B’av dairy dish in the recipe contest
of the magazine A Hét (The Week). She sent her recipe with the following letter,
which she addressed to “Madam Emma” (the pen name of a male journalist),
the editor of the women’s column in the paper and the person who organized
the contest: “Dear Madam Emma, The endless sympathy all readers of your
magazine feel for you prompts me that I, too, should respond with the description of a strudel to your call for sending recipes, though I doubt your
womanhood, and in my mind’s eyes I rather see you as a mischievous young
man with black eyes and black mustache. My grandmother, who is seventy-five
years old, learned from her own grandmother that it is a must to make sweet
cream strudel for the eve of the summer fast, and although the current generation
neither keeps the fast nor tolerates some of the heavier Jewish dishes, it is nevertheless true that for centuries on the eve of the fast our family has been feasting
on this slightly heavy, but very tasty milirám [from the German Milchrahm:
“milk cream”] strudel, which was the way we called it in my childhood. This is
how it should be prepared: knead a strudel dough from 25 dekas flour, 1 egg,
a little butter, a little salt, and a little sugar. Let this rest for a while. Stretch the
dough to strudel thinness and sprinkle it with 12 dekas raw [ground] almonds,
12 dekas finely ground sugar, 1 grated bread roll, and after sprinkling this with
a little cinnamon splatter it with melted butter. Roll up the strudel and bake it
in a well-buttered baking pan until it is light brown. Place the sliced strudel in
a pot just before you are about to serve it. Boil sweet cream or milk with a little
sugar, and pour this over the slices. Bring it to a boil and serve it. … With many
kisses for the honorable black-mustached Madam Emma, Linus G.”140
After this overview of the meals during the religious holidays, let’s take a look
at the typical dishes of some of the life-cycle events.

DISHES FOR THE BIRTH OF A BOY

“If the newborn child is a boy, then on the first Friday night of his life the
kinsfolk, relatives, and acquaintances visit the house of his parents, where they
are treated to cooked cold peas, prunes, herring, and peppery or sweet cookies.
This kind of hospitality is called zócher [correctly zachar, “male” in Hebrew].”141
This was how Ede Vadász described the celebratory gathering for the Shalom
Zachar (Hebrew, “Welcoming the male”) in 1908. Some people explain the

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tradition of the so-called zachar peas—that is, yellow or green peas (in the US
usually chickpeas) cooked in salted water—with the roundness of the peas that
in their opinion symbolizes the cyclical nature of life.142 Others somewhat
convolutedly claim that the birth of a boy and such legumes are symbolically
connected, because just as the round peas have no opening/mouth, the baby
boy has no milah, circumcision. Some commentators point out yet another
connection between the two things: eighty-five is the shared numerical value
of the words for “opening” and milah in Hebrew.143
On his eighth day a baby boy is circumcised and is thereby accepted into
Abraham’s covenant with God. This is the brit milah (Hebrew: “covenant of
circumcision”) ritual, which is usually performed in the morning, customarily
in the synagogue, but it can be held at home, too. A festive brunch or lunch, a
se’udat mitzvah (obligatory feast), had to follow this event, and Ede Vadász
describes how this meal was held in the first years of the twentieth century: “The
bris [the Yiddish version of brit] was typically celebrated with a feast organized
by the kvater [godfather] in the parents’ home. The food at this se’udat [Hebrew:
“feast”] can be cold (honey cake, alcoholic drinks), which is usually the case on
Saturdays. If the meal is warm, it can be either a dairy menu (coffee, tea,
chocolate, fine pastries, and fruit) or a meat one with the most refined courses
of the Jewish cuisine. … Usually the mohel, the specialist who performed the
circumcision, sits at the head of the table, unless some recognized scholar of the
Talmud is present.”144 Typical foods at this celebratory brunch include zachar
peas, lox, herring, lekach (honey cake), vays kichli (a coffee cake), vays kinlach (a
slightly sweet cookie), and other kinds of cookies, while the usual drinks are
wine and pálinka. According to the cookbook Auntie Giti (Mrs. Aladár Adler)
published in 1935 in Kecskemét, east-central Hungary, jellied paprika fish was
also one of the traditional courses at this celebratory meal. This was a different
dish from fish paprika (halpaprikás), which is served hot. In the chilled and jellied
paprika fish they use cooked slices of carrots and potatoes to decorate a fish
poached in a broth flavored with paprika, tomatoes, and onions. But such
categories can be a bit vague in Hungarian cuisine, and in some instances the
name halpaprikás may also refer to a cold, jellied preparation.

CAKES FOR THE FIRST DAY OF CHEDER

When a four- or five-year-old boy first went to cheder (religious Jewish elementary school), it was customary to pack for him a few pieces of lekach (Yiddish,
from the German lecken: “to lick”), a honey cake. Sometimes the boy’s mother
would decorate such cakes with Hebrew letters or shape the cake to resemble

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

[ 185 ]

76. Gingerbread (a.k.a.
Lebkuchen) with the letters of
the Hebrew alphabet.
Gingerbread is a type of large
cookie made with honey and
spices, which not only keeps
well for weeks, but its taste
actually improves with age. This
is a cast taken from an
eighteenth-century gingerbread
mold, which once was in the
collection of the excellent
Hungarian Jewish architect Béla
Lajta (1873–1920). There is an
FR monogram in the lower left
corner. People gave such
alphabet gingerbread cookies
to children studying in cheders,
elementary schools of Jewish
religious education. Gingerbread was also popular at
Sukkot, Rosh Hashanah, and
Hanukkah, especially in
Germany. But it was also fairly
common among Hungarian
Jews, and this is why Mrs.
Márton Rosenfeld included it in
her cookbook, first published in
1927. Jews sometimes used the
crumbs of this pareve category
cookie for thickening and
flavoring sauces of meat and
fish dishes. This photograph is
from a 1915 issue of Múlt és jövő
(Past and Future), a Jewish
magazine.

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Lekoch
(Lékoh)
From Régi zsidó ételek
(Old Jewish dishes)
by Mrs. Zorica HerbstKrausz.
Ingredients: 50 dekas
flour, 50 dekas sugar,
4 tablespoons honey,
1 deciliter oil, 4 eggs,
1 teaspoon baking soda,
1 handful of raisins,
1 handful of walnuts.
Heat the sugar to become
light brown, very carefully, so it doesn’t burn.
Slowly pour in the honey
and the oil, stir them
well, then add the flour
and work it into the
mixture. Separate the
eggs, stir the 4 yolks into
the mixture, then add
the baking soda and the
washed and soaked
raisins. Whip the egg
whites and fold them into
the mixture. Thoroughly
oil a baking pan, pour
the mixture into it, and
sprinkle its top with
coarsely chopped walnuts. Bake it slowly and
don’t let it get too dark.

such letters. According to Gil Marks, “early Ashkenazic references to lekach were
in conjunction with a popular medieval Ashkenazic ceremony, later called Aleph
Bazyn (from the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet). … At the first
appearance of a child at cheder … honey was smeared on a slate containing the
letters of the alphabet and the child licked them off as a reminder that the ‘words
of the Torah may be sweet as honey.’”145 Presumably, the intention was to
encourage the child to learn to read, but it sure wouldn’t make me love school.
As is clear from the previous quote, the tradition of this strange custom is
very old. A late-eleventh-century compendium of prayers and other religious
texts assembled in Vitry, France, and called Machzor Vitry mentions both lekoch
and the tradition of using honey for educational purposes, although the scene
described in the book happened in a synagogue and not at the cheder.
“A worthy sage … covers him [the child] with his prayer shawl and brings him
to the synagogue, where they feed him with loaves of honey and eggs and with
fruit, and they read him the letters [of the alphabet]. After that they cover the
board with honey and tell him to lick it off.”146
People baked lekoch not only for young boys’ first day in cheder but also
for other special occasions, such as engagements, weddings, and meals following circumcision, as well as for holidays, like Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah, and
Purim. This is testimony to the continuing popularity of honey even after it
had ceased to be the most common and at some places the only sweetener,
which had been the case before the widespread availability of cane sugar and
later beet sugar.

CAKES TO CELEBRATE THE FIRST EXAM IN CHEDER

Both Bertalan Kohlbach (1866, Liptószentmiklós [Liptovský Mikuláš, Slovakia]–
1944, Budapest) and Sámuel Krausz, two of the early-twentieth-century pioneers
of Jewish ethnography in Hungary, described a cake in which thin sticks of
crunchy dough reminded the student of the teacher’s stick in school. Here is
Kohlbach’s version of it from an article he wrote in 1914: “A boy was always
highly valued in Judaism. It was a great event when a family first sent a boy to
school [cheder], and they also celebrated his first exam, when the young student
completed an educational unit. The parents invited their relatives and the boy’s
schoolmates for this occasion. On a Saturday afternoon, after the boy had
described what he had learned in school, the children were treated to a cake
called Resegrüten [crunchy baked sticks]. I, too, had heard this word in my
childhood, but now I felt it necessary to ask an elderly friend in Liptószentmiklós
for more details: ‘When in front of invited guests and schoolmates in his parents’

home a student gave an account of what he had learned in cheder—answered
the more than eighty-year-old Mór Stark—he was rewarded with baked sticks.
These were made the following way: the strongly spiced dough was twisted
around a wooden stick and baked in a standing position. The cake was made
with the so-called nasseh [Kohlbach spells it neszech] dough, into which the baked
sticks were inserted, and the whole thing was baked this way. The nasseh dough
was a yeast dough made with wine, raisins, and walnuts.”147 Unfortunately, I have
never heard of this nasseh or neszech dough, nor was I able to find any information about it, so I can only repeat what Kohlbach wrote.

77. The wedding meal of René
Szergényi Geist and Pál
Kerpel in the Hotel Kovács in
Szombathely, western
Hungary, in 1928. The bride
wears a white dress, Jenő
Szergényi Geist, her father,
who was a member of an
ennobled Jewish family, sits
on her right. He was a wellto-do industrialist and for
years a member of the town
assembly. The family was
Neológ, and the meal was
attended by József Horovitz,
the chief rabbi of the town’s
Neológ community. Photographer unknown.

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DISHES FOR BAR MITZVAH

When a boy turned thirteen, he becomes a bar mitzvah (Hebrew: “son of the
commandment”), a grown-up man who must obey all the Mosaic commandments, all the mitzvot. This is marked by the ceremony and celebration of bar
mitzvah, mostly held on Saturday mornings. After this, the parents give
a Kiddush, where sweets and sometimes platters of cold food await the guests,
who are also invited to an evening meal in the parents’ home. These occasions
are known for their rich assortments of dishes, but no specific tradition of food
evolved that would solely belong to bar mitzvah.

DISHES FOR ENGAGEMENTS AND WEDDINGS

Nowadays the betrothal, the formal procedure of engagement, adjoins the
wedding ceremony, but in former times it was a separate event. After the
signing of the engagement agreement the mothers of the bride and the groom
customarily broke a plate, which some people associated with remembering
the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, while others with the wish that the
marriage should last as long as it would take for the plate to reconstitute itself.
The betrothal was followed by a celebratory seudah mitzvah (religiously prescribed meal), in which it was customary to include honey and milk to recall
a sentence from the “Song of Songs”: “Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue.”148
At the Shabbat service before the wedding the groom is called to recite
a blessing over the Torah and to announce the day of his forthcoming nuptials
—this is the so-called aufruf (Yiddish: “call” or “invitation”). On this occasion
the women tossed shelled hazelnuts, almonds, and walnuts at the groom—this
was the bevarfen (Yiddish: “throwing at somebody”), which originally must
have been a fertility rite, since nuts are traditional symbols of fertility. In the
evening of the same Saturday, after the end of Shabbat, the friends of the groom
gave a festive meal in his home, a kind of farewell party, which was called
forshpil (Yiddish: “prelude”). At this meal they usually ate herring, gefilte fish,
and jellied fish (since fish is a symbol of fertility and prosperity), followed by
lekach (honey slices) and sponge cake roulade, and drank wine and pálinka to
go with all this.
In a magazine article he wrote in 1916, Ede Vadász described the forshpil,
the festive meal on the Saturday before the wedding. “We called these Saturday
afternoon get-togethers forshpil. Among Jews there are three kinds of meals
where the guests contribute some food to the feast: the forshpil, the bar mitzvah,

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

and when someone’s son or daughter returns home. They used to send tortes,
pastries, eggs, wine, liqueur, and domestic or tropical fruits, which are received
with thanks and um freundlichen Zuspruch bittend [German: “asking for
a friendly visit”]. … If at such a forshpil the chosson [groom] was present, he
gave a droshe [Yiddish: “a sermon,” from the Hebrew derasha] about some freely
chosen theme, but if he wasn’t there, then he gave it at his own house, which
the guests rewarded with haussteuer [German: “house tax”] presents, whence
the name of such gifts: drosheshenk [present that is given to the groom at the
time of his learned address]. That anyone who can afford it should not neglect
treating the poor to a wedding meal is for us Jews aliquid nobis insitum [deeply
ingrained in us, i.e., self-evident]. It is a nice custom in Balassagyarmat and
elsewhere, that the baal chosson [the father of the groom] sends a barches

[ 189 ]

78. Painted china betrothal
plate from the nineteenth
century. People used to break
such a plate after signing the
betrothal agreement. The words
“mazal tov” [Hebrew: “Good
luck”] are painted twenty times
on the rim of the plate, and the
same words can be read next to
the Mogen David in the center.
Traditionally, all the guests at
the engagement shouted “Mazel
tov!,” when the mothers of the
bride and groom broke the
plate. The text around the star
and the doves: “The voice of
joy, and the voice of gladness,
the voice of the bridegroom,
and the voice of the bride”
(Jer. 33:11). The plate is in the
collection of the Hungarian
Jewish Museum.

79. A wedding feast in Budapest, around 1940. As required
at Orthodox weddings, the men
and women sit at separate
tables. Photograph by Gyula
Hámori.

[challah], a hen, and a liter of wine to the rabbi. Now, if the rabbi attends the
feast, he blesses the barches, but he eats only pareve foods, so that other people
shouldn’t be ashamed.”149
Before the wedding ceremony, the male and female guests sat at separate
tables, where they could eat lekach and other sweets and drink pálinka. The
wedding seudah mitzvah (mandatory meal) after the ceremony started with
“hamotzi,” a blessing usually said over bread, but this time over a sweet challah
with raisins in it, from which everyone ate. This was followed by jellied fish or
gefilte fish and golden chicken soup (goldzup in Yiddish), made with saffron to
make it even more luxurious and yellow, and garnished with thimble noodles
(fingerhitl in Yiddish, gyűszűfánk in Hungarian: small pasta rounds cut with
a floured thimble and deep-fried). These are quite similar to small, round deepfried or baked pasta puffs that are served in soup and called mandlen in some
Eastern European countries. Mandlen (Yiddish: almonds, though they aren’t
made with almonds), also known as soup nuts, however, aren’t cut with a thimble
but with a knife from an egg-rich dough rolled into a rope. In spite of its name,
the tastiest chicken soup isn’t made from chickens, but from hens, mature fowls.
Ever since Talmudic times fowl dishes have been traditional parts of wedding
feasts. This is frequently explained as a reference to a quotation from the Talmud
that used to be cited at wedding ceremonies: “Be fruitful and multiply like
fowls.”150

After the soup some boiled or roasted meat came and then sweets (lekach,
sponge cakes, vays kinlach, which was a type of cookie, and other cookies),
accompanied by kosher wine and pálinka.
Adolf Ágai described a nineteenth-century Jewish wedding in a small town:
“It was autumn, the sun was about to set, and its final rays cast a golden light
at Reb [Mr.] Eliah’s house and the big tent set up in his backyard. They were
just returning from the synagogue. … The celebrating crowd arrived to the
front entrance. The bride’s father and mother greeted the new couple and led
them in. The tables had been set under the canvas roof of the tent. Ájren
shammes [synagogue beadle] didn’t know which way to turn from all the work
he had to do. His wife did the cooking, but he had to supervise food service
and he had to encourage the guests, though this latter thing was hardly
necessary. … The old and young of the wedding crowd sat down to the tables
and perpetrated such a destruction among the baked and boiled carp and pike
that hardly anything remained of them. I can’t say that the turkey roast fared
any better, and the roast goose came to a similar end. The many kinds of sweets
were also consumed, just like the meats. But as the fish was disappearing, the
serving dishes used for them were continuously replenished, and the wine
barrel also seemed bottomless in spite of people constantly tapping it.”151
Noémi Munkácsi complements this with an account of a wedding in Máramarossziget (Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania), held probably in the beginning

80. Wedding meal in Budapest
in the 1930s. The second
standing man from the left is
István Hahn (1913‒1984), who
later became a well-known
historian, and the sitting man
at the end of the table on the
right side is Rabbi Henrik Fisch.
Photograph by the Schäffer
Photo Salon.

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W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

of the twentieth century: “In Máramarossziget and its surroundings people call
the celebration on the Saturday before the wedding forshpil [prelude]. … When
the groom and his festive retinue arrive home from the synagogue, the guests
are offered pálinka [fruit brandy], sweets and fish. … Two days later, that is in
the evening of the Monday before the wedding, the groom holds a farewell to
bachelorhood, called “chosson mohl,” the feast of the groom. Of course, only
young men take part in this. … When these festivities are over, comes the wedding. … The male guests pay a celebratory visit to the groom and stay with
him until he goes under the chuppah. They [i.e., the groom’s family] offer flódni
[a multilayer fladen], gingerbread [cookies made with honey and spices] and
drinks to the guests, not only here, but also in the bride’s room. … After the
wedding the young couple enters the house arm in arm, and when they are
crossing the threshold a relative of the family takes two huge loaves of barches
[challah] and strikes them together above their heads as a symbol for the wish
that their house should never be without daily bread. … For the newlyweds
they make a soup from hens specially fattened for this occasion. This soup is
called the Goldene Suppe [German: “golden soup”] and it is customary to garnish it with thimble noodles, little fried pasta rounds, called Fingerhüttl. It
counts as a great honor when someone among the guests is offered a spoonful
of this fine soup.”152
I would like to also quote from an article Mrs. Vilmos Vázsonyi wrote in
1934 for a Jewish weekly in which she recalls her wedding in 1898, although
unfortunately she doesn’t describe the dishes served there. “Perhaps there are still
people who would be interested in how a real Hungarian Jewish wedding went
in a provincial town some thirty-six years ago, around the holiday of Pentecost
[Shavuot]. … Days before the event my parents had two huge tents erected in
our garden behind our house. If I remember well, the two tents could accommodate 200 people. We wove garlands from beautiful peonies, jasmines, and
lilacs, and used them to decorate the tents. … Saturday night was the Polterabend
[German: party before the wedding, wedding shower]. Already at that time there
were about forty people from Budapest. … Next day we woke up to a wonderfully beautiful Sunday. Mr. Hoday, the chief constable of our county, showed
up at our house at eleven in the morning. He married us, for which he had
received permission from the county’s chief sheriff. … When he asked me
whether I wished to become the wife of Vilmos Vázsonyi [1868‒1926, a famous
attorney and politician], one of the gentlemen from Budapest yelled: ‘I should
rather think so!’ This was received with great laughter on both sides of the aisle
—as I would say had it had happened in the parliament and not in our house.
… Now we drank to celebrate this event. To tell the truth, by the time of the
midday meal, some of the guests were a bit tipsy. It is hard to imagine the jolly

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

81. The menu of a wedding
feast from 1912, held in Jakab
Neiger’s kosher restaurant
at 4 Teréz Boulevard in
Budapest. Naturally, in the
parfait (ice cream) on the menu
they had to substitute sweet
cream with some pareve
vegetable fat. When kosher
margarine became available,
people used that for such
purposes. Neiger’s large
restaurant on a fancy boulevard
of the city counted as one of
the most elegant such places of
Budapest, where even non-Jews
eagerly went to enjoy the
refined cuisine.

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W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

82. The menu of a wedding feast held in 1926 in Márton
Stern’s kosher restaurant in Budapest’s Rombach (Rumbach)
Street. Interestingly, similar to the wedding meal held
fourteen years earlier in Neiger’s restaurant, this one also
included paprika carp (this was cold, jellied fish), roasts of
different poultries, and marinated, cooked beef tongue.
Even the side dish served with the tongue was the same.
Although the Stern restaurant was kosher, it remained open
on Saturdays, and the customers on that day paid for what
they ate after the end of the Shabbat.

83. The menu of a kosher wedding meal from Budapest,
probably from the 1920s. The courses here included marinated
beef tongue in addition to various roasted or breaded poultry.
I am not surprised by the roasts, but the tongue, which was part
of all three wedding meals (Figs. 81, 82, and 83) can’t be merely
a matter of coincidence. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any
explanation for this in Hungarian sources. But Gil Marks mentions in his Encyclopedia of Jewish Food that since it was
difficult to obtain heads of calves or lamb for the Rosh
Hashanah dinner, frequently tongues were served instead.
Similar to the head, the tongue, which was part of it,
symbolized a leading role, the hope to become a boss. It is
conceivable that tongue represented this hope at wedding
meals, too, but this is merely a guess.

W E E K D AY S A N D H O L I D AY S

[ 195 ]

mood at this meal. It could have easily lasted until evening, had we not had the
synagogue wedding at six. … It was past seven when we returned from the
synagogue and at eight the evening meal was to start. Inside the tents there was
bright light, and intoxicating, dizzying smells drifted from that direction. …
Then the fabulous dinner got going and after it the flood of toasts. They were
already serving the coffee when the Gipsy violinist, who until then played only
quiet, slow pieces, struck up a czardas. Everyone started to sing … and from
then on I could neither see nor hear, only dance.”153
According to Gil Marks: “In Jewish tradition, shivat ye’mei hamishteh (seven
days of partying) follow the wedding. … There are no specific requirements
for the food at these meals beyond bread and wine, but, whether homemade
or catered, they are typically festive and special.”154

DISHES FOR MOURNING CEREMONIES

János Oláh writes the following about the mourners’ first meal after the burial:
“Customarily, the mourners go from the cemetery to the apartment of the
deceased and, while sitting there on some low seat, they eat bread rolls or bread
with hard-cooked eggs, which they sprinkle with ashes instead of salt. They
generally drink a little wine after this, the ‘cup of consolation,’155 since according
to the Talmud ’wine was created to comfort mourners.’156 The roundness of the
egg and the roll symbolizes the continuity of life, the cycles of life and death.
Sprinkling ashes is an ancient custom, which ever since biblical times signified
mourning.157 According to another tradition, the mourners eat a dish made with
lentils or dried beans to remind them that as these legumes have no openings/mouths they, too, should accept the unchangeable, the divine judgment
and shouldn’t be indignant, shouldn’t complain.”158

84. An advertisement of Stern’s
strictly kosher restaurant
(a 1926 menu from the restaurant can be seen in Fig. 82).
This ad probably predates the
menu, since it gives the address
as Vasvári Pál Street and not
Rombach (Rumbach) Street.

6
Households
Rural and Small-Town Households
Keeping Geese
Urban Households
Canning
Maids
The Role of Cooking in the Lives of Jewish Women
Kitchen Furniture and Equipment
Dishes, Tableware, and Tablecloths
Ritual Plates, Cups, and Table Linen

HOUSEHOLDS

RURAL AND SMALL-TOWN HOUSEHOLDS X

L

ike their Gentile neighbors, rural Jews relied on the small property around
their houses to provide much of the vegetables and fruits, as well as the
poultry and eggs necessary for their cooking, so they had to purchase only
some ingredients—for example, sugar, flour, and salt—from a store. Some of
them, like the grandfather of Mózes Katz who lived in Kírályfalva, a village in
the Carpathian region, owned a separate property in addition to the plot adjacent
to his house. They probably didn’t keep cattle; at least Katz doesn’t mention it.
“My paternal grandfather, Icik Katz was born in the 1870s,” he starts his recollections of him. “He earned his living in the carting trade: he had two pairs
of horses and two wagons. Carting didn’t bring much grist for the mill, much
money, but he could nevertheless provide for his family, in spite of having eleven
children. … My grandfather had a simple single-story adobe house. The farm
structures, like the shed, the stable, and the chicken coop stood behind it. There
was also a smaller orchard and vegetable garden behind the house, and my
grandmother used those vegetables for our meals. The land behind the village
was divided into plots, one of which belonged to my grandfather. He grew
potatoes, beans, onions, and other vegetables there, which—after they had been
harvested—were kept for the winter in a root cellar. All the females in the family
worked in that plot; my grandmother’s daughters started helping her when they
were still quite young.159
Most small-town Jews who lived in single-story houses similarly had a garden, where they could grow some of the produce needed in their kitchen. The
much-mentioned Braun family in Mátészalka, northeastern Hungary, was one
such family. They lived in fairly modest circumstances so it mattered a lot that
they could cook with the vegetables from their garden. My great-grandmother’s
family was by no means rich, nevertheless they were better off than the Brauns,
and their garden along two sides of their house was also bigger than the one in
Mátészalka. The door opening from their apartment led to a flower garden and
a gazebo. The vegetable beds were slightly farther away, and a large orchard
occupied the section of the garden behind the house. The house was built
around a huge central courtyard that had enclosures for geese and ducks along
its rear wall, while the mother hens lived in cages above them. The chicken
coop stood along one side of a vaulted passage that connected the courtyard

85. (page 196) Teréz Baruch’s
monogrammed table napkins
from the 1870s. Photograph by
Teodóra Hübner.

[ 199 ]

[ 200 ]

HOUSEHOLDS

with the rear section of the garden, and an elongated pigeon house hung under
the eaves of the court’s rear wall. In winter when the six large grain storage
rooms, which were part of the house, were mostly empty, they transferred the
poultry to the first storage room.

KEEPING GEESE

More than three thousand years ago people in Israel liked to eat domesticated
goose: it was probably the fattened bird on King Solomon’s table. In addition,
the third-century Mishnah, which was based on earlier rabbinical traditions,
also mentions goose breeding in Israel. In Europe it became popular in the
early Middle Ages, and this was when it evolved into an important source of
income for the Jews along the Rhine, who were excluded from many trades.
People ate goose mostly during the fall and winter holidays, as well as at
weddings and other special occasions. But goose fat, which was, together with
chicken fat, the most common kind of fat used in Ashkenazi cooking, played
at least as important a role in their kitchen as goose meat. In Hungary it had
been a much liked meat for centuries, not the least among the Jews. Béla Tóth’s
essay, which he wrote in 1896, is about Hungarian Jews who had been long
famous for their goose breeding: “The seventh decree our king, Ulászló II,
issued in 1514 orders that every year cottiers must offer their lords two geese:
a young one at Pentecost, and a mature one for the holiday of the sainted
Bishop Martin. … It seems plausible that the longstanding tradition according
to which on Saint Martin’s day the Jews bring fattened geese to the king comes
from this old, medieval order and it survived to this day because our Jews like
to emphasize that they are not subjects of a liege lord but their immediate and
sole ruler has always been the Hungarian king himself. In light of this weighty
legal argument, one can’t take seriously the opinion that the royal court has
always known where to find the best fattened geese, and that was why for
centuries it has demanded the ones raised by Jews. It is hard to find out why
exactly the Jews of Pozsony must provide the king with goose for Saint Martin’s
day, since the archives of the Pozsony Jewish community, which could have
cleared up the matter, were destroyed in the fire caused by the 1809 bombardment of the city. What people say about this is merely idle talk. According
to Bertalan Reiner, this had been customary even before the early fourteenth
century, in the age of the kings from the dynasty of Chief Árpád. … Others
maintain that the custom started only in the early eighteenth century, under
the rule of Károly III. It started when this king once spent Martin’s day in
Pozsony, and his purveyors of food couldn’t get any fine geese. The Jews, when

HOUSEHOLDS

they heard this, took six beautiful geese to the king’s kitchen for which they
received certain privileges, among them that from then on they should deliver
Martin’s goose to the king.”160 The great gastronomic writer Elek Magyar
wrote the following in 1933 about this tradition: “Formerly, on Martin’s day
[November 11] the serfs sought to please their lords by giving them fattened
geese. The Orthodox Jews of Pozsony kept this custom alive until Hungary
ceased to be a kingdom after World War I. But until then, every year on
Martin’s day they delivered the six most beautiful fattened geese to the
Hungarian king in memory of the permission they had received for settling
on the slopes of the Schlossberg in the city. The president of the community,
the chief rabbi, and some other respected Jewish citizens entered the royal court
carrying fabulous silver platters on which the slaughtered and cleaned birds
were decorated with ribbons of the national colors and flowers. They first gave
the geese to the chief officer of the royal household, and then the delegates
were allowed to meet the king. After they asked and received permission to
keep their hats on, the chief rabbi blessed the ruler.”161
Though goose fat was the most popular and frequently used fat in the
cooking of Hungarian Jews, some of them lived in such need that even that
counted as luxury. The parents of Meir Ávrahám Munk (1830‒1907) also lived
in such strained circumstances in Nyitra (Nitra, Slovakia) in the first half of
the nineteenth century: “Even now, after the passage of fifty-five years, my
heart is crying and pity arises in me for my mother, who died young because
of the great poverty, misery, and need that surrounded her, and because of the
anger she felt about the hunger that was greater in her own house than at
others. … They saved the goose fat and used it only twice a year, at Pesach and
Rosh Hashanah. They locked up any fat that remained after the holiday, saving
it to be used as medicine in case someone gets sick in the house and asks for
food prepared with goose fat.”162
At the parliamentary session in 1886, one of the representatives of the AntiSemitic Party, which had been founded three years earlier, proposed placing
a special tax on goose fat, clearly since he was familiar with the important role
it played in Jewish cooking. “The budgetary discussions that started this week
again loosened the tongues of anti-Semites” starts a Jewish weekly its account
of the session. “This was the first time this year when Andor Vadnay let his
anti-Semitic opinions be heard. He talked nonsense, like a man whose sole aim
is to prove that he, too, is a good reader. … He started with Galicia and the
immigration of Galician Jews, about whom he stated that masses of them come
to Hungary. According to him, they look like ravens because of their black
caftans, and wherever they fly there is destruction and plague. After this poetic
image, the speaker expressed his annoyance that up to now goose fat hadn’t

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86. Jewish goose breeder in
the vicinity of Nagyszombat
(Trnava, Slovakia) in 1938.
Photograph by Roman Vishniac.

been taxed, and since the whole House received this with laughter, he got really
angry and decided to bore the House with descriptions of the economic
situation in England and Ireland.”163
The parents of Leopold Karpelesz bred geese to supplement the meager
income the father received from his work in the lumber industry. They were
so short of money that Karpelesz, his parents, and his siblings were forced to
live in a single room at the workers’ colony of a sawmill in Gyergyószentmiklós
(Gheorgheni, Romania). “This workers’ colony was built around an enormously big courtyard. Each year we had at least 50‒60‒70 geese. There was
a woodshed and that was where the geese went. They received corn in the
morning, but they hardly ate from it, since they were happily waiting to go
out to the grassy areas in the courtyard. I was frequently asked to herd geese;
I liked the geese very much. I hugged them to me like children would do with
small animals even today. They had beautiful, silky feathers. But the geese could
find their way home by themselves. One had to only watch that they didn’t go
beyond the brook, since if the owners of the ploughed and planted areas there
caught the geese, we had to pay for their release. And I was scolded if I didn’t
guard them well, and they ventured to other people’s land beyond the water.”164
In the villages of Szatmár and Bereg Counties, geese played a similarly important role in the lives of local Jews. “Even in the 1940s, the breeding of geese
and the consumption of goose fat by local Jews to a large degree determined
the appearance of the small villages in our region. The street was practically
covered with geese. … A Jewish family tried to secure yearly 20‒25 liters of
goose fat for itself. Since one can’t get more than 1½ or 2 liters of fat from
a bird, their slaughtering could stretch to two months in a family, as one hardly
needed more than the meat of one goose for a Saturday. Therefore a peasant
woman in vain offered two or three geese at the same time to a Jewish family,
they wouldn’t buy them. … Together with the seller of the bird, a rural Jewish
woman set the price she would be willing to pay for the goose so that she
should be able to return it if the shochet judged it to be treif, not acceptable by
kashrut rules. The price of a fattened goose ranged from four to six pengős
between the two World Wars. The actual price not only reflected the weight
of the goose, but also the possible agreement concerning the risk. … In
addition to using some of the meat immediately, Jewish women smoked the
legs and breasts of the geese.”165
My great-grandmother kept the rendered goose fat in a big, covered
enameled steel container, but Mrs. J. W. in Pécs, southwestern Hungary, used
a different pot for this purpose. “My grandmother force-fed the geese herself.
There was an open-air market, and it was where people could buy young, thin
geese. She bought such geese and fattened them. Grandma was very good at

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this; she knew how to do it. She had two or three geese or ducks at a time. The
houses had wooden sheds with a fenced-in area inside them, and that was
where those birds were kept. … She force-fed the geese during the summer, so
in winter we could get enough fat from them for the whole year. We had a
large ceramic pot with a wide belly and a small rim; it was sixty centimeters
high and could hold twelve to fifteen liters. I don’t remember how they covered
it, perhaps it had a lid. They kept the fat in this pot.”166
Sára Székely recalled how geese used to be fattened in the Transylvanian
town of Gyergyószentmiklós, where she had grown up: “I remember that my
mother soaked the corn in advance, so the geese wouldn’t choke on it. First
she brought the goose out of its house. She spread a small rug over the ground,
sat down on it, and pulled up her legs. She held the goose under her legs

87. Geese belonging to a Jewish
breeder in the Carpathian Rus
region in 1937. Photograph by
Roman Vishniac.

HOUSEHOLDS

without pressing on the bird. She opened its beak and stuffed the corn into it.
We watched her with amazement. When they slaughtered the goose, it had a
huge liver. It was very delicious, but we were poor and nearly always had to
sell it. The factory owner and the office clerks told us well ahead of time:
‘Auntie Eva, if you don’t want to keep the liver, we will buy it.’ Occasionally,
when my mother had two geese, we kept the liver of one of them. It was the
most delicious food.”167 The mother of Mózes Katz in Királyháza, a village in
the Carpathian region, preserved the goose meat by salting it and keeping it in
a barrel in her cold courtyard: “We slaughtered the geese in the fall. My mother
took their livers to Huszt (Khust, Ukraine) to sell them to rich people, since
they were expensive delicacies. She salted the meat in a big barrel, which stood
in our courtyard. Every Friday she took some meat from the barrel for the
Saturday cholent, but not much, so that it should last until spring.”168
Jews were by no means the only people to like goose liver, but it was nevertheless considered to be a Jewish specialty. This had been so in many regions of
Europe for centuries. Although people stuffed geese also in ancient Egypt, the
enlarged liver, the result of force-feeding the bird, was first considered to be a
special delicacy in the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages initially only the
Italian Jews continued the tradition of stuffing geese, but later the Alsatian Jews
adopted this custom, too. Legrand d’Aussy (Pierre Jean Baptiste by his original
name, 1737‒1800) gave the following account of this in 1782: “The Jews of
Metz and Strasbourg also know these secrets [i.e., the secrets of the ancient
Romans], though we are not familiar with their exact methods. And out of this
secret grew one of the branches of commerce that made them rich. As is
commonly known, Strasbourg is famous for the pâtés made from those livers.”169
Adolf Ágai also considered goose liver a Jewish specialty when he wrote
about it in 1895 in Egyenlőség (Equality), a Jewish weekly: “The secret of baking
goose liver came from Jewish cuisine. One must first scare this tasty gland.
When it is still unsalted they place it, with a white paper under it, on the hot
metal plate of the cooking range, but quickly remove it from there when it starts
browning. Only now do they salt it in a covered dish and bake it over slow fire,
so that it shouldn’t collapse. Of course, this is simply based on experience, and
they don’t care for its chemical reasons. But the same way as a poet would be
unsure of whether the evening or the morning star sparkles more beautifully—
since he is a bad astrologer and doesn’t know that those two stars are really the
same—a gourmet is unable to decide whether it is better to eat baked goose
liver cold or warm—because he is an excellent gastronomer.”170 Ágai also writes
about this delicacy in one of his books: “It takes more knowledge to figure out
which goose has the bigger liver than to know the gender of an unborn child.
Because liver, this broad, bulging, yellowish gland, attracts the most customers

88. Jewish gooseherds are
taking geese to graze in
a pasture in the Carpathian
region of eastern Slovakia.
Photograph by Irving Berkey
(1890‒1974) from a March 1925
issue of Forverts (Forward),
a New York Yiddish daily.

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here [at Budapest’s Klauzál Square market]. … The gourmet isn’t disturbed by
the ‘fatty enlargement’ of the goose liver; on the contrary, he seeks it. … Then
they complain about indigestion.”171 Elek Magyar, who used the pen name of
Ínyesmester (Master Gourmet), described in some detail how the Jews baked
goose liver: “I will tell you how goose liver is baked according to the rules of
the Jewish cuisine. We should place the liver on top of pieces of hard fat and
white fat from around the liver together with a clove of garlic and a small head
of onion. We can’t forget pouring liquid over this, but instead of meat broth or
milk, we use only clean water. Of course, we don’t need more of this than the
amount of liquid used in the other two described methods [of cooking goose
liver]. We place this on the kitchen range, and when the water has boiled away,
we discard the garlic and the onion and, as I explained in the first [non-Jewish]
method, we roast it until it turns slightly brown on its top and bottom. At this
time we remove the liver from the fat. Now we season the fat with paprika and
bake it until it is red, then return the liver into it.”172

Goose “Bacon” (Ineresz; zsidó szalonna)
From the Rosenstein szakácskönyv (The Rosenstein
cookbook) by Tibor and Róbert Rosenstein.
Comment: This appetizer is an interesting example of
efforts by Jews to create kosher versions of inherently
nonkosher foods. I know from my mother that although
they served mostly warm suppers at my great-grandmother’s in the early twentieth century, once in a while the
meal consisted of cold dishes, which in cold weather
between late fall and early winter could include this goose
“bacon.” It was made from hard fat removed from the
breast of the bird, which was then rubbed with garlic,
rolled in paprika, and kept at a cold place. It looked exactly like “paprika bacon,” made of white pork fat, devoid of
any streaks of meat, and it was similarly sliced thin and
eaten with bread. Unlike paprika bacon, however, it wasn’t
cooked but only very well chilled. Zorica Herbst-Krausz
includes a version of this goose bacon in her book Régi
zsidó ételek (Old Jewish dishes), which is very similar to the
one made by my great-grandmother, but I prefer to quote
here a slightly lighter, less dense, and more elegant version
from a cookbook written by the Rosensteins, father and son,
chef-owners of one of the best restaurants in Budapest.

Ingredients (for 5 servings): 40 deka hard fat from the
body of the goose, preferably the fine yellow fat around
the liver, salt, pepper, garlic, paprika (according to taste)
Preparation:
1. Clean the membrane from the fat, and finely grind the
fat. Place it in a deep bowl, carefully so it doesn’t melt.
Add crushed garlic, salt, and ground pepper to it, and
mix them well.
2. Place it in the refrigerator, and when it has hardened
and its texture slightly resembles putty, form small
cylinders from it. Roll the cylinders first in ground
paprika and then enclose them tightly in plastic wrap.
Keep the finished “sausages” in the refrigerator. They
keep for a long time.
3. Cut a few slices from it, which can be immediately
eaten. We serve it with toasted bread or challah. It can
be served as an appetizer before the meal or with good
tea as a breakfast course, or at any other time when we
would like to have a snack.

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URBAN HOUSEHOLDS

In bigger towns and of course in Budapest people bought whatever they needed
for cooking at markets and in stores. But this was so even with some inhabitants
of small towns, where not all the families had vegetable gardens around their
houses. While most town folks purchased their bread from a baker, at my greatgrandmother’s at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries they
kneaded dough on every Thursday for enough bread to last the week. They took
the risen dough in a special breadbasket to the baker, but they baked the challah
at home. Although Györgyike Haskó’s parents lived in Budapest, they, too,
kneaded the bread dough at home. “In Paulay Ede Street we had a maid, who
once a week accompanied my mother to the Hold Street market hall. … After
they finished shopping, they carried the stuff home. The maid used them for
cooking; my mother taught her how to cook. And every week mommy baked
bread. She kept starter dough as well as rye and wheat flour in our pantry, and
she used them to make enough dough for an elongated and a round loaf. She
always kneaded some cooked potato into the dough. They took the dough to
the baker Kohn on the corner of Káldy and Király Streets for baking, that was
where they baked our cholent, too. The bread was most delicious; we ate it the
whole week. … They canned a great deal of tomatoes, also jams. They did everything by themselves. Mommy bought 100 kilos of tomatoes [about 225 lbs],
and they cooked them in large pots; the bubbling tomato pulp kept splattering,
and they had burns on their hands by the time they finished. Mommy bought
a goose every week and collected the rendered fat from it in large enameled steel
containers, since this was the fat they used for cooking. Goose liver counted
as luxury, but we frequently ate goose fat on slices of bread and also goose
cracklings.”173
In addition to kosher butchers, special groceries served the needs of religious
Jews in towns and cities with a large Jewish community. The Stern family, who
lived in Dohány Street, in Budapest’s old Jewish quarter, also bought much of
what was necessary for their kitchen in such stores. Mrs. Hermann Stern
purchased vegetables, live poultry, and fish in the market hall on Klauzál Square
and she only went to Budapest’s central market hall for items she couldn’t buy
on Klauzál Square, for example, for bananas and oranges, since in those years
such tropical fruits were not yet sold everywhere. She bought the cold cuts
from Lipót Skrek’s store in Dob Street and oil from a kosher grocer in the same
street. They purchased the food stuff for Pesach in the same store, but the
round, handmade matzo in a matzo factory. Mrs. Stern never bought canned
goods, not even kosher ones, and she wasn’t even willing to buy dried pasta
at the Jewish store but used only homemade pasta. Laurent Stern, her son,

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Stewed
Quince
(Kompót
birsalmából)
From A Hét szakácskönyve (A Hét cookbook),
published in 1902, where
it is called a “Jewish
dish.”
Peel quinces, cut them
into segments, place
them in a cooking pot,
add sugar cubes
(counting 10 pieces for
each quince), a piece of
cinnamon, a few pieces
of clove, the zest of one
lemon, and a generous
amount of washed black
grapes. Cook this
without water until the
quince softens. Remove
the spices and chill the
stewed fruit. It is
customary to serve this
as a side dish to poultry.

remembers well the kosher bakery of Mór Weisz diagonally opposite the Skrek
salami store. Stern attended the Jewish elementary school in Kazinczy Street,
and after he turned ten his parents always gave him money to go during the
ten o’clock break to the nearby Weisz bakery to buy himself coffee with milk
and some pastry.
In the first half of the twentieth century, various kinds of “specialized”
domestic help performed the household tasks in the homes of even those
families that weren’t rich, but merely middle class. So some families had both
a cook and a maid, and also women who periodically came to do their laundry,
to iron, to make dried pasta, and to help in the yearly big house cleaning in
the spring, as well as at times also in canning. This was the approximate arrangement in the parental home of Zsuzsa Diamantstein, born in 1922 in
Marosvásárhely (Târgu-Mureș, Romania). Her step-father was an office clerk.
They lived comfortably, but by no means in luxury, which can be seen from
the fact that they didn’t have enough money for vacations. “We didn’t keep
kosher, but my mother attended synagogue service during Shabbat, lit candles
on Fridays, and didn’t cook on Saturdays. … We had a maid to help in the
household, and my grandparents with whom we shared a big apartment also
had one. … One maid was in the kitchen and the other cleaned the apartment.
… Not to mention that laundry was such a big commotion in those years, so
we had a washerwoman coming to help. … They also did lots of canning for
the winter: in addition to fruits they canned vegetables, tomatoes, and pickles.
As I recall, the cellar wasn’t good in this big building, but there were pantries
where we could keep things. Then in the fall it was time to make dried pasta
for the winter. We had a special woman coming to us for this, who had various
sieves and who kneaded the dough for the egg barley, the narrow soup noodles,
the pasta squares, and the broad noodles. Our whole apartment was full with
all kinds of pasta, since they were spread out to dry on various cloth-covered
tables. … Every day there was market on Main Square, but by eleven in the
morning the square was all cleaned up, not even an apple peel could remain
on the pavement. … Generally my mother did the shopping for the kitchen.
… I know that a rural farm woman brought the milk products always to our
house: the milk daily, but the farmer cheese and the sour cream only once a
week. The main market day was on Thursday, the farmers came with carts and
lots of produce to sell, and they also brought poultry from various regions,
including the lands along the Nyárád [river in Transylvania]. The open-air
market was well organized: the vegetables were in one section, while the poultry
and other live animals in another area. … Jews owned most of the shops on
the main square of Marosvásárhely. … Each family had a favorite grocer, a
shop where they generally went, and where they could order a whole month’s

HOUSEHOLDS

supply, which the housewife recorded in a notebook, and the merchant probably wrote it down, too. Usually, the store’s apprentice delivered the purchased
goods to us, because in those years people bought not merely a kilo sugar, but
enough for a whole month or so. If they needed some other stuff before the
end of the month, they picked it up from the store and recorded it in the
notebook of purchases. We paid our balance in the store shortly after the first
of the month, when my father received his salary.”174 The Stern family in
Budapest also had a range of domestic help for household chores. The maid
and the Viennese governess lived with them, though the latter only until March
1938, because when Hitler’s Germany annexed Austria, she switched to a
Christian family. In addition to them, they employed a woman for the big
house cleaning in the spring and separate persons for doing the laundry and
the ironing once every three weeks. After the third Jewish law, enacted in 1941,
no Gentile was allowed to work for Jews, so the various domestic help of such
origin at the Sterns was replaced by Jewish women from the Carpathian region.

CANNING

Although stores sold factory-canned food in metal cans and glass jars approximately since the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most
housewives – regardless whether Gentile or Jewish and whether living in cities
or in rural areas – put up fruits and vegetables at home, since the selection of
canned goods was meager in the stores, and they were also more expensive and
of poorer quality than the homemade ones. It shows the importance of home
canning in the early twentieth century that one of the few Hungarian Jewish
cookbooks published before 1945 focused on nothing else but it and baked
goods. My great-grandmother Riza also attached great importance to canning,
which can be seen from the contents of her recipe collection where 12 of the
136 recipes are for various preserves, pickles put up in glass jars, fruit pastes,
and fruit jellies. A huge quince tree stood in front of the door leading from
her apartment to the garden. They must have liked this fruit, since her small
collection includes three preparations made from it: two kinds of preserves and
quince paste. Presumably, Riza made even more kinds of preserves than what
is in her collection, since most fruits are put up in a similar way, so she must
have felt that she didn’t need separate recipes for each.
Canning always meant bustle and excitement, but nothing could compare
with the commotion of making plum butter (szilvalekvár) in late summer. In
the morning of the plum butter cooking day Paula, Riza’s servant, and Ilka,
the domestic help at Riza’s sister Lujza, carried the big copper cauldron from

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Etrog in Sugar
(Cédrusalma cukorban)
A summary of various candied etrog recipes sent to the
magazine A Hét (The Week). It was written by Ignotus
(Hugó Veigelsberg), who under the pen name of
“Madame Emma” organized the magazine’s recipe
contest. The article was featured in the September 15,
1901 issue of the weekly.
Comment: The cookbook assembled from the entries
to the recipe contest features this text in a slightly
different form, but I prefer to print here the description
Ignotus wrote for the magazine as a summary of the
different versions sent by the readers, since it also gives
the names of the senders. In addition, I include the
introduction he wrote to the recipe.
Cedrat apple or Adam’s apple or Judenapfel (German:
“Jewish apple”) or citron or etrog. All these names refer
to the same fruit: Citrus Pomum Adami Rissi, according
to the encyclopedia. It is a fragrant, oval, slightly pearshaped fruit. There are some smaller or larger dents on
its golden skin, almost like tooth marks: Jews call them
Eve’s bite. According to the Talmud, it is the fruit of the
tree of knowledge, of which Adam and Eve took a bite. …
Jews in the fall in their Festival of the Tabernacles bind
it together with palm, willow, and myrtle branches, and
hold this festive bouquet during their prayer. It is an
expensive fruit, since by the time it gets from Italy to
Hungary, the price of a good piece varies between
10 and 80 koronas; the more beautiful and perfect it is,
the higher its cost. It also grows in Corfu and Sicily, but
the most beautiful examples are imported from the
East. Its unripe thick peel is the citronat.
You lovely ladies responded to my simple request for
recipes with a virtual literature of this “king of fruit
preserves,” as one of our senders rapturously calls it.
I can’t feature here all of the responses, but at least
I include the main variations. I must say, each sender
believes her version is the only good way to make these
candied slices. Generally, the recipes differ in two things
from each other. One group soaks the etrog only for one

or two days, while the other for no fewer than nine –
why exactly nine, perhaps it has something to do with
the kabbalah. The other point of contention is the
vinegar: one group includes it, the other especially
emphasizes that one shouldn’t use it. These are the
main types:
The all-knowing Aranka Harsányi copiously punctures the
skin of both the etrog and the orange with the help of
a knitting needle, cooks them in water until they start to
soften, then soaks them in cold water for 24 hours,
frequently changing the water over them. When the fruits
have drained, she cuts them into slices, and removes the
seeds. Now she places the same weight of sugar as the
fruits and two cups of water for each kilo of sugar in a
pot and cooks them until they turn into a thick syrup, but
not so long that the syrup turns yellow and starts to
smell. She adds the slices and cooks them until they
become translucent, almost like glass. When they are
almost done, she adds the strained juice of a lemon.
When they have half cooled, she transfers them into
broad jars, and covers them only on the next day. It isn’t
necessary to steam the jars.
Mrs. Lajos Bródy’s method differs from this mainly in
the sequence of things. She cuts the unpeeled etrog –
since it has little taste when it is peeled – into slices,
removes the seeds, and soaks the slices for four to five
days in water, naturally she changes the water every day,
then she cooks them in hot water until the water doesn’t
taste bitter. She lets them boil only once and keeps
changing the water, because the slices soften if they

HOUSEHOLDS

soak too long. When the slices are no longer bitter, she
cooks them in syrup until they became translucent.
The syrup shouldn’t be too thick. This is the king of
fruit preserves! It is customary to cook it together with
quinces. It is very good that way, too, although not as
beautiful.
Linus G. soaks the slices for nine days and mixes them
with lemon slices. Sári Weinberger does the same, but
she peels the fruit, and since she believes that I am
more a theoretical than a practicing cook, she kindly
offers that she would make this year’s etrog for me.
I appreciate this, but for the time being only the good
intentions. Mrs. Stauber soaks the raw and seeded
slices for three days, lets them drain on a sieve, and
cooks them three times one after the other, each time
in fresh hot water. Aranka Schwarz writes that it
caused her much inner struggle to decide whether she
should send us her version, her tried family secret. She
cuts the etrog into thin, round slices, which she seeds
and soaks in cold water for nine days. She changes the
water daily. During this time the etrog looses its
unpleasant bitter taste. Now she cooks them until they
soften. When this is done, she weighs the etrog, and

cooks a thick syrup from the same weight of sugar,
adding a few spoonfuls of wine vinegar to it according
to taste. She adds the etrog slices to this and cooks
them until they become like glass. At this time for
every four pieces of etrog she takes one whole lemon,
which she peels, slices into rounds, seeds, and
together with a few whole cloves adds to the etrog in
the syrup. She brings this once more to a boil. After it
has cooled, she places the slices in glass jars, pours
the syrup over them, ties parchment paper over the
jars to seal them, and steams the jars. It keeps well
even after a jar has been opened. … The variation
submitted by one of my blond readers is close to this,
while a recipe sent from Mélykút [southern Hungary]
and those I received from Irén Grünhut, Aranka Eisner,
and others blend different elements of the main types.
I am deeply touched by the attention and the exertion
of all of them.

Candied Etrog (Eszrog cukorban)
From a book by Mrs. Lajos Venetianer, called
A befőttekről (About preserves) and published in 1931.
Comment: Etrog, also called citron, grows in warmclimate countries, mainly in Israel, Morocco, and Italy.
This fragrant variety of the citrus family is somewhat
bigger than a lemon and has a thick, scabrous skin. It is
one of the “four species” which are part of the socalled lulav, a festive bouquet that is one of the
symbols of Sukkot. It consists ‒ in addition to etrog ‒
of palm, myrtle, and willow branches. People hold this
bouquet while saying the prayers that are parts of the
holiday ceremony. This imported subtropical fruit was
always expensive in Hungary, and therefore when the
holiday was over Jewish housewives frequently made

preserves from it, either on its own or mixed with
quinces, or – like in this recipe – they cooked slices
of it in sugar syrup to make candied etrog.
In October, prick the etrog at several places with
a needle and soak it for nine days in water, which you
change every day. Cut it into finger-thick slices, cook
the slices two to three times in always fresh water in
order to get rid of their bitterness. Place them on
a sieve to drain, weigh them, and cook a syrup from the
same weight of sugar. When the syrup is thick, add the
etrog slices to it together with some orange and lemon
slices, and cook them with a little salicylic acid until
they turn almost translucent, which should take about
25 minutes.

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the laundry room to the courtyard. Lujza lived in the same large house as Riza,
but her apartment was on the opposite side of the courtyard. For the occasion
of making plum butter, Riza and Lujza, the two perpetually quarreling sisters,
decided to make peace and join forces. The stove under the cauldron was fired
up and the washed prune plums were cooked until the pits separated from the
flesh of the fruit. Then the two servants removed the pits from the cauldron
and continued cooking the fruit. They took turns stirring the furiously
splattering hot plum butter, constantly watching it so that it doesn’t burn on
the bottom of the pot. The fruit purée had to be cooked until it was so thick
that it wouldn’t drop from an inverted spoon. Usually it was late evening by
the time they could pour the hot purée into large ceramic jars, which they
covered and sealed the next day when the plum butter was cold.
György Braun recalls how his mother put up fruits and vegetables in their
home in Mátészalka, northeastern Hungary: “I tried to help even more in late
summer, when most of the canning was done. Every year our mother made
enough preserves for our family to last the whole winter. The canning jars got
filled mostly with plums and sour cherries, but at times also with regular
cherries. She put up cucumbers, red cabbage, and small melons, too. So we
had plenty of food for the winter. We purchased the tomatoes at the market,
and we bought so much that after our mother cooked them they would fill
thirty or forty large glass jars. On such days we carried last year’s empty canning
jars down from the attic, soaked them in a large enameled mixing bowl, washed
their insides with a bottle brush, rinsed them out, and set them with their
mouths down to dry in the sunny courtyard. We added the tomatoes grown
in our garden to the purchased ones, then washed them, cut them up, placed
them in a 20-liter pot, and set the pot onto the range to cook. It had to be
cooked slowly, since it would have gotten burnt on a bigger flame. When it
had become nicely thick, my mother strained it, then with the help of a funnel
she filled it into the jars, and finally she sealed the jars airtight by tying
parchment paper over their mouths. After steaming the jars, she let them rest,
and then she placed them on the shelves in the pantry to be stored there for
the winter. We also made lekvár [fruit butter] at home. Our neighbors cooked
it in a big cauldron set over a fire pit they dug in their courtyard, but we cooked
it in a large pot in our kitchen. There was lots of work with it. The plums first
had to be washed several times, then they needed to be cooked until the fruit
started to fall apart and we could rub it through a sieve to separate the pits,
finally, while constantly stirring it, we had to continue cooking the lekvár until
it was ready. If my mother started in the morning, it was late night by the time
the lekvár finished cooking and could be filled into small containers and stored
in the pantry for the winter. In addition to putting up preserves and cooking

HOUSEHOLDS

Gooseberry Jelly (Egres-kocsonya)
From the kosher cookbook of Mrs. Ábrahám Ganz,
published in Dés, Transylvania, in 1928.
Take 6 liters of green gooseberries, clean them,
place them in a cooking pot, and pour enough
water over them to cover the fruit. Place it on the
range and cook it until the juices turn nice and
rosy. Turn it out onto a sieve, so it can drain. Use
20 dekas of sugar for each water glass of the juice,
and cook this mixture until it starts to jell.

lekvár, we placed the potatoes, the cabbage, and some other vegetables in a root
cellar dug in our courtyard, for storing them until the winter. We stored also
beets there and took them out only when we needed them. Our garden yielded
so much of all this, that we hardly needed to supplement it during the winter.
We also put up much horseradish. It grew near the bushes in the rear of our
garden. When its roots became thick, we dug them up, grated them, and filled
the grated horseradish into glass jars.”175
Putting up things for the winter was similarly one of the busiest times of the
year at Mrs. J. W.’s grandmother in Pécs, southwestern Hungary. “Grandma had
to do the household tasks by herself; she had no servant to help. She and my
parents had separate apartments, separate households, but when there was a lot
of work, we did it together. Putting up tomatoes was an example of this: it was
tremendous amount of work. We cooked 50 to 60 kilos of tomatoes, which
required lots of canning jars. … We had a brass cauldron and used that for this
task. When we were canning things, grandma came to help, and when she was
putting up vegetables or fruit, we went to assist her. … Grandmother put up
everything, even sugar peas, green beans, and all kinds of fruit. We also did a lot
of canning for the winter. As the harvest season of the various fruits arrived—
the cherries, the sour cherries, and so on—we kept putting them up as they
ripened one after the other, so that we would have enough of them to eat
throughout the winter. In those years one couldn’t buy fresh vegetables in winter.
There were apples and cabbage, as well as sauerkraut, but nothing else. We also
preserved vegetables in sand. To do this, we poured sand into a wooden chest
and placed the vegetables in neat rows in it, so that they didn’t touch each other.
They kept well and didn’t dry out when they were completely buried in dry sand.
One can preserve carrots and parsnips this way.”176

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Certain canned vegetables seem to have been more common in Jewish
households than in Gentile ones. I have no idea what made water pickles
(blanched cucumbers preserved in salted water mixed with herbs and allowed
to ripen in the sun) a Jewish dish. They are included in some general-use
Hungarian cookbooks, too, but Gizella Grosz, who lived in Szilágycseh in
Transylvania, lists them as a Jewish dish in a letter she sent as an entry to the
recipe contest organized by the magazine A Hét (The Week) in 1901. The
recollections of Magda Fazekas, who was born in 1920 in a Transylvanian town,
seem to reinforce this impression. According to her, water pickles were
frequently served at the midday meal of the Shabbat: “On Saturdays my
mother served roast hen, made from a part of the bird. We cooked the unpeeled
potatoes on Friday, so we had to only cut them into segments, warm them up,
and add them to the sauce of the roast hen on Saturday. … And she always
served cucumbers as pickles. My mother—I remember it well—always put up
cucumbers in large glass jars, but she only made water pickles, never those
preserved in vinegar.”177

MAIDS

Most of the even slightly well-to-do families had a maid, the better-off ones
more than one. This didn’t count as luxury in those years, since domestic servants were very poorly paid. But sometimes the family business also required
their employment, for example, in the childhood home of Mrs. Béla Pollák,
born in 1916 in Zalaegerszeg, a town in western Hungary: “My parents worked
a lot. In addition to a general store, they also had a pub. As if this hadn’t been
enough, they dealt in grains, grew vegetables, and bred animals. They also
leased a small property. While my father bought goods for the store, my mother
had to be in the store. This was why we had to have a maid.”178
In many rural and urban families an intimate relationship of trust evolved
between the non-Jewish domestic help, who frequently had been with the
family for decades, and her Jewish masters. Such servants were also important
since they could perform those tasks that Jews couldn’t do because of the
prohibition of work during the Shabbat and other holidays. For example, on
Saturday they went to pick up the cholent from the baker, where it had been
cooking in the oven since Friday late afternoon, and they could turn on the
lights in the Jewish home. In my great-grandmother’s home Paula, their maid,
who had been born in a nearby village and who belonged to Hungary’s German
minority, was treated almost like a family member, loved and respected by
everyone, especially by the grandchildren who adored her. After decades of

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service at Riza’s, she knew the Jewish dietary rules and the scripts of the holidays
better than some born Jews. Jewish maids were probably less common, but,
for example, Margit, the maid who served at the Orthodox grandparents of
Laurent Stern in Budapest, was of that background. So was the maid serving
at the parents of Mrs. Imre P. in Máramarossziget (Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania): “My mother kept a kosher household, and my grandmother even more
so. Naturally, our cook was Jewish, so she knew everything about keeping
kashrut rules.”179

THE ROLE OF COOKING IN THE LIVES OF JEWISH WOMEN

According to religious tradition, the three main duties of a Jewish woman are
the burning of a small piece separated from the kneaded dough, the lighting
of the candles at the beginning of the Shabbat, and cleansing herself in the
ritual bath, the mikveh. In addition, cooking was the woman’s task in the majority of traditional Jewish families in the nineteenth century, though not
everywhere, since in a few of the most religious homes it was the husband who
did the household chores. Meir Ávrahám Munk (1830, Nyitra, today in Slovakia–1907, Nagyvárad, today in Romania), the father of Bernát Munkácsi,
a famous linguist, described this in his Hebrew-language recollections of the
time in 1848 when he had lived with a highly religious family in Nyitra: “In
most of the homes that I knew here, the husband did all the household work
instead of the wife. Since most of the husbands went directly from the yeshiva
to under the chuppah [wedding baldachin], they didn’t know how to make a
living, so the women had to spend their whole day with selling their goods in
the town or by going with their horse-drawn cart from market to market
throughout the week. And since the men did the women’s work in the homes
—like making the beds, cleaning the house, dressing the children, and cooking
the meals—they never managed to learn how to make tasty food. So the food
had no taste, no pleasant smell, and a few times I got so fed up with it that
I ate only bread.”180
In the last third of the nineteenth century more and more Jews sought to
follow the example of Gentiles in their use of language, style of dressing, choice
of schools, and in a few other areas of everyday life, and with time such cultural
assimilation led to increasing secularization in some of them, even to a complete abandonment of religious traditions. But in most cases even those women
who no longer kept a kosher household, didn’t observe the Shabbat, and didn’t
go to the mikveh continued to consider cooking as one of their important tasks.
Even in those well-to-do urban households where a cook prepared the meals,

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89. The mother of André
Kertész (Andor Kertész), the
world-famous photographer
(1894, Budapest–1985, New
York), as she is cutting up meat
in her Budapest kitchen. The
father of Kertész, a book dealer,
died young, and his widow had
to raise her three sons by
herself: Imre, the oldest, André,
who was only fourteen when his
father died, and Jenő, who was
merely eleven. As soon as
Kertész got his first camera in
1912, he became passionately
interested in photography, and
his early pictures already show
exceptional talent. This and the
other two photographs by
Kertész featured in this book
don’t contradict the fact that
the great many Jewish-born
Hungarian photographers
generally avoided Jewish
subjects and none of them
depicted the daily lives of
anonymous Jews in larger series
of pictures. Although Kertész
took numerous photographs
of his family, he didn’t do this
because they were Jewish, but
since he wished to preserve
how his loved ones looked and
he could find willing models in
them at the beginning of his
career. Photograph by André
Kertész from April 27, 1917.

the lady of the house determined the menus of regular days and holidays and
she supervised the cook’s work. It was also quite common that the maid or
cook was only asked to prepare the dishes, while the baking of sweets, which
required greater attention and more precise work, was done by the housewives
themselves. While an increasing number of urban Jewish (and Gentile) women
attended universities, held jobs outside the house, and achieved significant
results in their chosen profession, most of them continued to do the cooking
and baking for their families or at least they supervised the work of the
domestic help who performed those tasks. Men in that period hardly ever did
any cooking: for example, nearly all the friends of my parents were assimilated
Jews, but not a single male in those families could cook or bake; at most they
were able to make a soft boiled egg for themselves.
Of course, poor or lower-middle-class Jews rarely had money to hire a maid,
so the wife had to do the cooking by herself, at the maximum her children
could give her a hand. But cooking was merely one of the many tasks that
awaited the Jewish wife: she was mostly responsible for bringing up the children
and taking care of their daily needs, and it was her duty to prepare for the
home rituals of the holidays, like the Shabbat. But this was by no means the
end of her long list of responsibilities: she had to help in the shop that was the
family’s major source of income, and in villages and small towns she had to
care for the vegetable garden and also to work on the small separate plots of
land some families owned. Furthermore, she was mainly in charge of furnishing
the home and making it cozy and comfortable.
Cooking the meals was not merely a burden on the women, but also the
subject of justified pride: it was an area of life where the creativity of the wife
could flourish. A housewife who was an exceptionally good cook became
known among the neighbors, even in much of the Jewish community. Most
women didn’t need a recipe to prepare the dishes which required less precise
work and left room for more improvisation, but they mostly used them when
they baked sweets. As a result, the majority of handwritten recipe collections
contains descriptions of only sweets. Women, especially those belonging to the
urban middle class, frequently shared their favorite recipes with their friends
and acquaintances, so this evolved into an area of their social lives.
In the period approximately up to World War I, young women learned to
cook at home from their mothers. Around the turn of the century, however,
an increasing number of urban women decided to choose a profession. Some
of them made this decision because they wished to break out from the intimate,
but at the same time slightly stifling atmosphere of the home, others were
compelled to do this for financial reasons. This of course also meant that they
had less or no time left for teaching their daughters how to cook. This is why

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90. Mrs. Vilmos Vázsonyi (first
figure on the left) in early 1927,
in her recently opened cooking
school. Photograph by an
unknown photographer from
the February 9, 1927, issue of
Tolnai Világlapja (Tolnai’s world
review), a weekly publication.

Auntie Giti (Mrs. Aladár Adler), the author of a Jewish cookbook published
in 1935 in Kecskemét, east-central Hungary, wrote in her introduction to the
volume how much she hopes that the recipes and useful advice included in her
work “will help … those women whose jobs have kept them away from the
kitchen.”181
Similar to Auntie Giti, numerous Jewish institutions including Jewish high
schools and associations of ladies’ and unmarried women realized that the
formerly self-evident cooking skills of women had become patchy and were in
need of help. Therefore, starting in the 1920s they organized cooking classes
in many places. For example, in 1925 the Jewish girls’ high school in Budapest
started such a course for their senior students. As Kálmán Wirth, the director
of the school, described this in an interview: “In order to acquire the practical
skills of cooking, the eighth-year students learn to cook in groups of six under
the guidance of two ladies, whom I had selected from parent volunteers
according to the criterion that they must be knowledgeable in the tasks and
rules of a real kosher household. … Messrs. Dr. Sándor Lederer, the president
of the Jewish community, and Dr. Adolf Kecskeméti, the supervisor of religious
education, have been most helpful in setting up our modern and well-equipped
kitchen. We give the meals thus produced to those children who live in the
neighborhood.” Another article about this cooking class complements this by
describing that the course, initially available only for eighth-year students, “will
be gradually extended to other students as well, and in wintertime it will be
able to provide midday meals to impoverished pupils of the high school.” The
article that included the previously quoted interview in Egyenlőség (Equality),

HOUSEHOLDS

a Jewish weekly, also describes the equipment of the kitchen where the course
was held and the activities there: “This is a splendid, fully tiled, modernly
equipped room with a huge cooking range and separate cabinets for the meat
and dairy dishes. Six rosy-cheeked young girls, wearing white aprons and
bonnets, surround the range and they kindly encourage us to taste the preserves
they made, promising that we will not have cause for complaints. … The
menu: cauliflower soup, veal roast, breaded calf ’s liver, and walnut cake. The
tasting, however, evolves into a serious meal. Each dish is so tasty and excellent
that none of our most elegant restaurants could produce any better. … In the
meantime, the children who will eat the meal arrive, so it is time for handwashing and prayer, followed by the meal, when the hungry little stomachs
will be happily filled with the results of the cooking test.”182
Mrs. Vilmos Vázsonyi, the widow of a famous Jewish politician, opened
a cooking school in Budapest in 1927 with the intention of using the income
from it to support the Charitable Women’s Association of Terézváros (a Budapest district with a large Jewish population). According to an article published
in A Reggel (The Morning), she herself was planning to teach the participants of
the two-month course, though a professional chef would assist her in teaching
practical cooking. “I believe,” she told the reporter, “that the person who teaches
women and girls how to become housewives advances not only charitable goals
but does a service to many families and more generally to Hungarian family life.
… Lectures will be held three times a week between 10 and 1, and on each of
those days we will prepare a midday meal. It is included in the tuition that each
student can take home a complete meal and for a low additional price several
servings of it.”
KITCHEN FURNITURE AND EQUIPMENT

The requirement to separate cooking equipment, dishes, and furniture that
comes in contact with dairy and meat products appeared relatively late, only
in the Middle Ages in Europe.184 From then on, however, it completely transformed the arrangement of the Jewish kitchen. To satisfy the rule of separating
dairy from meat, Jews who kept kashrut rules had to have separate cabinets or
at least separate shelves for storing the two types of dishes. The need to have
two cabinets, cooking ranges (although the second range could be substituted
with placing iron plates on the burners), kitchen tables, and dishwashing bowls
required a larger than usual kitchen, and this was not only more costly, but
made the households of religious Jews significantly more complicated.

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It was, however, by no means uniform how and to what degree different
families satisfied these requirements. For example, in the kitchen of Hermann
Stern, the secretary of the Budapest Autonomous Orthodox Jewish Community, there were two ranges: one heated by wood and coal and another one,
which was gas burning. But they had only one kitchen table, which they could
make appropriate for dairy food by covering it with a sheet of linoleum.185
Teréz Berger, my deeply religious, but not Orthodox great-grandmother, was
less strict in observing these rules in her household in Moson, western Hungary. Although she stored the dairy and meat dishes in separate cabinets, she
had only one wood-burning range on which she covered the burners with a
metal plate when she cooked dairy foods. She also had only one kitchen table,
about which she claimed that if she wiped off its red marble top with a damp
cloth, it could be used for dairy foods, and if she wiped it off again, it was okay
for meat ones. In the Budapest kitchen of Ivan Sanders’s paternal grandparents,
who had been born in Galicia and who kept a kosher household, there was
also only one huge marble-topped kitchen table, which they similarly washed
off when they wished to use it for dairy stuff after preparing fleishig (meat)
foods on it or vice versa.186 Like at my great-grandmother in Moson, there was
only one wood-burning range in the Miskolc (north-central Hungary) kitchen
of Andrew Romay’s Orthodox parents, but as far as he can remember they
didn’t cover the burners for dairy food.187
Some religious Jews couldn’t afford to have separate cabinets. One of them
was Sára Székely’s mostly Yiddish-speaking grandmother in Gyergyószentmiklós in Transylvania, who was later murdered in Auschwitz: “Although all
the daughters of grandma were religious and kept kosher kitchens, she always
claimed that they were not sufficiently observant. … Her last apartment was
in the courtyard of a house belonging to someone in the carting trade. … She
had a separate small room opening from the courtyard. … It had a bed, a table,
and two shelves. This was the same in our home: we had no kitchen cabinets
—since we were poor—only beautiful, painted shelves, one for the dairy dishes
and another for the fleishig ones. … Grandma had two such shelves and two
water buckets on a bench. She also had a wardrobe, and she always stored
walnuts and hazelnuts on its top. She kept telling me: ‘If you write to Sziget
[Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania, where presumably they had relatives], I will give
you some walnuts.’”188
Not only the dishes, pots, baking pans, etc., had to be kept separately, but
all the other cooking equipment, too. If equipment had been used for processing fish, it was forbidden to use it for meat. So, for example, if someone
ground the fish meat for the gefilte fish instead of chopping it with a knife,
she needed a special grinder that she used only for fish. This might have had

to do even more with culinary considerations than with kashrut rules, since
with the cleaning agents used in the past—like soap, brush, vinegar, or coarse
salt—it was nearly impossible to remove the fish smell from metals. The need
to have a separate grinder for fish was also insisted upon by the rabbinical
supervisors of kosher restaurants, and Laurent Stern once witnessed a heated
discussion of two such supervisors over this issue.
Auntie Giti’s cookbook, published in Kecskemét, east-central Hungary, in
1935, includes a few sentences about some further requirements of a kosher
kitchen: “We have to leave space in the kitchen for a small bench, on which
the water buckets stand. Even if we have running water we need at least one
water bucket, which is virtually indispensable for pouring water over the salted
meat during koshering. The way to do this is to fill the bucket with water and
to have a dipper standing next to the bucket on the bench or hanging on the
wall from a nail. This dipper should preferably have a long handle, so the hand
shouldn’t touch the water during scooping. This is desirable both for hygienic
and kashrut considerations. There should be also a soap dish on the wall for
the kosher soap and a towel hung next to it, since we might have to wash our
hands frequently during cooking. The dish towels should be made of two kinds
of fabrics or differently patterned ones and should be marked with Zs for zsíros
(meat) and T for tejes (dairy), so that a guest or new household help could immediately distinguish them from each other. At least two cutting boards, two

91. Kitchen in the Szolnok
(east-central Hungary)
apartment of the poet and
editor József Kiss’s granddaughter, probably in the 1920s.
Kiss (1843, Mezőcsát, northern
Hungary–1921, Budapest) was
one of Hungary’s most famous
poets who wrote numerous
narrative poems on Jewish
subjects. He was the founding
editor of A Hét (The Week),
a magazine that was the first in
the country to provide a home
for modern Hungarian literature. Photograph by Ottó Kiss.

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pastry boards with separate rolling pins, and two smaller, hand-held boards for
making little dumplings [galuska] also belong to the kitchen’s furnishings.
Wooden spoons must be clearly marked so that we don’t mix them up accidentally.”
For Pesach it wasn’t enough to have separate dishes or at least ones specially
koshered for that purpose, but people also had to slightly change the furnishings
of the kitchen. At E. G.’s parents in Nagyenyed in Transylvania they used a
different water bucket during Pesach, and they even paid attention that it
shouldn’t touch the kitchen stool used throughout the year: “In our home the
water bucket stood on a kitchen stool. … We carried down the Easter [Passover]
dishes from the attic and replaced the water bucket with a special Easter bucket.
… The Easter bucket also stood on the kitchen stool, but we first placed hay on
the stool, then a board over it, then again hay, and only then did we place the
bucket over this top layer. We did this to keep the bucket from touching anything
that wasn’t kosher, because perhaps someone who carried that board touched
something not permitted during Pesach, like bread or I don’t know what.”189
But this wasn’t enough, they also had to kosher the baking oven in the
kitchen for Pesach. “Two days before Easter we placed lots of pebbles on the
iron plate of the oven. We lit the fire and took some coal out of the oven and
placed it on top of the pebbles. As the fire burned, the pebbles became hotter
and hotter. We placed coal on all of them and repeated this I don’t know how
many times, until the oven completely burned out. We kept the fire going the
whole day. During the night it cooled down, and my mother removed the
pebbles into a bucket, threw them out, and cleaned out the oven. We wiped it
off, and cleaned it with some scrubbing powder. Until Easter we could no
longer cook or warm dishes on this koshered range, so we had to prepare the
food ahead of time, since after the koshering we could only eat cold food.”190

DISHES, TABLEWARE, AND TABLECLOTHS

92. A 1930s advertisement
of a Jewish dish store with
branches in Budapest’s old
Jewish quarter. In the ad,
the owner called himself
edénykirály, king of dishes.
The advertisement claims that
the store is the most reliable
source for buying shel Pesach
dishes, that is, ones
appropriate for Pesach.

As previously mentioned, religious Jews had to use separate pots, pans, serving
dishes, and sets of plates and cutlery for meat, dairy, and pareve foods, and yet
another set of everything for Pesach. New metal, glass, and glazed terracotta
dishes that had been manufactured by non-Jews and those that had earlier been
owned by non-Jewish people, for example, merchants, had to be plunged into
water at the ritual bath or at least into a river or well while saying a blessing
over them. With dishes that had not been previously used, this was all that had
to be done, but when a used plate, pot, or bowl for some reason became not
kosher, for example, when some dairy food touched a fleishig (meat) dish, it

HOUSEHOLDS

had to be koshered at home by submerging it into boiling water. If a big
enough pot wasn’t available for this, then the dish that was to be koshered had
to be filled with water, which had to be brought to a boil, and then pieces of
stone that had been previously heated in fire had to be thrown into it, so that
the overflowing boiling water covered the dish’s outside surfaces. Metal baking
pans had to be koshered by heating them over open flame until they were
practically glowing, but nowadays this is not done, since this would destroy
most of them, so instead of it people place the pan for an hour in the oven
that had been preheated at the hottest possible setting. It was not permitted to
kosher the milchig and fleishig dishes back and forth—this could only be done
before Pesach, when they anyhow had to kosher certain things.
A religious Jew needed separate dishes not only for the milchig and fleishig
foods, but also for the pareve (neither milchig, nor fleishig) courses and even
for the kitchen waste that had become treif, that is, not kosher. In addition,
they needed separately stored sets of milchig, fleishig, and pareve dishes for
Pesach. Only glass dishes could be used—after thorough washing—for all these
categories. Since all this was complicated and expensive, as well as it required
lots of room, not everyone observed all the rules. Ede Vadász sums up the
requirements for the different sets of dishes in the following way: “There must
be four kinds of dishes in the household of a Jew who attaches great importance
to the appropriateness of his home: fleishig, milchig, pareve, and … treif. Treif?

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93. The monogrammed napkins
of Teréz Berger, née Baruch
from 1876, the year of her
marriage, or slightly earlier.
Before the 1920s the parents
of most middle-class young
women bought trousseau for
them, since this was society’s
expectation of marriageable
women. Probably these napkins
and the cutlery shown in
Fig. 96. once belonged to her
trousseau. It is possible that
the red woven pattern and the
red monogram of the napkins
indicated that they were to be
used for fleishig (meat) menus,
but I can’t be sure of this, since
no blue-patterned napkins
survive from her. Photograph
by Teodóra Hübner.

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42e

94. Blue-patterned hand towel
or kitchen towel from József
Hirschler’s kosher restaurant
in Csepreg, northwestern
Hungary, from the first half of
the twentieth century. The blue
pattern indicated that the towel
was meant for pots and tableware used in the cooking of
dairy foods. They used towels
with a red pattern for fleishig
dishes. Photograph by
Richárd Tóth.

Yes, treif: this is the dish where they throw or pour—especially during koshering—the solid or liquid waste that for any reason is unfit for consumption,
including the blood we find so repulsive, since the horror sanguinis atavistice
Judaeis institus [Latin: the revulsion from blood is atavistically part of Judaism].
The three types of dishes mentioned before the treif category are collectively
called kosher, but in many regions, for example, among the Jews of Bohemia
and Moravia, as well as in Hungary among those living in the upper Danube
area and in the valley of the river Vág, people use this adjective kat’ exochen
[preeminently] for those neither fleishig, nor milchig foods, dishes, and cutlery,
which we call pareve. If we take into consideration that at Pesach we need
separate sets of all four of the listed categories, then according to the truth of
2 ×4=8, the kosher household needs eight sets of dishes and cutlery.”191
In former times the manufacturers frequently included the Hebrew word
basar (meat) on the more expensive fleishig dishes and platters they produced,
for example, on the ones made of china or pewter. Auntie Giti, the author of
the cookbook mentioned in the previous subchapter, found it necessary to
mark the dishes belonging to the different food categories in such a way that

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they were easily distinguishable: “It is absolutely important that the color of
our fleishig dishes should differ from that of the milchig ones, but perhaps it is
also possible to use other kinds of markings for identifying them. That is what
we should do with the fish-cooking pot and also with the trough that we use
for kneading yeast dough. We must take these preventative measures mainly
for strangers who might work in our kitchen. … If we don’t have enough
dishes, this could cause difficulties, especially on Fridays, when we have to cook
ahead for Saturday, and this requires more pots. At such times we should start
our cooking with courses that can be prepared relatively quickly, such as sauces,
stewed fruit, vegetable dishes, and boiling pasta in water. When these are done,
we should transfer them into bowls or onto platters so that we can wash the
thus freed pots and use them again.”192
Auntie Giti also reminds us that: “If our range doesn’t have a built-in waterheating kettle, we should have a 6-to-10-liter capacity vessel, in which we heat
water while we cook a dish, so that when it is done we have hot water to wash
the pot used for cooking. This water vessel should be pareve (that is, neither
milchig nor fleishig), so that we will be able to use the water heating in it for any
purpose. We must use our kosher dipper for taking water from this vessel.”193

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95. Monogrammed china cup
and saucer from the 1840s,
which once belonged to my
great-great-grandmother, Mrs.
Ede Baruch, née Katharina
Kauders (1818, Körmend,
western Hungary–1912, Moson,
western Hungary). Her Biedermeier-style tea set was in no
way different from similar sets
owned by her non-Jewish
middle-class contemporaries.
Photograph by Teodóra Hübner.

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HOUSEHOLDS

96. The c. 1876 silver tea spoon
and knife of Teréz Berger, née
Baruch with her TB monogram.
Photograph by Teodóra Hübner.

People needed several sets of not only pots, serving dishes, plates, and cutlery, but of kitchen knives, too. It wasn’t allowed to use a fleishig knife for
chopping even the pareve, neutral category vegetables, if those were meant for
a dairy, milchig course. At the beginning of this chapter I already wrote about
the process of transforming milchig dishes into fleishig ones or the other way
around. Making a fleishig kitchen knife, which had touched dairy foods, usable
again for meat wasn’t much easier. When at my great-grandmother in Moson,
northwestern Hungary, a fleishig knife accidentally came in contact with some
dairy dish or product, this made the knife treif, that is, not kosher and thus
forbidden. At such times Riza stuck the knife into the soil in her courtyard
and left it there for eight days. According to her, this restored the knife, since
the earth “sucked the milk out of it.” This must have been a widely known
practice, since Miklós Rékai also heard of it in Munkács (Mukacheve, Ukraine),
where in the early 1990s he researched Jewish customs related to food.194
In addition to the separate sets of dishes used for fleishig, milchig, and pareve
foods as well as the few treif pots, religious Jews needed completely different sets
of them for Passover, which my great-grandmother and most of the other smalltown or rural Jews stored in the attic or in the cellar during the rest of the year.
But poorer Jews couldn’t afford complete sets for Pesach, so they had to kosher
some of their regular dishes to make them appropriate for the holiday. “If we
didn’t have a separate dish for Easter [Passover],” remembered Leopold Karpelesz,
who had been born in 1924 in Ditró (Ditrău, Romania), “then we had to kosher.
We dug a big pit in the ground, filled it with water, and placed in it all the clay
pots and glazed terracotta plates that had to be koshered [he probably recalls this
incorrectly, since clay pots can’t be koshered]. At another place, we heated large
pieces of stone until they were very hot and placed them in the water-filled pit
so that we should be able to use the dishes in the pit at Easter time.”195 The parents
of E. G. in Transylvania did this slightly differently: “They made a big pit in the
back of the garden, and we had to put into it all those dishes of which we didn’t
have special Pesach versions—like mortars and the like. They had to be koshered
to make them usable at Easter. First we spread soil over the dishes, then we carried
out hot pieces of stone and put them into the pit. The stones had previously been
in our oven to get really hot. We had a bucket and we used that to carry the hot
stones to the soil-covered dishes. We had previously placed a bucket of water near
the pit—it was the special Pesach bucket that we had carried down from the attic
—and poured this water over the hot stones, and then covered them with soil.
… It had to remain this way until about ten days before Easter, when we could
remove the dishes from the pit.”196
Aside from the Seder platters and some other dishes for various holidays,
most plates, cups, glasses, and cutlery were similar in Jewish households to

HOUSEHOLDS

those in Gentile ones, at most the markings or the color code (traditionally
red for fleishig and blue for milchig), which helped distinguishing the different
categories of dishes, were different from those owned by non-Jews. Although
no inherently kosher or not kosher dish exists, there were some Jewish-owned
specialized stores in big cities to satisfy the needs of religious Jews for dishes
and household articles. We know from István Csupor that Jewish potters used
to own workshops in some of the villages of the Szatmár and Máramaros
regions in northeastern Hungary. As he writes, in Vámfalu two such craftperson-merchants made pots, jugs, and platters for other Jews of the region
between the two World Wars.197 These were probably not the only places where
such potter-merchants could be found.
When a housewife was to serve milchig dishes, she could only set the table
with tablecloths and fabric napkins used for fleishig menus if she had previously
washed them. But of course this was only possible if days separated the fleishig
meal from the milchig, therefore housewives had separate tablecloths and
napkins for the two food categories.

RITUAL PLATES, CUPS, AND TABLE LINEN

Many home rituals in Judaism are connected with meals. People covered certain
foods that had become parts of religious ceremonies with special cloths, enclosed them in special boxes, or placed them on special platters that had a ritual
role. But at times they also had ornamental plates specially marked for lifecycle events. Such objects could be found in the households of most of the
religious Jews, but of course the poorest of them could only afford their simplest, least ornamented, or plain versions.
It was customary for the Friday night Kiddush to cover the table with a festively beautiful white tablecloth, frequently made of satin or silk. According to
some opinions this was because the food from heaven, the manna, fell on a layer
of dew during the Israelites’ wandering in the desert following their escape from
Egypt, so it wasn’t necessary to pick up the God-given nourishment from the
ground (based on Mos. II. 16:13–14). In addition to the tablecloth, the challah
(called barchesz in Hungary) cover is also an indispensable requisite of the
Kiddush ritual (sanctifying blessing) that introduces the Shabbat. Although the
two challah loaves, customary for this ritual, may be covered with any kind of
fabric, even with paper, most families use a piece of nicely embroidered textile
on which a Hebrew text praising the Shabbat can be read. The tradition of two
challah loaves is generally explained by the double portion of manna that awaited
the Israelites on Fridays during the years they spent in the wilderness after leaving

[ 227 ]

[ 228 ]

HOUSEHOLDS

97. Challah cover. Printed cotton
fabric from before 1940 from the
collection of the Hungarian
Jewish Museum.

HOUSEHOLDS

[ 229 ]

98. Challah cover, designed by
the outstanding graphic artist
and typographer Albert Kner
(1899‒1976) in 1940. The Budapest
Jewish community gave this
printed silk cover, commissioned
by the Hungarian Jewish Museum,
as a present to each newlywed
couple.

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HOUSEHOLDS

Egypt, while the need to cover the loaves memorializes the dew that blanketed
and protected the manna. A more likely explanation for the cover is that on
Friday nights in Talmudic times the food was brought in only after the Kiddush,
so today we cover the Shabbat loaves until the time when in that ancient period
the challah would have been carried in. People in many families placed the
challah on a plate made specially for this purpose and cut it with a knife that
had a blade engraved with this biblical quotation: “The blessing of the Lord, it
maketh rich” (Proverbs 10:22). An example for such a challah plate is a richly
decorated silver platter with an engraved Hebrew text, which was probably made
by Jakab Seligman in Budapest in 1872 or a little later and is now in the
collection of the Jewish Museum in New York. Kiddush cups were perhaps even
more common than challah plates. The wine used for the Kiddush ceremony
could be poured into any cup, but slightly better-off people drank it from ornate
silver Kiddush beakers.
During Sukkot, people in some families used an ornamented box to protect
the etrog, also called citron, an expensive imported citrus fruit that is part of
the holiday ritual. The Torah prescribes using “four species” (four plants con-

99. A nineteenth-century silver
Kiddush beaker from the
collection of the Hungarian
Jewish Museum.
100. Challah cover, used by the
Hirschler family of restaurant
owners in Csepreg, northwestern
Hungary, in the first half of the
twentieth century. The Hebrew
text and the border decoration
are embroidered with red yarn,
while the central image of the
challah and the flower pattern
around the cloth with yellow.
The embroidered text: “Thus
the heavens and the earth were
finished, and all the host of
them” (Mos. I. 2:1).

HOUSEHOLDS

sisting of etrog and branches of palm, myrtle, and willow trees) during the
Sukkot ceremony. In this ritual the bouquet made of the branches and the
etrog are blessed and waved in a symbolic allusion to the Jews’ service of God.
Sukkot, sometimes referred to as Chag HaAsif, the “Festival of Ingathering,”
was originally a harvest festival, and that is one of the reasons why plants play
such an important role in it. Etrog containers are often made of silver and they
come in many shapes: some are rectangular boxes, but more typically they are
oval, like the fruit.
Purim also had a traditional dish: a plate. It is customary during this spring
holiday to send gifts, most frequently baked sweets to neighbors, acquaintances,
and relatives. Such presents are called mishloach manot in Hebrew, shalach

[ 231 ]

101. A painted china Seder plate,
made by the Herend china
factory around 1870. It is in the
collection of the Hungarian
Jewish Museum. The words above
the painting in the middle of the
plate refer to the Kiddush with
which the ceremony begins.
The inscriptions starting from
this one and moving counterclockwise name the subsequent
steps of the ritual.

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HOUSEHOLDS

102. A cast and engraved pewter
Seder plate, made probably in
Hungary in 1819, from the
collection of the Hungarian
Jewish Museum. The image in the
middle depicts a stylized tower
with a bell and a clock. The tower
is flanked by rearing lions. The
rim of the plate features an MR
monogram and a Hebrew text
about the order of the Seder.

manos or shlachmones in Yiddish, and they were delivered mostly by the
children of the family. Frequently, the senders of these gifts placed the pastries
and cookies on a large, flat cake that was almost like an edible platter (my greatgrandmother’s collection of recipes included such a cake, called Nussenbeigel),
at other times on a regular tray or plate, but occasionally on a metal plate
specially made for this purpose and ornamented with an engraved text and
perhaps also a picture, like a scene from Esther’s Scroll, the Purim story.
Not all the families had etrog boxes and shlachmones plates, but nearly all
of them had a Seder platter. The holiday period of Pesach started with the first
of two Seders. This is a ritual held at the dining table, and its most important
requisites include the Seder platter, the six symbolic foods on it, and the matzo.
The three sheets of matzo, which are part of the ceremony, were either covered
with a special cloth or placed in a matzo bag (see Fig. 69) or—if the family had
a multitier Seder platter—concealed behind a curtain on the lower shelves of
the platter. Any bigger plate could serve as a Seder platter, but most families
used an ornate earthenware, china, metal, or, in rare cases, wooden platter that
was specially made for this purpose. Wine is also part of the ritual: at the Seder,
people must drink four times from it in addition to the wine sipped for the
Kiddush, and they place a separate cup on the table for the Prophet Elijah, in
the hope that he would appear and announce the coming of the Messiah. In
better-off families these cups and beakers were made of silver and sometimes
bore engraved decorations, but of course this wasn’t a requirement.
Perhaps it makes sense to mention here again a plate that was not meant
for meals. This was the plate people broke at the end of the engagement
ceremony. The broken plate symbolized the endurance of the marriage, the
wish that it should last as long as it would take for the plate to become whole
again. This, too, could be a simple plate, but at times they used an ornamented
one specially made for this occasion.

103. This painted china engagement
plate from the end of the nineteenth
century is in the collection of the
Hungarian Jewish Museum. Traditionally, at the end of the engagement
ceremony the mothers of the bride
and the groom break such a plate, but,
as is obvious from this example, some
unbroken plates survived.

7
Domestic
Hospitality
and
Banquets
Dinner and Supper Guests, Home Parties, and Salons
Banquets and Celebratory Meals
Rules of Good Manners at Meals

D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

[ 237 ]

DINNER AND SUPPER GUESTS, HOME PARTIES, AND SALONS X

A

lthough nothing prohibited having Christians over for meals in homes
that kept kosher, such families mostly invited people similar to them
for lunch or dinner. Among religious Jews in provincial towns this
meant mainly the invitation of poor yeshiva students or other people needing
help. Primarily, the local Jewish community provided the meals for such
students. The bochers (yeshiva students, literally: youths) ate every day at a
different family, or, according to the Yiddish expression, they “ate days”
(Yiddish: tog essen). Although he studied in a yeshiva in his hometown in 1848,
Meir Ávrahám Munk didn’t want to live with his fairly poor father because of
his step-mother and the verbal and physical violence he suffered from the
father. “My father took stock of the members of his family and made those
who had a house pay their dues by asking them to invite me once a week for
the midday meal. … But eating at my relatives wasn’t pleasant for me. The
food wasn’t as nourishing as what I ate in the yeshiva at the tables of rich
people. Bochers don’t eat in poor homes, because the poor have enough worries
to provide bread for themselves and food for their children. The food [at my
relatives] wasn’t as well prepared as in the households where they know how
to make tasty food.”198
Religious Jews invited not only students of the local yeshiva for lunch, but
also traveling yeshiva students, trade apprentices, commercial agents, or
salesmen who happened to stop in their town. This was especially so before
Shabbat, since hospitality was a mitzvah, a good deed mandated by tradition,
the importance of which had been instilled into religious Jews since their
childhood. When someone noticed in the synagogue a stranger from another
community, he invited him for Friday night, since it was inconceivable to leave
such a person to himself, deprive him of the possibility to celebrate the
beginning of Shabbat with a festive meal in a friendly home. People use the
word oyrech (Yiddish from the Hebrew oreach, “guest,” plural: orechim) mostly
in this context: On oyrech auf Shabbes, “a guest for the Shabbat.” This was also
so in the parental home of Ignác Goldziher (1850‒1921), a famous professor
of Oriental cultures and a member of the Academy of Sciences: “Poor travelers
sat every day at our table and responded with endless blessings to the parting
handshake of my parents who were saying farewell to these ‘guests’ (orechim).”199

104. (on page 234) Sándor
Incze, the editor in chief of the
weekly magazine Színházi Élet
(Theater Life) and his friends
in 1924 at a dinner in the Hotel
Golden Bull in Debrecen, northeastern Hungary. Incze sits on
the left of the picture. (Detail
of Fig. 108)

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D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

Religious Jews generally invited their relatives for a meal in their homes
only on Shabbat or on other holidays, and their friends for coffee and cake in
the afternoons or after dinner. Of course, this was only typical of middle-class
people, like my great-grandmother in Moson, a small town. Her lady friends
might stop by for a few minutes at other times, too, but the afternoon was the
time of the formal, previously agreed upon visits, when she served coffee and
sweets to her visitors.
The relatives of Hermann Stern, the secretary of the Budapest Autonomous
Orthodox Community, also came to his home for dinner only on holidays,
birthdays, or anniversaries. On the other hand, when Germany occupied
Austria in 1938 and a year later also Czechoslovakia, every day they invited
a refugee—mostly one from Slovakia—for dinner, and on weekends even two.
Stern felt that it is everybody’s duty to help those who need it, but especially
his, since he himself, his parents, and his siblings had all been refugees: they

105. A child’s birthday party in
a Budapest middle-class family
in the 1930s. Photographer
unknown.

D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

had come from Galicia a few weeks before the outbreak of World War I. After
the destruction of Poland in 1939, lots of Polish refugees, among them several
thousand Jews, came to Hungary with the support of the Hungarian government, but the majority of the Jewish refugees were only able to get into the
country with false documents, issued in someone else’s name. Most of them
were employed by Jewish manufacturers who knew that their papers were not
in order. Many of those refugees had their midday meal at the homes of Jewish
families, especially in Budapest’s old Jewish quarter, where generally their
workplace was.
At some places the journeymen and shop assistants of manufacturers and
merchants ate with the boss’s family, and this was so even if some of the
employees weren’t Jewish and even if the boss had a kosher household. The
Orthodox Jewish grandfather of the novelist Géza Hegedüs is an example of this.
The grandfather had a big shoe store and custom-made shoe manufacturing
facility in Nagyvárad, Transylvania, in the second half of the nineteenth century.
“At noon, when the children had arrived from school, the head of the family,
his wife, children, journeymen, and apprentices all had their meals together, in
summer in the courtyard and in winter in the rear room of the workshop. More
than twenty, occasionally as many as thirty people sat around the big table. My
grandmother and the cook spent the whole morning cooking for the many
hungry mouths. One could only start eating when all the plates were full and
the head of the family had finished the blessing before the meal. Being a religious
Jewish home, people could eat only if their heads were covered, so that was how
the Gentile assistants and apprentices sat down to the table. But after the recitation of the Hebrew blessing by the head of family, the non-Jews had to remove
their hats for a few minutes, so that at first a Catholic and then a Protestant
assistant should have a chance to recite the before-the-meal prayer required by
his religion. And only then, when they again put on their hats and the boss/head
of the family started eating his soup, were they allowed to start, too.”200 Although,
as mentioned, Gentiles dined relatively rarely in the homes of religious Jews,
according to György Braun, who was born in 1929 in Mátészalka, northeastern
Hungary, the food prepared by his mother was popular among non-Jews, too:
“We always took some of our cholent to our good acquaintances, our neighbors,
who were Gentiles, but they liked my mother’s cooking very much and they
were always eager to eat cholent.”201
Orthodox Jews generally were reluctant to invite Neológs (members of
a branch of Hungarian Judaism advocating modest religious reforms) for a meal,
and at times such tensions could exist even within a family. Géza Hegedüs also
mentions how much his Orthodox grandmother, who lived in Nagyvárad,
Transylvania, objected when her son (the father of Hegedüs) married a Neológ

[ 239 ]

[ 240 ]

106. The Pollacsek salon in the
first years of the twentieth
century. Mihály Pollacsek
(1848‒1905) sits behind the table
in the middle, and next to him,
leaning to one side, is his wife,
Cecília Pollacsek, the hostess
of the salon. On the extreme left
is their daughter, Laura Polányi.
The sitting figures, from the right:
the Marxist social scientist and
library expert Ervin Szabó, the
sociologist and politician Oszkár
Jászi, and the writer and artist
Anna Lesznai (behind the woman
in the foreground). Photographer
unknown.

woman from Budapest. “My mother saw her mother-in-law only once, since she
didn’t come to Budapest for her son’s wedding. … When my father visited his
parents after his engagement, and showed a photograph of his bride to his
mother, … she only said: ‘So you are marrying a faithless girl? … Be very happy,
but should the two of you come to Nagyvárad, you should stay in a hotel. Should
you wish, though, once, when you visit me, you may bring your wife with
you.’”202 It is an interesting contradiction that the same woman who ate her
daily meal at the same table with the Gentile journeymen and apprentices of her
husband’s business was not willing to allow her Neológ Jewish daughter-in-law
to eat with her or to stay in her home.
Both Jewish and Gentile dinner guests were more frequent in the homes
of assimilated or secular Jews than in those of the faithful. In addition, some
of the middle- and upper-middle-class Jews organized birthday parties for their
kids, to which they invited the children’s playmates, regardless of whether they
were Jewish or not. At such parties they generally served hot chocolate or coffee
with milk and cakes, pastries, and cookies to the children. Such birthday parties
for children were less common among the Orthodox, though Andrew Romay’s
(called Andor Friedmann at the time) strictly religious parents, well-to-do
wheat merchants in Miskolc, north-central Hungary, did give such a party for
him in the 1920s. But virtually all the children at this party were Jewish, since
all the closest friends of Andor came from that group.203 Similarly, all Laurent

Stern’s friends were Jewish, but his Orthodox parents welcomed only one of
them in their home and condemned the rest as “bad company.” Unlike at the
Friedmanns, there were no birthday parties for children in the Stern home,
and Laurent can only recall such parties at the homes of two of his cousins.
The governess, originally from Vienna, was the only non-Jewish person who
ate in his parents’ home.
These parties generally took place in the family home, and I know only
one example of a child’s birthday party that was held in a public institution
with the aim of extending help to the underpriviledged. This was how Samu
Stern (1874‒1946) advisor to the royal court, bank director, and the president
of the Budapest Neológ Jewish community, celebrated his granddaughter’s
birthday every year. “Formerly Marika Elek received a magnificent present for
her birthday. But one day it was decided that Marika Elek’s birthday should
be celebrated in a different way: so that other children should get pleasure out
of it, too. Therefore Samu Stern and his wife went to the girls’ orphanage of
the Jewish Women’s Association and arranged for a festive afternoon party for
200 Jewish orphan girls on the occasion of the grandchild’s birthday. This is
how it has been happening on the 29th of November of each year. Marika
Elek’s birthday present is that on this day 200 orphaned little Jewish girls
receive a splendid and plentiful afternoon snack from Samu Stern and his
wife.”204

107. A photograph taken in
the 1930s in the Mauthner villa
at 13 Lendvay Street in Budapest following a house concert
given there by Bronisław
Huberman, the world-famous
Polish classical violinist (1882,
Częstochowa–1947, Corsier-surVevey). The rich industrialist
Ferenc Chorin stands on the
left, while Huberman sits next
to him on the armrest of a chair
occupied by Daisy Weiss,
Chorin’s wife, who was the
daughter of Manfréd Weiss,
one of the wealthiest persons
in Hungary. Elza Weiss, Alfréd
Mauthner’s wife and Daisy’s
sister, sits on the right.
Photographer unknown.

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D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

Numerous well-to-do Jews, among them the Arányi, Kohner, Hatvany, and
Lukács families, from time to time invited outstanding intellectuals for conversation about the social and cultural issues of the period, and at such
gatherings, as well as at the house concerts at these and other similar families,
they frequently served snacks and beverages to the guests. In contrast to those
occasional get-togethers, Cecília Pollacsek (1862, Vilnius, Lithuania, at the
time part of the Russian Empire–1939, Budapest) had the major figures of
Hungarian intellectual life regularly come to her salon for friendly discussions
on Sunday afternoons. Mama Cecil (the way participants tended to call Mrs.
Pollacsek) awaited her guests with tea or coffee and perhaps with sandwiches
and cakes, too. Not only was the hostess Jewish at these afternoon discussions,
but by my estimate this was the social background of at least half of the participants. This didn’t mean, however, that the gathering had any kind of religious

The Inczes’ Stuffed Cabbage
From George Lang’s The Cuisine of Hungary, published in
1971 in New York. Lang’s comment: “Stolen from the
secret files of Peggy and the late Alexander Incze.”
Ingredients (for 6 to 8 servings): 1 head of fresh cabbage,
¼ cup uncooked rice, ½ cup beef broth, 2 medium-sized
onions, chopped, 3 tablespoons bacon drippings,
½ pound lean pork, ground, ½ pound beefsteak, ground,
dash of freshly ground pepper, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 egg,
3 tablespoons flour, 1 tablespoon paprika, 2 pounds
sauerkraut, 1 tomato, sliced, 2 smoked pig knuckles,
1 pound fresh sausage, ½ pound oxtails, 1 pound
spareribs, 1 cup sour cream, ¼ cup heavy sweet cream,
1 to 2 teaspoons paprika essence (paprika dissolved in
warm but not hot melted lard)
Preparation:
1. Separate the cabbage leaves and place in hot water
to make them limp enough not to crack when rolled.
2. Cook rice in beef broth for 10 minutes.
3. Fry 1 onion in 1 tablespoon bacon drippings for
5 minutes. Mix ground meats with fried onion, pepper
and salt, ½ cup water, 1 egg, and the semicooked rice.
4. Place mixture in separated cabbage leaves, and roll or
squeeze together in clean napkins so the rolls won’t
come apart when cooking.

5. Fry the other chopped onion in remaining drippings
for 5 minutes. Add flour, stir, and cook for 5 or 6 minutes.
Add paprika and 1 cup cold water, whip, and pour over
sauerkraut.
6. Line the bottom of a large casserole with the stuffed
cabbage leaves; put sauerkraut layer over. Add tomato
and 2 cups water, or enough to cover the sauerkraut
layer. Top with meats, neatly arranged. Cook it over very,
very low heat for 2 to 2½ hours. Lift cover as few times
as you can.
7. Take a huge, low-sided casserole or platter. Spread
sauerkraut in its bottom. Place stuffed cabbage leaves
around it and the meats cut into individual portions in
the center. Sprinkle with sour cream mixed with sweet
cream and the paprika essence.

character, since neither Mama Cecil nor her guests were observant. The social/
religious background of the group merely reflected the fact that it mostly
consisted of modern writers and left-wing, progressive representatives of social
studies, many of whom were of Jewish origin in Hungary.
Sándor Incze (1889, Kolozsvár, today in Romania–1966, New York), who
had changed his name from Mór Stein in 1908, and Zsolt Harsányi jointly
founded a theater magazine in 1910. Initially it was called Színházi Hét
(Theater Week), but it became much better known after it had been renamed
Színházi Élet (Theater Life), especially in the 1920s and 1930s when it was one
of the most popular magazines in Hungary. Incze remained its editor in chief
until his emigration to the US in 1938. He was an assimilated Jew who no
longer kept the dietary laws. He frequently met his friends and those Jewish
and Gentile eminencies of the cultural life with whom it was important for
him to keep in touch over meals in a restaurant. According to his wife, “everything that had to do with cooking and recipes interested him very much,”
though he himself could only prepare chicken paprika, and not even that really
successfully. It also speaks for his interest in food that near the end of his life,
when he had to keep a strict diet, he asked his wife to read him recipes from

108. Sándor Incze and his
friends in the Golden Bull Hotel
in Debrecen, northeastern
Hungary, at a dinner he gave
in early December 1924 after
a show he had organized for
the local subscribers of Színházi
Élet (Theater Life), a magazine
where he was editor in chief.
Photographer unknown.

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D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

various cookbooks. “He ordered me to read certain recipes on those occasions
just as a carouser orders a Gypsy violinist in a restaurant to play his favorite
Hungarian popular melodies for him.”205 George Lang, the outstanding American gastronome and restaurateur of Hungarian Jewish origin, remembered
eating a complicated and refined version of stuffed cabbage (see recipe on page
242) in the home of Incze, which must have reflected the host’s taste and
perhaps also some of his cooking suggestions. It is probably unnecessary to say,
that the dish was not at all kosher. This begs the question: what does such a
recipe do in a book about Jewish cuisine? But in my opinion the same way as
any work about the diverse lifestyles of Jews would be unimaginable without
a discussion of the increasing secularization, the culinary culture of no longer
observant Jews has a place in the cultural history of Jewish cooking—even if
the dishes they ate were very similar to those of Christians.

BANQUETS AND CELEBRATORY MEALS X

109. The menu of a festive dinner
given in 1897 in the Országos
Kaszinó (National Club) by Leó
Lánczy (1852‒1921), a converted
Jew, who was an MP, the president of a bank, a counselor to
the royal court, and the president
of the Chamber of Commerce.
The menu lists the courses of this
elegant international-style meal
by their French names. The food
at the dinner wasn’t kosher.

The Jewish press frequently featured accounts of the various festive or charitable banquets. While these articles always describe in great detail the reasons
why the gatherings were held and list the religious and secular celebrities who
participated, they rarely write anything about the courses served at the meal
that followed the speeches but only give the number of place settings at the
table, for instance like this: “the blessing of the Torah was followed by a banquet
with the table set for 200 people,” or “on Sunday night in the Vigadó people
celebrated president Lederer’s jubilee at a banquet with tables set for 500
guests.” The banquet given in 1921 in Zöldhelyi, a kosher restaurant in Dob
Street in Budapest’s old Jewish quarter, is the sole Jewish event known to me
of which we not only have a detailed account but also a list of the dishes served:
“Dob Street was unusually lively on Sunday evening. Carriages and cars were
speedily emerging from the direction of Holló Street; they were bringing gentlemen in tails, tuxedos, and top hats to the Zöldhelyi restaurant. This restaurant
is presently managed by the Supply Division of the Pest Jewish Community. It
is currently the most modern Jewish restaurant of the capital, but at the same
time one that strictly adheres to religious rules. The reason why the formally
dressed gentlemen gathered around the big, flower-decorated table set up amid
the wood paneled walls of the Zöldhelyi restaurant was because Ferenc Székely,
the president of the Jewish community, together with Chief Rabbi Illés Adler
and Dr. Emil Zahler, were about to travel to America to find financial support
for the cultural and charitable institutions of the Hungarian Jewry. A colorful
group of people surrounds the horseshoe-shaped table. Next to the dark blue

D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

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110. The menu of an almost
certainly kosher festive dinner
given in 1891 in honor of Dr.
Salamon Spira, the rabbi of the
Jewish community in Losonc
(Lučenec, Slovakia). The dinner –
as was traditional – started with
fish courses (pike-perch with
tartar sauce, jellied paprika
carp), followed by braised beef
and roasts of turkey, duck, and
goose. Perhaps they chose
cabbage strudel for dessert since
it isn’t made with dairy products,
so it was compatible with the
fleishig menu. The tartar sauce
was probably made by mixing
melted aspic or the sieved yolks
of hard-cooked eggs instead of
sour cream into the mayonnaise.

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of a colonel’s uniform the black of a priestly cassock can be seen. The stately
redingotes of elderly men are counterbalanced by the brightness of white
starched shirts. The restaurant aspires to be a model institution of kosher
restaurants, as if it wished to prove that traditional Jewish cooking is able to
compete with French culinary art. The dinner’s menu is indeed outstanding.
This is the sequence of the courses:
Pike with walnuts
Slices of goose liver with cauliflower
Roasted turkey and goose
Vegetables in hollandaise sauce206; French salad [diced mixed vegetables
in mayonnaise]
Apple and cabbage strudel
Black coffee

111. The menu of a formal dinner
given in honor of the eightieth
birthday of the famous Hungarian Jewish classical composer
Károly Goldmark in 1910 in the
restaurant of the Lipótvárosi
Kaszinó (Lipótváros Club;
Lipótváros was a Budapest
district with a substantial
middle-class and upper-middleclass Jewish population). Like
in Fig. 109, here, too, the menu
courses are listed in French and
here, too, the food wasn’t kosher.
112. Károly Goldmark, a famous
Hungarian Jewish composer, is
inscribing his name for someone
at the festivities held on the
occasion of his eightieth birthday
in 1910 in Keszthely, the western
Hungarian town where he was
born. Photograph by Gyula Jelfy.

Waiters dressed in white serve the guests. They are scurrying behind the
chairs while carrying huge platters, quietly and skillfully like in the homes of
aristocrats. Until the people are finished with the roast, one can’t hear anything
but the quiet murmur of jovial conversation. Then Dr. Béla Feleki, the vice
president of the community, stands up to propose the first toast in a sequence
of many.”207
Unfortunately, I could find only a single other menu of a kosher banquet.
The purpose of that festive dinner, held in 1891, probably in Losonc (Lučenec,
Slovakia), was to honor Dr. Salamon Spira (1865, Homonna, today: Humenné, Slovakia–1944, Auschwitz), the rabbi of the local Neológ Jewish community.
On the other hand, I know the menus of several formal dinners in various
nonkosher clubs and restaurants, which were either given by people of Jewish
origin or organized in honor of them. The membership of the Országos
Kaszinó (National Club) consisted mainly of members of the gentry, but it
also had converted Jewish members. Around the turn of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries Antal Müller led the elegant restaurant on the ground floor
of the club’s building in Budapest. About ten beautifully bound books survive
in which Müller collected the calligraphically inscribed menus of the festive
dinners held in the restaurant, including ones given in honor of such wellknown people of Jewish origin as a member of the Mauthner family of rich
planting seed merchants, Leó Lánczy, politician and bank president, Mór
Gelléri, economist and newspaper editor, and quite a few others. The menus
are examples of elegant, French-style international cuisine, and though they
don’t include pork dishes, this had nothing to do with Jewish dietary rules, but
merely with the opinion that considered pork not as elegant as other meats.

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113. Banquet in the 1930s in the
Lipótvárosi Polgári Kör
(Bourgeois Circle of Lipótváros),
where many of the members
were Jewish businessmen and
professionals. Photographer
unknown.

The menu courses of dinners held in honor of people of Jewish ancestry are
indistinguishable from other menus in the volumes describing food served for
Gentiles who didn’t have a drop of Jewish blood in them, but this is exactly
what makes these menus outstanding examples of Jewish assimilation.
The members of the Lipótvárosi Kaszinó (Lipótváros Club; Lipótváros was
a Budapest district with a substantial middle-class and upper-middle-class
Jewish population) were mainly businessmen and financiers, many of whom
were Jewish or at least had such ancestry. The club opened its huge and ornate
palace in 1896 on the corner of Nádor and Zrínyi Streets, in the heart of the
oldest and most upper-class part of the neighborhood. Like in Országos

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Kaszinó, here, too, an elegant restaurant awaited the members of the club and
the rest of the public. While anyone could eat in the cellar restaurant, the
ground-floor rooms were reserved for club members. The visitors of the
restaurant by and large came from the same social group as the members of the
club, so there were many Jews among them. “Wholesale merchants, bank people,
high-ranking employees of the nearby police headquarters, and journalists sit
here at the tables, eat the tasty products of the kitchen, and admire the paintings
of the owner’s famous gallery, which—all first-class works by outstanding
artists—decorate the walls of the restaurant.”208 The festive dinner given in 1910
in honor of the eightieth birthday of Károly Goldmark (1830, Keszthely, western
Hungary–1915, Vienna), the world-famous Hungarian Jewish composer, was
held in the club. The courses of the dinner—appropriately for May, when the
event took place—included asparagus and roasted young goose. The dinner
almost certainly wasn’t kosher, since as far as I know the restaurant’s kitchen
wasn’t equipped for it. I also know two menus from 1934 from the Magyar
Tőzsde Club (Hungarian Stock Exchange Club), which had its building in the
same district as the previously mentioned club. Judging from the names of the
courses served, the meals could have been kosher, though it is most likely that
they were not. The dinners there consisted of „only” four courses, as opposed
to seven to ten in the previously mentioned other clubs. It is hard to know
whether this difference was due to the less ostentatious nature of this club or
to the less happy and prosperous times between the World Wars.

RULES OF GOOD MANNERS AT MEALS X

It is interesting to compare the advice concerning eating and hospitality included
in the etiquette book that was a favorite of the Hungarian middleclass and
nobility in the last decades of the nineteenth century with passages about the

114. A festive dinner held in
March 1934 in the Lipótvárosi
Kaszinó (Lipótváros Club;
Lipótváros was a Budapest
district with a substantial
middle-class and upper-middleclass Jewish population) in honor
of Emil Stein, the chief executive
of the Hungarian Commerce Bank
and the newly elected president
of the club. Like Stein, many
members of the club were Jewish.
Photograph by András Macsi.

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same theme in Derekh eretz (Hebrew: “the way of the land,” but in a metaphoric
sense “correct conduct” or “good manners”), two tractates of the Talmud (Derekh
eretz rabbah and Derekh eretz zuta), which represent the traditional code of behavior in Judaism. Like most such comparisons, this, too, is a bit forced: while
the book of Janka Wohl (1846‒1901), called Illem. A jó társaság szabályai. Útmutató a művelt társaséletben (Manners: The rules of good company: A guide for
the social life of the cultivated) was first published in 1880, the core of Derekh
eretz probably dates from the eighth or ninth century, and some parts of it are
even older. The work collects some of the rules of conduct that had been included here and there in the extensive collection of the Jewish so-called Oral Law.
In spite of this tremendous difference in age, I find the comparison justified.
Not only was no comparably comprehensive modern Jewish etiquette published
in Hungary in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but religious Jews of this
period continued to study the Derekh eretz, which they considered an authoritative guide for their moral conduct and behavior.
The difference in the goals of the two works is more important than the
roughly thousand years separating them. The main goal of Janka Wohl’s etiquette book was to teach the mostly Gentile members of the gentry and the
upper middle class how they should live so that every minute and detail of
their lives reflect their social rank. But not only people of those classes read the
book. I find it likely that the comfortably off, but not rich, middle-class people
read it, too, since the lifestyle described in the work expressed their aspirations,
even though they didn’t have enough money to conduct their lives exactly as
the book suggested. It is obvious that not only super-rich people bought the
book, otherwise the bookstores wouldn’t have been able to sell enough copies
to justify at least four editions. People of less exalted means also enjoyed reading
that “we must pay special attention to service and therefore we must have
separate servants for every two or three guests at big dinners,” or the three-page
description of who should lead whom to the dining room, who should sit next
to whom at the table, and in what sequence should they be served food. Such
demonstrations of social standing must have appealed to people, but it was
especially important for the book’s author, Janka Wohl, who was the daughter
of converted Jews and who tried very hard to be an accepted and esteemed
member of the Gentile middle class, which must not have been easy for her,
since she wasn’t rich and her only income came from writing. No Jew attended
the salon she and her similarly unmarried sister, also a writer, maintained in
their joint home, and even the few converted Jewish guests counted there as
exceptions, since the vast majority of the participants were non-Jewish intellectual celebrities and aristocrats.

D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

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115. The front cover of Janka
Wohl’s book Illem. A jó társaság
szabályai. Útmutató a művelt
társaséletben (Manners: The
rules of good company: A guide
for the social life of the cultivated), first published in 1880,
followed by several later
editions.

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D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

116. The 1896 Hungarian edition
of Derekh eretz (Hebrew: “the
way of the land,” but in a metaphoric sense “correct conduct”
or “good manners”), a collection of rules mainly assembled
in the ninth century, but relying
on even earlier works. This
edition was translated by Dr
Sámuel Krausz and published
by IMIT (Jewish Hungarian
Literary Society), an organization founded in 1894.

D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

Contrary to her book, the parts in the Derekh eretz concerning the guidelines for hospitality and eating pay no attention to social standing—not even
to the standing that existed at the time the manual was written—but they focus
on how we must behave not to offend our fellow men: the guest or the host.
As it says in the fifth chapter, which describes the rules of good manners around
the table: “One should always try to be in tune with the other creatures.” The
Derekh eretz was originally meant to provide guidance for the behavior of
scholars, but in later centuries most of the religious Jews studied it and considered it applicable to themselves, if not always and not in every detail, at least
in its goals. While according to Wohl we must be always conscious of the
complicated system of social hierarchies, the Derekh eretz knows only one
authority: the teacher, the person possessing and transmitting knowledge.
According to its exhortations, when getting together for meals we must at all
times avoid two things: haughtiness and gluttony. We must steer clear of these
even in the tiniest details, for example: “when two men sit at a table, first the
bigger man should reach for the food and the smaller one only after him, since
if the smaller one touched it first, it could be seen as gluttony.” Other rules are
more self-evident: “The person who is a guest in a house, shouldn’t say: give
me to eat, until the host offers him food.”
Of course, one shouldn’t read more into the differences between the two
behavior codes than what is clearly part of them. Not only Gentiles tried to
follow Janka Wohl’s advice, but also many well-to-do Jews, at least to the extent
their circumstances allowed it. This, too, was a part of assimilation, their effort
to fit into the majority society and to adjust to the lifestyles of non-Jews living
in financial circumstances similar to theirs. But all this notwithstanding, I feel
that there are essential and telling differences in the thought processes and
value systems of the two codes of behavior.
But life—even religious life—had situations for which no rule could be
found in the relatively short text of the Derekh eretz. For this reason religious
tradition supplemented it with a huge number of additional rules, not the least
with ones about eating and hospitality. For example, tradition prescribes that
if a kohen, a descendant of the biblical priestly order, is present at a meal, he
must be seated at the head of the table and he must be honored by asking him
to say the blessing before the meal. In addition, he must be the first to get food.
If a kohen is not present, the first place belongs to a scholar—which of course
is consistent with the value system of the Derekh eretz in which the teacher is
the greatest authority. According to another traditional rule, if a Gentile and
a Jew are wishing to drink wine together, the Jew must open the bottle of wine
and he must pour from it, because if a non-Jew touches the wine, it becomes
ritually unclean, the “wine of idolatry.” It is important to recall here that wine

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D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

has a different role in traditional Jewish life than in the ceremonies of those
religions that the Jews consider “idolatrous.” But such a situation can hardly
occur today, since kosher wine is mostly pasteurized. Religious authorities equate
this with “cooking” or “boiling,” which makes the wine unfit for idolatrous use,
so it remains kosher even if a non-Jew touches it.
Of course, there are far more religious rules about how Jews should behave
during meals and when they have dinner guests, but perhaps even these few
examples could give you an idea of the things traditional Jews considered important and those they saw as secondary, which, on the other hand, were greatly
valued by other social groups.
Traditional Jews mainly stressed the importance of the daily study of the
Torah and the necessity of observing the many religious rules meant to control
nearly every minute of their days and their entire lifestyle, and they placed less
emphasis on well-mannered behavior that was in accord with the expectations
of society, including the majority society’s customs and conventions related to
meals. This probably didn’t lead to conflicts at those poor or lower-middleclass Orthodox and Hassidic Jews who nearly always ate their meals either with
their family or with people similar to them. That they virtually never had meals
outside their social circle can be also seen from a list Izrael Singer, a nineteenthcentury Jewish teacher in Sátoraljaújhely, north-central Hungary, prepared
about the ten requirements that in his opinion a Jew who is “knowledgeable
in the Torah” must satisfy. Katalin Fenyves quotes this list in her book209 about
the identities of Hungarian Jews in the “long nineteenth century,” and its fifth
point goes like this: “He is only allowed to participate in religious-type feasts.”210
But unfamiliarity with the codes of behavior inevitably created problems
as soon as Jews, who lived fairly isolated from the surrounding society, stepped
out of this traditional world. Fenyves writes about these difficulties in her book
and about the way Meir Ávrahám Munk (1830, Nyitra, today: Nitra, Slovakia–
1907, Nagyvárad, today: Oradea, Romania), whom we know from a previous
chapter, experienced this when he was a 14-year-old youngster and was under
the care of his older brother: “It happened fifty-five years ago, but I still haven’t
forgotten all the strain and trouble I caused for my brother of blessed memory.
Because even if in comparison to my age I had achieved considerable excellence
in my studies, … in my interactions with people I didn’t have the least idea
about the rules of manner.”211 Not knowing the norms of behavior caused
problems even for those who didn’t spend their entire youth in cheders and
yeshivot. Ármin Vámbéry (1832, Szentgyörgy, today: Svätý Jur, Slovakia–1913,
Budapest), a famous scholar of Oriental cultures, who also grew up in a fairly
poor family, experienced similar problems in his youth. He initially studied in
a Jewish grade school, then in a Catholic middle school, and later in a Lutheran

D O M E S T I C H O S P I TA L I T Y A N D B A N Q U E T S

secondary school, but when for financial reasons he had to leave school and
take a job as a home tutor in a Gentile family, he had to learn how to follow
society’s norms in his behavior. He writes the following about this: “Mrs.
Petrikovich, an outstandingly cultured lady, who had spent her youth with an
aristocratic family and who laid great emphasis on politeness, good manners,
and handsome clothing, soon noticed to her great chagrin that the young
teacher she hired is a fairly uncouth fellow—in spite all his linguistic knowledge
—and is not at all up to the task of teaching middle-class customs to her son.
As a result, she took the hard task upon herself to educate the teacher, and she
tirelessly tried to make me familiar with all the areas of good manners—
including how I should hold the napkin and the cutlery at the table, how
I should say hello, walk, stand, and sit—indeed proving the nobility of her
heart through all this.”212
Even for Jews who didn’t come from families as poor as Munk’s or Vámbéry’s, it was frequently an effort to absorb the accepted and expected everyday
customs of social interaction in middle-class society, including those related to
eating and hospitality, which had to be an important part in their process of
acculturation. This was especially so in the first generation seeking to become
middle class; their descendants were already born into middle-class existence
and thus in most cases they spontaneously absorbed the accepted code of
manners of that lifestyle.
Not only anti-Semites made broadly generalizing comments about the
strange behavior of Jews, but such stereotypes also existed in the self-images of
Jews, some of whom—including the author of the following quotation—even
ignored that this was by no means valid for all their groups. Egyenlőség (Equality), a Jewish weekly, wrote the following about this in 1903: “When it comes
to good manners we could learn much from the Gentiles; this is acknowledged
by the Jews themselves. An old Yiddish proverb is proof of this: De masichta
ist unser, der Derekh eretz is bey sey [Freely translated: The learning is ours, the
good manners are theirs].”213

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8
Jewish
Places
of
Hospitality
Kosher Restaurants and Boardinghouses
Coffeehouses, Coffee Shops, and Pastry Shops
Jewish Soup Kitchens

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

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KOSHER RESTAURANTS AND BOARDINGHOUSES X

O

perating nonkosher pubs and inns has been one of the typical occupations of Hungarian Jews from the late eighteenth century on, but
since the customers in those places of hospitality were mostly
Gentiles, they fall outside the scope of my work. Naturally, at times Jews who
no longer kept kosher also visited those restaurants and pubs, and it is even
possible that their menu included some Jewish specialties, especially in towns
with a large secularized Jewish population, I nevertheless feel that it is more
justified if I deal here only with kosher restaurants.
Eighteenth-century documents tell us about the simple kosher restaurants
that served the needs of Jewish merchants who toward the end of the century
came to the big fairs held outside the city gates of Pest: the drive-in fair outside
the Hatvani Gate, near the beginning of today’s Rákóczi Road, and the fair with
display stands on New Market Square (Új piac/Új vásártér), where today’s Erzsébet and Deák Squares are. These national fairs were held four times a year in
Pest: in March, June, August, and November. “But since in reality the fair took
longer—like a week or ten days—than just the market day, the Jewish merchants
needed places where they could get food prepared according to kashrut rules.
… Two agile entrepreneurs managed to get permits from the city for operating
temporary kosher kitchens during the fairs, and so they opened stalls, informal
eateries (Garküchen) for kosher hot food in the areas they rented for good
money”214 But there were also other restaurant owners, not only these two, who
operated kosher kitchens at the fairs in the late eighteenth century. Unfortunately, however, no information survived about the specific dishes they sold,
so I don’t dwell on them here in detail.
Naturally, kosher restaurants also existed later on in Pest and in the provincial towns with a fairly large religious Jewish population. Although in
Budapest the majority of Jews didn’t keep kosher, even the 5 or 10 or 20
percent that the Orthodox represented in the capital’s Jewish population215
(their share kept changing with time) meant a very large number of people in
a city where by 1910 more than 200,000 Jews lived. One of the few surviving
nineteenth-century photographs depicting the Óbuda Jewish community
shows a kosher restaurant, and ever since the nineteenth century, several such
restaurants functioned in the gigantic Orczy House, built around two large

117. (on page 256) The
Messinger coffeehouse and
on its right a kosher restaurant
in Trencsénteplic (Trenčianska
Teplice, Slovakia) in c. 1910. The
restaurant’s German-language
shop sign advertises “Viennese
cuisine.” (Detail of Fig. 132)

118. Mór Guttmann’s kosher
restaurant in about 1890 in
Óbuda. Photograph by Antal
Weinwurm.

courtyards on the corner of Király Street and Károly Boulevard. In the 1880s
and in the beginning of the 1890s Jónás Wassermann (1842‒1901) operated a
restaurant on the Károly Boulevard side of the building, which was famous for
its boiled beef, one of the characteristic dishes of Jewish restaurants. The
economist and journalist Vilmos Balla (1862, Pest–1934, Budapest) described
this restaurant and one of its regular customers, Hazlinger, a gluttonous seller
of lottery tickets: “For a midmorning lunch he preferred to go to the bar of
the Wassermann restaurant in the Orczy House, where already in the very early
morning (in both winter and summer one of the cooks started at three in the
night) one could detect the soothing smell of onions: in dawn’s half-light people
could order freshly prepared boiled beef in a soup [tányérhús in Hungarian,
Tellerfleisch in German, see recipe on page 332] and other dishes of a midmorning meal [villásreggeli, Gabelfrühstück]. Nearly always there were some
early-rising merchants from the provinces who had heard of the gluttonous
man’s unlimited capacity for food, and who were glad to get to know this
legendary figure. … As to the size of the servings, one must say that today’s

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

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119. Jónás Wassermann, the
owner of the kosher restaurant
in Budapest’s Orczy House, and
his wife, probably in the 1890s.
In this restaurant, both the
portions and the owner were
oversized. According to the
recollections of a contemporary, “the Rudas steam bath
in Buda kept a special, doublesized towel for the fat
Wassermann.” Photograph
by Ödön Uher.

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[1927] pitiable generation can’t have any idea of the portions usual at that time.
But the portions in the Wassermann restaurant were the most famous of all;
one could sense this by taking a look at the corpulent owner for whom the
Rudas steam bath kept a double-sized sheet. The Czech china manufacturers
didn’t make a plate big enough to keep the pan-braised beef cutlets [serpenyős
rostélyos] from hanging over its edges. Lots of guests sent these cutlets back
with the waiter, since their dimensions were nearly unappetizing. Compared
to today’s small servings of pörkölts [beef stews], which consist of one piece
of chewy meat, a piece of bone, and a piece of fat, with two tiny dumplings as
a side dish, in the version served for the ten o’clock midmorning meal at
Wassermann’s there were as many cubes of meat as one could pile onto the
plate, to which they served scrambled-egg dumplings [tojásos galuska]
separately.”216
After Wassermann decided to leave the business, Mór Grünwald and later
a restaurateur called Schermann operated kosher restaurants in the same storefront space in the Orczy House, followed by Adolf Werner in 1909. In 1928,
Henrik Werner took over the restaurant, which he led until the demolition of
the building in 1936. We know from a report in a Jewish weekly that he reopened it in the new building which replaced the old one: “The Werner
restaurant, which has been a favorite meeting place of the capital for centuries,

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

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opened its doors in new premises in the freshly completed building on Károly
Boulevard. The owners celebrated the opening with a fish dinner attended by
the prominent people of the capital’s Jewish social life, who wished the best to
the popular leaders of this old, reputable restaurant.”217
But the largest number of kosher restaurants weren’t located in Óbuda, not
even in the Orczy House at the border of Budapest’s old Jewish quarter, but in
the quarter itself. Around 1930, religious Jews could eat either in Mayer
Weinberger’s restaurant at 12 Dob Street, or at the Kosher Kitchen at 58 Dob
Street, or at Jakab Schlesinger on one of the corners of Kazinczy and Király
Streets, or at the Goldmann eatery on the opposite corner, or at Salamon Kohn
just one house from the corner on Kazinczy Street, or at Vilmos Blumberger,
Ignác Gelbmann, or Kálmán Nilkenfeld, all of them also in Kazinczy Street,
or at Gyula Rosenbaum, Márton Stern, Salamon Weisz, or Ignác Fränkel in
Rombach Street. The nearby area north of Andrássy Boulevard was also a traditional Jewish neighborhood. The Hoffmann and Niszel restaurants in Révay
Street and the Back eatery in Hajós Street were in this area. As is clear from
this, there were plenty of kosher restaurants in this neighborhood, sometimes
several of them in the same block.
Rafael Rezső Herz opened his kosher restaurant in 1877 at 4 Váci Boulevard (today: Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Road), not far from the Orczy House, and led

120. Mór Grünwald’s kosher
restaurant on the side of
Budapest’s Orczy House facing
Károly Boulevard. Photograph
by György Klösz from around
1899.
121. The kosher restaurant
of the previous picture in the
beginning of the 1900s. By that
time it was owned by a fellow
named Schermann. Photographer unknown.
122. Adolf Werner’s kosher
restaurant occupying the same
premises as Messrs. Grünwald’s
and Schermann’s establishments before him. Contemporary postcard.

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it until 1909, when Simon Herz, probably the owner’s son, took it over. Elek
Magyar, the popular food columnist of the magazine Pesti Napló (Pest Diary),
recalls this long-defunct restaurant in one of his 1932 articles: “In the area of
ritually correct meals Rafael Rezső Herz on Váci Boulevard, next to the
Morocco house, played about the same role what Miska Karikás used to play
in the field of Hungarian cooking. The large glazed porch facing the courtyard
wasn’t as glittering and elegant as Braun’s restaurant, but certainly uncle Herz’s
jellied carp, his pan-braised beef cutlets (serpenyős rostélyos), and his exemplary
Shabbat cholent with the exquisitely smoked brisket that cooked in it, the fat
bottom of a goose, and the famous ganev (the skin of goose neck stuffed with
a mixture of flour, fat, and paprika) were all tasty rarities, worthy products of
the old and outstanding Jewish cuisine.”218 The cover of the first Hungarianlanguage Jewish cookbook names Herz’s wife, Leonka Bauer as the book’s author,
though, as we have seen, the degree of her authorship is debatable. But I agree
with András Cserna-Szabó219 that the “many years of experience” Mrs. Herz
mentions on the title page of the book probably refers to the time she spent in
the kitchen of her husband’s restaurant.
The fanciest kosher restaurants were located either near the Pest bank of the
Danube, like Nándor Braun’s restaurant in Mária Valéria Street (today: Apáczai

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

Csere János Street), or on the fancy boulevard (körút, ring road) that cuts through
Pest in a half circle. This latter group included the second-floor establishment of
J. H. Schwarz on Erzsébet Boulevard, opposite the huge, ornate office building
of the New York Palace, and Jakab Neiger’s place at 4 Teréz Boulevard.
From the 1880s until it closed in about 1910 the kosher restaurant initially
led by Miksa Braun and from 1894 by Nándor Braun was the favorite place of
wheat-stock traders and a legend among the gourmands of Pest. The great
novelist Gyula Krúdy (1878‒1933) recalls the restaurant’s famed boiled beef
in one of his writings: “Even the traders of the wheat exchange were nice and
funny people in the forenoon when they arrived in an excellent mood to the
old Braun [restaurant] to eat its bony beef.” The “bony beef ” was probably
short ribs, what the Viennese call Beinfleish and the Hungarians csonthús. Krúdy
also mentions this in his short story “Az utolsó szerencsés aranyásó NagyMagyarországon” (The last lucky gold digger in Greater Hungary): “In Pest
people could still dig for gold by going to Braun on Eötvös Square for lunch
and paying attention there not only to the quality of beef but also to the
appetite of the leader of the wheat traders, watching whether he eats a lot or
hardly at all.” In addition, Krúdy mentions in his novel, Boldogult úrfikoromban
(literally: “In my late, lamented youth,” but the title of its English edition is
Blessed Days of My Youth) the tomato sauce served with the boiled beef. Finally,
in his short story “A pénteki vendég” (The Friday guest) he writes about Braun’s
excellent cholent. In 1932 Elek Magyar recalled the defunct Braun restaurant

Semolina Soup (Csángó daraleves)
A recipe of the kosher restaurateur Jenő Neiger, for which he received a prize
in 1935 in a competition for Hungarian-style dinners, organized by the Budapest
Restaurant Owners’ Association. In the book featuring the winning recipes, this is
listed as an “original creation.” It was prepared by József Nikoletti, the chef of the
restaurant.
Cut the giblets from one and a half geese into small pieces, and cook them in
5 liters water. When they are half cooked, salt the broth, and add 2 to 3 julienned
carrots, parsnips, and celery knobs. When the giblets are completely tender, stir in
8 dekas coarse semolina [búzadara or gríz], and add 10 dekas finely diced
mushrooms as well as 3 tomatoes, also diced. Cook this for a few minutes then
remove it from the fire and stir in 8 egg yolks. At serving time, add a few drops of
paprika dissolved in fat [paprika essence, in Hungarian: paprika szín], diced hardcooked eggs, and [chopped] parsley.

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123. A newspaper ad from
about 1930 of the restaurant
owned by Henrik Werner,
Adolf ’s successor. According to
the advertisement, paprika fish
(jellied fish, usually carp) was
available every day.
124. A newspaper ad of the
Goldmann kosher restaurant,
located in Budapest’s old
Jewish quarter.
125. An advertisement of
Neiger’s kosher restaurant in
Budapest. According to the text
it is “the meeting place of
Hungarian Jewry.”
126. A newspaper ad from
about 1930 of the Back kosher
restaurant in Hajós Street, in
a neighborhood of Budapest
with a large Jewish population.
Free translation of the jingle
included in the advertisement:
“You are truant if you don’t eat
in Back’s kosher restaurant.”

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127. Jakab Neiger’s kosher
restaurant in about 1910. The
elegant and large Budapest
restaurant was on the corner
of Teréz Boulevard and today’s
Dohnányi Ernő Street.
Contemporary postcard.

in one of his newspaper articles: “Pest gourmands, regardless of their religious
background, gladly and frequently visited the restaurant near the Danube
(where the Hotel Ritz stands today), which was run by the poor Braun who
later committed suicide. What excellent fatty boiled beef could one get there!...
The matzo ball soup, the stew of goose and vegetables (libabecsinált), the
peppery goose breast, the stuffed pike, the boiled and baked doughs made with
goose fat, the kindli, and the fladen—they all found equally enthusiastic friends
in this sparklingly clean restaurant overlooking the Eötvös statue.”220
In the decades following the demise of the Braun restaurant, Neiger’s was
undoubtedly the most famous and elegant kosher eating place in Budapest.
Jakab Neiger founded it in 1887, though in its last period his son, Jenő took
over from him. For much of its fifty-year existence, the restaurant occupied
the same place: the corner of Teréz Boulevard and today’s Dohnányi Ernő
Street. Its excellence was acknowledged not only by Jewish gastronomes, but
by non-Jews, too, among them Elek Magyar, the well-known food writer and

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

[ 267 ]

cookbook author. A reporter from the magazine Színházi Élet (Theater Life)
wrote the following about it in 1924: “The observant Jew, who faithfully
follows the commands of his religion, has no other place to go than to Neiger’s.
But less observant people come here too, if not for their religion, then for
their stomachs. Neiger’s is the place for the fabulous beef brisket, the
inimitable dishes of fish paprika and jellied fish, not to mention the
unforgettable ricset [bean and pearl barley cholent] with goose drumsticks and
breasts. Anyone who ate at Neiger’s can’t deny that Jewish cuisine—if we use
the adjective that means ‘good’ in the Pest slang—is indeed kosher.”221 Jenő
Neiger later opened a kosher brasserie, the only example of this type of place
in Budapest. “At present [in 1938], his son, Jenő continues the Neiger
tradition. He took over the so-called Gourmand brasserie on Mussolini Square
(Oktogon Square), which is on account of its kosher kitchen a favorite meeting

128. “Restaurant money”
issued by the Neiger kosher
restaurant in 1920. Such
“emergency money” (szükségpénz), usually made of
paper, but sometimes of metal,
was issued by shops and other
businesses to overcome the
shortage of real money during
and after World War I. It is
likely that the Neiger restaurant
used this for the equivalent of
change, with the idea that
it could be redeemed at the
next visit to the restaurant.

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129. The February 21, 1925
menu of Jakab Neiger’s
“ritual” restaurant written
with letters imitating
Hebrew script. It features
such Jewish specialties as
chopped eggs (the menu
calls it lengyel tojás, Polish
eggs), cholent, cholent egg,
and different kinds of
herring. As is typical
of Jewish cuisine, it also
includes a large selection
of dishes made with fish,
goose, and veal, as well as
various courses of boiled or
braised beef. For example,
this was the choice of goose
dishes: cold goose liver,
goose soup with matzo
balls, roasted goose,
cholent with goose drumstick, cholent with chopped
goose breast, braised goose
breast, and in the prix fixe
menu goose giblets in rice.
Unfortunately, they used
a very primitive mimeographing method to print the
menu, which faded in the
ensuing decades, so it is
hard to read at places.

place of the capital’s population, but writers, artists, and foreigners also come
in great numbers.”222
Jakab and Jenő Neiger not only paid attention to the quality of the food
served, but they were also masters of publicity, of appearing in the press as
frequently as possible. The newspapers and magazines featured many articles
and anecdotes about the restaurant, and by no means only the Jewish press. The
following one is from Színházi Élet (Theater Life): “There is no place where the
rounds of card games are as jovial as at the Fészek Club. … Elemér Szemző once
jokingly declared when he was the banker in a round of games: ‘If I win the next

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bidding, all the gentlemen here will be my guests for lunch at Neiger’s.’ As fate
turned out, on the next day, which was a Saturday, fifty people showed up in
Neiger’s restaurant at two in the afternoon, where elegantly set tables awaited
Szemző’s guests. We record only for the sake of historical accuracy that the
cholent lunch lasted from two until six in the evening. To the greatest surprise
of this group of guests, a Gipsy band showed up in the restaurant at four o’clock
and so the cholent lunch was accompanied by Gipsy music, which was quite an
innovation. It ended only at six, when the whole company moved to the Fészek
Club so they could offer the kind host a return game of cards.”223

130. The menu of the goose
slaughtering feast (libator)
offered by the Neiger kosher
restaurant in February 1934.
The courses of the dinner were:
goose soup with matzo balls,
smoked goose breast, stuffed
goose neck, baked goose liver,
roasted goose breast, goose
cracklings, goose sausage, plus
the Jewish pastries of flódni
and kindli. The page also includes a rhymed version of the
menu written by the ten-yearold son of the restaurant’s
owner.

131. Ilona Schönfeld’s kosher
restaurant and “night lodging”
in Mezőlaborc (Medzilaborce,
Slovakia) in the 1900s.
Photograph by Divald and
Monostory.

Both the Pesti Napló (Pest Diary) and the Színházi Élet described the goose
slaughtering feast or banquet (libator), held on February 23, 1934, in Neiger’s
restaurant. The story had started ten days earlier with a competition organized
by the Restaurateurs’ Association to find the best fresh pork products—like
sausages and meats—produced in a Transylvanian-style pig-killing feast (disznótor). The competition took place at the Hotel Metropol, where the expert jury
was presided over by Károly Gundel, the owner of the most famous Hungarian
restaurant, and its members included Elek Magyar, the greatest food writer of
the period. Neiger responded to this by organizing a goose-killing feast in his
restaurant. While feasts held for the slaughter of pigs are traditional in Hungary,
the goose equivalent of this was Neiger’s invention. As Elek Magyar described
it: “The sequence of courses started with a substantial goose soup with fluffy
and incredibly tender matzo balls in it. After the deserved success of this overture,
the smoked breast of goose earned much appreciation, since everybody found
its salting, brining, and smoking perfect. Of the two kinds of stuffed goose neck
generally the meat-filled one was more popular than the flour-based stuffing,
but both were beaten by the thin smoked sausages made with goose meat in

sheep casings. This sausage was tasty and outstanding. Károly Gundel was right
when he suggested that other restaurateurs should also feature it in their menus.
The roast goose was up to any criticism, while the tender and wonderful goose
cracklings as well as the creamily tender and fragrant goose liver were beyond
criticism. The cholent and stewed cabbage were fitting companions to all this.
The sequence of foods, in which each dish outdid the previous one, reached its
zenith with the desserts: with the light and tasty kindli, a pastry made with goose
fat and filled with walnuts and poppy seeds, and with the multilayered flódni,
full of various fruit flavors. It seemed to me that everyone enjoyed the rich menu
and the wines—a Riesling from Csopak and a ‘Bull’s Blood’ red wine from Eger.
It is probably not necessary to add that the mood was excellent and nobody
doubted that the feast of goose achieved its goal, just as its inspiration, the pigkilling feast competition had done.”224
Naturally, there were kosher restaurants in provincial towns, too, but in
most places I know nothing more about them than their names and addresses,
and even that only because they are listed in a book published in 1927 about
the Shabbat-keeping Jewish merchants, craftsmen, and factory owners. This is

132. The Messinger coffeehouse
and the entrance to a kosher
restaurant in Trencsénteplic
(Trenčianske Teplice, Slovakia)
in about 1910. The Germanlanguage sign of the restaurant
promises kosher Viennese
cuisine. Photograph by Divald
and Monostory.

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J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

133. An advertisement from
1927 of the Tauber hotel and
restaurant, located in Budapest’s old Jewish quarter.

somewhat complemented by advertisements printed in Egyenlőség (Equality)
and in other Jewish papers. In addition, we have a few scattered pieces of
information about such restaurants, like the one from which we know that as
early as in 1820 religious Jewish vacationers could buy kosher wine in the
lakeside resort town of Balatonfüred and by the middle of the nineteenth
century they could eat there in a kosher restaurant. We also know from newspaper ads that in 1925 kosher eateries continued to exist in Balatonfüred and
also in Hévíz, another spa town nearby. This was also so in several other spas
visited by Jews, among them Sztojka (Sztojkafalva, today: Soiceni, Romania),
a town in northern Transylvania, owned by the Esterházy family. The local
spring, which produced water rich in bicarbonate of soda, salt, and carbon
dioxide, was covered in the middle of the nineteenth century, making the
development of a spa resort possible. In addition to the boardinghouses and
regular restaurants created in the next decades in the town, a kosher restaurant
also opened to accommodate the Orthodox Jewish guests.
Starting in the end of nineteenth century many Hungarian Jews spent their
vacations in Abbázia (Opatija, Croatia), a fashionable seaside resort with many
hotels, boardinghouses, villas, and baths. The resort town used to be part of
the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and although a post–World-War-I treaty assigned it to Italy in 1920, it continued to be a favorite vacation spot of the
Hungarian middle class. Advertisements for its kosher restaurants and boardinghouses frequently appeared in the Hungarian Jewish press. One of those
publications featured the following report in 1932: “Dr. Simon Hevesi, the chief
rabbi of the Budapest Jewish community, spent a few weeks of vacation in
Abbázia. Naturally, the chief rabbi only used accommodations that strictly
observe the ritual laws, and he ate all the time in the reputable Tauber kosher
restaurant. Lately, this establishment has become very popular in Abbázia. At
the white tables of this splendid restaurant we can primarily see people who
didn’t become faithless to ritually acceptable food. … The Tauber restaurant is
not only famous for its excellent kitchen, but also for its cheap prices which
suit today’s economic circumstances.”225 The huge, five-storied Hotel-Pension
Breiner was a favorite of vacationing religious Jews in Abbázia. As Ilona Riemer,
born in 1921, recalled the summers spent there with her family: “In Abbázia
we stayed in the Hotel Breiner, which was a strictly kosher hotel. … I remember well that in the Hotel Breiner red tablecloths covered the fleishig tables,
while blue tablecloths the milchig ones. You could eat either fleishig or milchig
food, but they kept those two sections of the dining room separate.”226
Most of the relatively few other kosher hotels were similarly located in resort
places. In cities and towns hotels—like the Tauber hotel and restaurant in
Rumbach Sebestyén Street, which functioned for a few years in the heart of

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

134. The kosher restaurant of József Hirschler (1884, Csepreg–1944, Auschwitz) in Csepreg,
western Hungary, in about 1920. The owner stands right of the entrance and on the extreme
right Szidónia Hirschler and Mrs. Salamon Hirschler, József ’s mother can be seen. The restaurant
was founded by Salamon Hirschler (1848–1929), and the door panel right of the entrance still
bears his name. The fancy sign hanging above the entrance depicts a bunch of grapes. “Mainly
Orthodox Jewish merchants frequented the restaurant during the weekly and yearly markets,”
remembers Borbála Hirschler, József ’s daughter. “Consistent with the ritual requirements, the
restaurant’s milchig and fleishig kitchens were in separate rooms. The milchig dishes and towels
were blue colored (see Fig. 95), while the fleishig dishes and the towels belonging to them were
red. Laundry was done in three troughs: in the first they laundered the cloths used for milchig,
in the second one those used for fleishig, and in the third one those used for pareve foods.”
Contemporary postcard.

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J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

135. József Hirschler, the owner
of a kosher restaurant in
Csepreg, western Hungary, near
the Austrian border, his wife,
Sarolta Fehérvári, and their
daughters, Borbála and Judit,
in 1941. Photograph by György
Reichard, a photographer
in Csepreg.

Budapest’s old Jewish quarter—counted as rare exceptions. But religious Jewish
visitors to cities, towns, and resort places could typically choose from several
kosher boardinghouses. Some residents of cities and towns, especially those
who were single, preferred to live in boardinghouses, because they were attracted by the comfort of living and eating there. Religious Jews didn’t have any
difficulty in finding kosher boardinghouses, since they could always choose
from a rich assortment of ads for them in the Jewish papers. It is clear from
those ads that in Budapest such boardinghouses weren’t limited to areas with
a large Jewish population in the districts of Erzsébet- and Terézváros, but could
also be found in neighborhoods with no special Jewish character, such as the
elegant Andrássy Boulevard, Svábhegy, a hilly, wooded suburb of the city, or
Budakeszi, which was a separate town in the immediate vicinity of the capital.

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

The advertisements of these boardinghouses proudly mention the tasty kosher
home cooking available in them. A few such places even offered not just a single
daily menu, but à la carte service and a choice of dietetic dishes for those with
health problems.
Of the Orthodox kosher Jewish boardinghouses in Budapest, I know
most about the one called Karmel, which was owned by Sarolta Friedman
(1897‒1956), the maternal aunt of my friend Laurent Stern. It was probably
the most elegant such establishment in the city, located at 43 Andrássy Boulevard on the fourth floor of a fabulously ornate Renaissance-style building,
called the Brüll Palace after Miksa Domonyi Brüll, a wealthy and ennobled
Jewish businessman, who built it in 1883. The boardinghouse opened in the
early 1930s and kept functioning until June 1944, when its owners were forced
to move to one of the yellow star houses in the city. The guest rooms and
the apartment of the owners occupied the entire top floor of the building,
surrounding its central courtyard on all four sides. The rooms of the owners
and their three grown children faced the boulevard, while most of the about
twenty guest rooms the courtyard, but those rooms were also very bright since

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136. The wooden case of József
Hirschler’s wine tester, probably
from the late nineteenth century.
He owned a kosher restaurant in
Csepreg, western Hungary. He
kept the fragile tester, made of
glass, in this cotton-lined case.
It is likely that his father, the
founder of the restaurant was
the original owner of the wine
tester. Photograph by Richárd
Tóth.
137. The wine tester of József
Hirschler, owner of a kosher
restaurant in Csepreg, western
Hungary. The tester has a scale
of 0, 5, 10, and 15. The restaurateur probably used it when
he purchased wine. Photograph
by Richárd Tóth.

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J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

[ 277 ]

they were on the top floor. All the rooms had running water, but only shared
bathrooms, which opened from a hallway. Most of the guests rented accomodations for longer periods in the Karmel: in a way it became their home,
where they weren’t confined to their rooms but could spend time and socialize
in a large sitting room.
Of course, several employees assisted the owners in the kitchen and in
taking care of the guest rooms. One very large kitchen served both the owners
and the guests. The kosher nature of the kitchen was certified by rabbinical
authorities, who periodically came to reinspect it. There were two large ranges
in the kitchen, one of them coal fired, the other a gas range. My friend recalls
that the kitchen had an astonishing assortment of cooking implements and all
kinds of machinery, an unusual thing in Hungary of the 1930s. The guests
were served breakfast and dinner in the dining room of the boardinghouse,
though Laurent Stern is no longer sure about lunch. When requested, the
kitchen provided dietetic food for the guests.
Kosher boardinghouses also existed in most vacation places frequented by
Jews, including Mátrafüred, Görömböly-Tapolca, Ótátrafüred (Starý Smokovec, Slovakia), and many other such mountainous resorts. But the choice was
greatest at the resorts surrounding Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Central
and Western Europe. In Siófok, for example, the Jewish vacationer could
choose from the kosher boardinghouses of Jónás Blau, Mrs. Jakab Kohn, and
Márton Mandl. In the Tauber boardinghouse, owned by Márton Mandl, not
only families and single grownups could vacation, but unaccompanied children, too, since the owner hired a teacher to watch them and keep them
occupied. The Pension Kohn in Balatonszemes advertised, in addition to daily
five meals, an in-house synagogue, a mikveh, and even a ritual slaughterer,
a shochet. Could an observant Jew wish for more?

COFFEEHOUSES, COFFEE SHOPS, AND PASTRY SHOPS

Although there were many Jewish restaurateurs, the number of people of that
background who owned or leased coffeehouses was far greater: in Budapest
they represented over half of the owners. But the overwhelming majority of
those places wasn’t kosher, and they didn’t even have any particular Jewish
character, which created the paradox that while more Jews owned coffeehouses
than restaurants, there were far fewer kosher cafés than eateries of that type.
Most of the few kosher cafés didn’t even satisfy the legal requirements for calling
themselves coffeehouses, so they were only coffee shops, a lower-ranked
category. Coffeehouses had to meet certain standards: their floor area had to

138. The lobby of 43 Andrássy
Boulevard, the building where
the elegant Karmel Orthodox
kosher boardinghouse occupied
the fourth floor in the 1930s
and early 1940s. Photograph
by Teodóra Hübner.

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139. The cashier’s counter in
the Café Orczy with the old
cashier woman and some of the
customers in 1935, in the last
full year of existence of this
coffeehouse, which was more
than a hundred years old at the
time. This is a drawing by
Vladimir Szabó, which appeared
in the magazine Pesti Napló
(Pest Diary) as an illustration
to Béla Bodó’s 1936 report,
quoted in the text.
140. The storefront of the Café
Orczy in about 1915. The sign
above the entrance bears the
name of the Strasser family,
which managed the place from
1870 until 1936, the year when
the building was demolished.
Photographer unknown.

be at least 180 square yards, their floor to ceiling height more than 13 feet, and
they had to have at least two pool tables. Provided its owner wanted it, such
a coffeehouse could stay open for 24 hours. If any of the previous criteria was
lacking, the establishment could only be called a kávémérés, a coffee shop. The
prices in such coffee shops were generally lower than in coffeehouses of a comparable quality.
As far as I know, Budapest had only one kosher coffeehouse: The Orczy
Coffeehouse on the side of the Orczy House facing Károly Boulevard. This was
the longest-lived coffeehouse in Pest: it opened around 1825, replacing a coffee
shop that had been there since 1795, and it survived until the demolition of the
Orczy House in 1936. Behind its narrow shop windows friendly vaulted spaces
awaited the customers. The first lessees of the place were Gentiles, since until
1864 Jews hadn’t been allowed into the Coffee Guild and so they couldn’t own
or manage coffee shops. Actually, only the last lessee, the Strasser family, which
led the coffee shop from 1870 until its closing in 1936, was Jewish. But the
preceding non-Jewish managers of the place also had no objection to running
a kosher coffeehouse.

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J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

141. A c. 1934 photograph of the
Café Orczy, Budapest’s only
kosher coffeehouse, located in
the Orczy House. Two of the
customers visible in the picture
were probably Orthodox Jews,
since they are wearing hats
indoors. The lessee of the Orczy
coffeehouse bought the mirror
on the left side of the
photograph from the old Café
Primorszky when it closed
down. Probably a photograph
by Béla Borsody Bevilaqua.

In the nineteenth century, the Orczy Coffeehouse was for all practical
purposes the commodity exchange place for the grain business and the location
for most of the commercial transactions of wholesale merchants of rawhide,
fur, feather, tobacco, and a long list of other goods. It was also where
unemployed hazzanim (Jewish cantors) and melamedim (Jewish teachers) met
emissaries of the Jewish communities to find employment. “In this smokefilled and dirty room,” remembered Ármin Vámbéry (1832‒1913) in 1905, a
famous orientalist and ethnographer, “which even after forty years has to this
day preserved much of its former appearance, one could see the colorful crowd
of rural and urban Jews, sipping their coffee or emitting ear-splitting noise as
they gestured, talked, and yelled with each other. The crowding and noise was
the most infernal between one and four in the afternoon at this employment
market of Jewish teachers, since this was the usual time for them to make
business contacts.”228 The choice of drinks and food in the café was minimal,
but the mostly religious customers were free to read any of the Jewish magazines
made available to them by the management. “On the tables there were
newspapers with Hebrew characters and Jewish playing cards that instead of
figures had fancy Hebrew letters on them.”229
The café hardly changed in the next three decades, though it became quieter: “The guests are also old,” explained the manager in a newspaper interview

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

in 1934, “this is a very conservative coffeehouse. Do you see the gentleman
there? We know for certain that even his father used to be a regular customer
here. The only difference is that I serve this gentleman, while my father served
his father, and the late Mr. Bartl served his grandfather. Nothing has changed
here. … Inside the café, the five vaults of the ceiling arched over the small
space, and the wooden floor was made of wide, dusty boards. The marbletopped tables and the big, old mirror dated from the middle of the nineteenth
century. The big, brown cashier’s desk, which occupies nearly half of the space,
resembled the sideboards of our grandmothers. There were sugar cubes waiting
on its old marble countertop to be carried to the guests, and a white-haired
lady cashier, wearing thick glasses, who had grown old during the decades spent
here, stood behind the counter. Most of the repeat customers, who sat with
their hats on, had been kibitzing here to each other over card games for decades.
Everything gave the impression of unchanged permanence.”230 Béla Bodó’s
report from 1936, the year when the Orczy House was demolished, is even
more elegiac—if that is at all possible—than the previous interview. “Time
moved quickly outside, and while it was running it didn’t stop to look into
this café. Nothing has changed here; this is still the Orczy Coffeehouse. There
is no coat check here; the respected guests either wear their hats on their heads
or push their caps to the top of their heads for the sake of greater comfort. …
The card games used to be more heated here than in the casinos. … Wheat,
produce, and rawhide merchants came here in former times, as well as those

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142. Mr. Spitzmann in the Orczy
Coffeehouse in 1936. A drawing
by Vladimir Szabó. “Coolness
and a blend of tobacco and
coffee smells. The ceiling over
the small space consists of five
vaults, curved, like the back of
a very old man. Up in the vaults
there are clouds of tobacco
smoke, while down there is
a dusty wooden floor with cigarette and cigar butts scattered
on it, and next to them a pair of
elastic-sided short boots can be
seen. There are wrinkled and
tight trousers above the boots
and also a jacket. And in all this
there is Mr. Spitzmann, the immortal customer of this place. …
It is neither mystery nor magic,
but: his great-great-grandfather
(Mr. Spitzmann) used to be a
regular customer here, his greatgrandfather (Mr. Spitzmann) too,
his grandfather (Mr. Spitzmann)
also kept coming here, the first
in the lineage to wear elasticsided boots, his father
(Mr. Spitzmann in elastic-sided
boots) was also a regular customer, and finally he himself, who
resembles his ancestors down to
the last detail, naturally including the boots. Older regular
customers recall that he even
resembles his forefathers in the
way he keeps sighing while
drinking his coffee. In short: he
is immortal.”231 Similar to some
of the customers in Figs. 139 and
141, Mr. Spitzmann must have
been a religious Jew since he
wears a hat indoors.

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

who did business with them: shop assistants and red-capped porters. Many
a ‘my dear old Sam, could you please take this’ from the street corners—the
carriers of love letters. The porters are long gone, and although love lives on,
the porter trade is dead. … ‘Champagne, please!’ I yell, though I don’t mean
it seriously—the place and the atmosphere made me say it. The waiter looks
pityingly at me, like at someone who is not quite normal. The boss comes
immediately: ‘Please forgive us! There is no champagne here. What an idea!
We have never carried it. People don’t drink wine here, only a bottle of beer
on rare occasions. Black coffee and coffee with milk are the drinks here—that
is what is appropriate.’”232
The coffeehouse was never open after seven in the evening (or after nine,
according to the above article by Béla Bodó), since in the nineteenth century
it “was mainly visited by people from the provinces who came to sell their
goods in the markets and who rose early in the morning and were asleep by
the evening.”233 The customers—as we know from the above newspaper article
—mostly consumed coffee and not much else. Clearly, this is the reason why
no description survived of the snacks they could order. The modest selection
probably consisted of dairy foods, like buttered bread, bakery products, and
perhaps simple egg dishes.
Like in the Orczy House that stood opposite it at the beginning of Király
Street, most of the tenants were Jewish in the Gyertyánffy House, built in 1815
and sometimes called Am Judenhof, German for “next to the Jewish courtyard,”
that is, next to the Orczy House. The entrance to the Herzl, or Hercli by its
nickname, a Jewish café, was from the Király Street side of this building. The
Herzl was founded in the first half of the nineteenth century and it became
nearly as famous as the Orczy Coffeehouse. People mostly spoke of it as a
Jewish coffeehouse, though officially it was only a coffee shop, since it lacked
pool tables, one of the mandatory requisites of coffeehouses. “The fame of its
exquisite coffee and pastries was transmitted from one generation to the next,
a quality that was exactly the same in the dark period of absolutism in the
nineteenth century and in the first happy years of this century,” Vilmos Balla
wrote in 1927. “One could get the tastiest afternoon snack there, consisting of
coffee made from beans roasted fresh on the premises daily and mixed with
rich milk coming from the estate of the Royal Palace in Gödöllő. It was served
in very large glasses, topped with whipped cream of the thickness of two fingers
and accompanied by five sugar cubes. … The spectacular coffee always came
with a special cake: the classic bole. This yeast cake, made with raisins and
cinnamon, was virtually a legend, and its enthusiastic public was not only from
this area. Such a complete serving cost 16 krajcárs. There were also lots of
customers who came mornings and afternoons to take home some of the fine

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143. The beginning of Király
Street from the direction of
today’s Deák Ferenc Square in
about 1900. The Café Herzl was
on the Király Street side of the
corner building, the so-called
Gyertyánffy House, which is on
the left of this picture. Unfortunately, no photograph survives
of this café, founded in the first
half of the nineteenth century
and famous for its excellent
cakes and pastries, among
them a Sephardic specialty, the
bola or boles. It was also the
favorite place of Jewish
matchmakers. The café was
somewhere behind the awnings
of the corner building. How
wonderful it would be if I could
enter the photograph and walk
to the Café Herzl, so I could
take a look at the towers of
walnut boles in the shop
window mentioned by Elek
Magyar in his description of the
shop, and perhaps I could even
go inside to taste a piece of this
cake! But returning from my
imaginary time travel to what
actually can be seen in the
photograph: left and right of
Király Street two of the biggest
buildings in Pest of the period
stand. The Gyertyánffy House
on the left was Pest’s first fivestory building and the Orczy
House on the right was even
bigger, though not as tall.
Nearly everyone living in the
huge Orczy House was Jewish
and in the Gyertyánffy House
they constituted the majority,
too. Photograph by Antal
Weinwurm.

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J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

144 The mother of André
Kertész in about 1917 in the
kosher coffee shop she owned
on Budapest’s Teleki Square,
a place known for its large flea
market, where a large share of
the sellers and their customers
was Jewish, and where Yiddish
could be frequently heard.
Although the wood paneling,
the large mirror, and the bentcane holders of newspapers
hanging on the wall are similar
to the typical appurtenances of
coffeehouses, one can see from
the rustic floor boards that this
is a simpler place. Photograph
by André Kertész.

coffee and the soft, fluffy spirals of yeast cake. … In addition to the incomparable beverages and pastries, this place had yet another distinguishing feature:
the professional matchmakers [shadkhan in Hebrew, shadchen in Yiddish;
plural: shadchonim], be they male or female, came here.”234 Elek Magyar, my
favorite gastronomic writer also recalled the Herzl with great fondness: “Seekers
of a special experience also visited the Herzl coffeehouse in the beginning of
Király Street, close to the Freund [a famous pastry shop]. In the shop windows
of this well-known gathering and deal-making place of matchmakers towers
of farmer cheese delklis [similar to cheese Danishes] and walnut boles lured the
passers-by into the store.”235
Those raisin- or nut-filled spirals of dough once used to be popular among
Hungarian Jews—who called them bole, bolesz, or bola—but today they are
completely forgotten. They were one of the few Sephardic specialties adopted
by Hungary’s Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine. Their name is also of Sephardic origin:
it comes from the Ladino word for “ball.” They were made of yeast dough,
which initially had been fried in oil, but already since long a baked version
containing raisins, chopped walnuts, and perhaps also diced candied fruit had
been more common. The cake was introduced to Western Europe by Jews who
had been forced to leave Spain and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century.
It became especially popular in Holland—where most of the Portuguese Jews
had settled—and presumably it was there where the version evolved in which
people roll out the risen yeast dough on a pastry board sprinkled with
cinnamon sugar, scatter raisins and perhaps chopped walnuts or diced candied
fruit over the dough, roll it up, slice it into spirals, let the spirals rise again,
and then finally bake them. This was the version sold at the Herzl. The bole
was popular in Hungary mainly in the nineteenth century—more or less during
the lifetimes of Adolf Ágai (1836‒1916) and Samu Haber (1865‒1922), both
of whom wrote about this cake—but as is clear from the recollection quoted
above, the Herzl kept this tradition alive until the early twentieth century.
There were more kosher coffee shops than coffeehouses, but even those
weren’t numerous. Most of them were located in Budapest’s old Jewish quarter,
but, for example, the one owned by the mother of André Kertész, the worldfamous photographer of Hungarian origin, was on Teleki Square, a place known
for its large flea market where the majority of both the dealers and their customers
were Jewish, many of them Orthodox. Kertész and his mother were assimilated
Jews, and the mother didn’t keep kosher at home. She nevertheless had a kosher
coffee shop, since she wished to make it available to the many religious Jews
buying and selling goods at the flea market. In addition to these cafés, there
were many nonkosher coffeehouses and coffee shops in neighborhoods with
a large Jewish population, in which virtually all the customers were Jews.

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

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J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

The Freund pastry shop, founded in 1862 and located at 14 Király Street,
was the oldest and most famous kosher bakery. It was frequently called the
“Jewish Ruszwurm,” implying that the quality of its products was comparable
to those of the oldest pastry shop in the city, founded in 1827. “The ‘jeunesse
dorée’ [French: “golden youth,” meaning fashionable youth] of Terézváros
[a neighborhood with a large Jewish population] is all there in the Freund. …
In an earlier period, even before the customers would order, they were served
baskets of fine tortes and pastries, which—to avoid misunderstandings—also
included a slip of paper with the list of the sweets. According to old records,
even Herbert Bismarck, the iron chancellor’s son, and Paul Lindau, the German
writer once visited this place.”236 Elek Magyar, the popular food columnist of

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

the magazine Pesti Napló (Pest Diary), also had a high opinion of the Freund:
“After lunch, the gourmands liked to go to Ödön Freund’s famous pastry shop
in Király Street, in order to have a kindli [Jewish pastry, filled with either poppy
seeds or walnuts] or some other pastry of the season, which in terms of quality
could compete with the products of Kugler [a pastry shop as good as Ruszwurm
and nearly as old].237 A newspaper report from 1925 describes the shop in
greater detail: “My grandfather,” says Sándor Freund [Ödön Freund’s son],
a blond and corpulent gentleman with a kind face, “came to Pest in 1862 from
Pozsony, where he had a bakery and a pastry shop. … Mr. Freund takes an old,
battered book from his desk. The handwriting is quite faded in it. It is the
recipe collection of Hermann Freund, the grandfather. I flip through the old
notebook, filled with grandfather Freund’s old-fashioned spiky German
handwriting. I try to find his favorite sweets in it, and I feel moved when
I come across the classic recipe for Pfeffer-kugli [a salty-peppery or sweet-andpeppery cake, mostly known as pfefferkuchen or feferkuhen], which was the
following: 6 pounds flour, 3 pounds goose fat, 10 dekas pepper, ½ kilo sugar,
10 eggs, salt, and wine (1856).”
“The number in parentheses is the date when the Pfeffer-kugli first appeared
in the grandfather’s shop in Pozsony. But there are even older recipes. The very
first, in much faded script, is undated and contains instructions for the making
Gewürzte Linzer Tortelette [spiced Linzer rounds]. While recalling the past of
the shop, the younger Freund keeps looking through his grandfather’s recipe
notebook with visible emotion. ‘Indeed,’ he says, ‘the challahs made at our
shop used to be known in whole Budapest, especially the festive yeast bread
we made for pasitah [here: brunch or lunch after circumcision]. It had an
unusual shape. The big, braided loaf contained six thin sticks, also made of

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145. The kosher coffee shop
of André Kertész’s mother on
Budapest’s Teleki Square
around 1917. Hebrew-lettered
signs on the shop windows
proclaim the kosher nature
of the shop. The woman on the
left is the mother; the other
three are relatives or waitresses. Unfortunately, the
negative of the photograph
didn’t survive, only a tiny
contact print of it, and this is
why it can’t be reproduced in
larger size. Photograph by the
young André Kertész
(1894‒1985), who at the time
he took this picture was still
earning his living as a modest
bank clerk.
146. A printing block carved
of wood and bearing the words
“Take challah!” (Yiddish:
Challah nehmen!). This was
meant as a reminder that a
small piece, the challah, was
still to be separated from the
raw dough and to be burned
as a sacrificial offering. Bakers
perhaps intended to print this
reminder onto slips of paper
they wanted to place next to
the dough or onto cotton
towels used for covering it,
though it is doubtful that they
actually used this block, since
it shows no discoloration from
printing ink. From Tamás
Lózsy’s collection. Photo by
Teodóra Hübner.

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J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

147. Newspaper ads of the famous Freund bakery and
pastry shop, founded in 1862, and the King pastry shop, its
successor. Next to them an advertisement of Mór Weisz’s
bakery can be seen, as well as that of a café, which sold
pastries and cakes made by Weisz. All these bakeries and
cafés were in Budapest’s old Jewish quarter.

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

challah dough and prebaked, and its top was decorated with a golden cooked
egg, as well as with flowers and ribbons. It was called Resche Rutenbarches [German, resche Ruten: crunchy sticks]. It had been quite a while since these famous
and popular loaves had gone out of fashion, and the wedding feasts of coffee
and cake are gone, too. Nowadays, cold platters are offered at such celebrations,
once, however, people were more modest and they were satisfied with coffee
with whipped cream, gugelhupf [a coffee cake], and farmer cheese pastries. We,
too, used to put on such wedding celebrations: we catered the entire feast, and
everybody was satisfied. … The tradition of kosher meals has survived to this
day in Mr. Freund’s shop, something that the Jewish baker Freund gladly
acknowledges. Outside the office, in the sales area of the shop, the walls are
decorated with green wallpaper, and the Watteau-style pictures framed in gold
look down at the customers as the waitresses almost soundlessly glide along
the marble floor. The shop has become more modern, but in the small back
office they reverently guard the recipe collection of the grandfather.”238 Not
much after the publication of this article, the Freund pastry shop went
bankrupt, and its place was taken by the King bakery, which sold more or less
the same cakes and pastries, among them many Jewish specialties.
Several other kosher bakeries functioned in the old Jewish neighborhood,
of which the cookie, biscotti, and sweet cracker factory of Mór Weisz was the
most significant. In addition to those products, it made pastries and cakes,
which were sold in the factory’s own store, but they were also purveyors to
coffeehouses and coffee shops. His factory was one of the bakeries that in late
1944 and in the first days of 1945 continued to function in the Budapest
ghetto. Since 1953 the similarly kosher Fröhlich pastry shop has occupied its
premises.

JEWISH SOUP KITCHENS

According to Jewish religious traditions, charity is not merely a voluntary act,
but also a religious obligation, and the soup kitchens created with this purpose
played an exceptionally important role in the life of the Jewish community.
Although there were many nonobservant Jews and even quite a number of Gentiles among those who received meals at such places, Jewish soup kitchens served
only kosher food, otherwise religious Jews couldn’t have eaten there. The soup
kitchen set up by the Pest Jewish Women’s Association in 1869 was the first such
establishment in Budapest, predating those opened by the city. By 1896 it
was offering free food for 141,130 hungry people and in 1915, during World
War I, this number increased to 287,465.239 The institution was tremendously

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J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

148. The kitchen of the Dr. Berhard Kahn
Boarding School in Máramarossziget
(Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania) around
1926. The Joint (American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee), a Jewish charity
organization, provided the funds for the
creation and operation of this institution.
Photographer unknown.

149. The framed paper sign of
a charitable eating place in Sopron,
western Hungary, from the first half
of the twentieth century. Photograph
by Richárd Tóth.

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150. The kitchen of the Pest
Jewish Community’s hospital
in 1923. Photographer unknown.

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J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

important for the many poor Jews in the capital, who for ritual reasons couldn’t
eat at the soup kitchens set up by the city. The organizers of this charity kitchen
wanted to make it available not only for Jews but for “all the starving people of
the poorer social classes, regardless of religion.” Based on the concept of this first
soup kitchen, soon the Women’s Associations of other cities and towns organized
similar ones, and their examples were then followed by other types of Jewish
organizations. One of them was OMIKE, the National Hungarian Jewish Cultural Association, which opened its canteen for students and young artists in
four rooms it rented at 11–13 Ráday Street in March 1911, and another was
OMZSA, the National Hungarian Jewish Aid Association, which was created in
1939 to ameliorate the results of the draconian anti-Jewish laws. At times private
people also tried to help those who didn’t have enough money for decent meals.
The wealthy industrialist Manfréd Weiss, for example, set up a soup kitchen in
1914 where anyone in need was served, while in the second half of the 1920s
Róbert Feinsilber, called Uncle Róbert by everyone, organized such kitchens at
four different points of the city, where, standing on the street, he distributed
free warm food to the hungry. And in 1933 the button and trimmings factory
of Adolf Reich and Sons started to help the many starving and out-of-work
people of the period by providing a free lunch for anyone who showed up at its
facility at 173 Váci Road.

151. Tables set for Seder
evening at the girls’ orphanage
of the Pest Jewish Women’s
Association in 1923.
Photographer unknown.

Unfortunately, most of the reports about those Jewish charitable institutions
where people could get free food describe only the organizers and the number
of portions served each day, but they rarely mention the subject of this book:
the specific dishes they offered to the poor. There are a few exceptions, though,
and we can learn from some newspaper articles and recollections of the period
what dishes four different charitable eateries served in 1920, 1927, 1929, and
1936.
In March 1920 the Jewish weekly Egyenlőség (Equality) featured a report
about the charitable midday meals financed by the Association of Jewish
Hungarian University and College Students. As part of this program, the
organization provided daily free meals for several thousand students at the
Alföldi restaurant on the corner of Wesselényi and Akácfa Streets. “I look at
these children in the Alföldi restaurant, and the tears of my emotions blur my
vision. Today is a holiday: the festival of merriment [Purim]. As I recall from
my childhood, lunch used to be more plentiful at such times. Even poor Jews
in villages had a roast on the table, followed by walnut- and poppy seed-filled
kindlis. I sadly look at the children’s festive lunch: the waiter is carrying tiny
plates of beans in a roux sauce and poppy seed noodles to the tables. The portions are indeed very small. The unshaven students—the price of shaving is
four koronas today—eagerly gobble up their food, and in a few minutes there
isn’t even a morsel left on the plates. … But regardless of the meagerness of
the meal, it is an act of great charity. If even this didn’t exist, my God, what

152. A 1923 photograph of the
dining room in the Old Age
Home operated by the Pest
Chevra Kadisha. Photographer
unknown.

153. The dining room of
the Jewish Orphanage in
Szatmárnémeti (Satu Mare,
Romania) in the second half
of the 1920s. The orphanage
wouldn’t have existed without
the support of the Joint, an
American charity organization.
Photographer unknown.

would happen to so many poor Jewish students! Because there are so many of
them! Now perhaps only some two thousand, but when the enrollments start
at the universities, their number will exceed three thousand.”240
In 1927, the same newspaper featured an article about the children’s cafeteria operated by the Hanna Association for the Protection of Children. Dóra
Heiden was merely seventeen or eighteen years old when she founded the
association in about 1921. As Gábor Dombi describes it, “she literally went
begging all through Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, and England to raise
enough money for the smooth operation of her organization. … The Hanna
was a social welfare institution, which—although it had ties to the Orthodox
Jewry of Budapest—wasn’t operated by any religious organization. It took care
of 200 (and by the 1930s, 300) children. These children came from the poorest
Orthodox Jewish families of the city.”241 According to an article printed in the
Jewish weekly Egyenlőség, “a jolly army of children is swarming at the small, white

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

linen-covered tables in the room of the ‘Hanna’ organization on Kazinczy Street.
They are spooning the tasty Saturday cholent with pleasure and munching the
excellent poppy seed bejgli [pastry roulades], which caring hands give to them
with love.”242 Dóra Heiden married an American rabbi and moved to the US in
1927, but the cafeteria stayed open after the departure of its founder, and even
after World War II it continued functioning at a different location until 1965,
though no longer only for children.
A 1929 article in Egyenlőség describes the Páva Street charity kitchen of the
Jewish Women’s Association of the eighth and ninth districts: “From 11:30 to
1:30 they serve 269 portions to women, children, young, and old, who can
either choose to eat it in the organization’s dining room or take it home. …
Around noon mainly children are having lunch in the dining room. They came

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154. Girls learning how to make
braided challah at the Hanna
Children’s Cafeteria in about
1940. Photograph by Mr. Fekete,
a Budapest photographer.

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J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

155. The children’s cafeteria of
the Hanna Association for the
Protection of Children in
c. 1940. The organization was
founded in about 1921. By the
1930s, 250 poor Jewish children
received free kosher meals
daily at this cafeteria. Photograph by Mr. Fekete, a Budapest
photographer.

from school, there are school books under their arm, and their right hand’s
forefinger is stained with ink. They are sweet darlings. … They either have no
father or if they have one, he isn’t earning enough to provide his children with
a satisfying lunch. … It is the holiday of Simchat Torah. Today’s lunch: meat
soup with soup biscuits, roast goose with sautéed onions and potatoes, cabbage
salad, and poppy seed flódni (fluden). A traditional lunch. The geese were sent
as a present by Mr. Friedmann, a poultry merchant on Garay Square. Yesterday
there was cholent and braised beef. Five times a week they serve meat dishes,
and on the rest of the days vegetables and noodles. But not everyone gets this
menu. It’s strange, but true, that this charitable kitchen also serves dietetic food
to people with stomach ulcers or diabetes, for whom they prepare separate
dishes. There is no precedent in the world for a soup kitchen serving dietetic
food. And it nearly brings tears to one’s eyes when Mrs. Sándor Rosenberg,

J E W I S H P L A C E S O F H O S P I TA L I T Y

the president of the Women’s Association, brings jellied fish from her home
for a diabetic patient.”243
From a monograph about the painter Margit Anna (1913, Borota–1991,
Budapest) we learn of her “wedding feast” at OMIKE’s cafeteria in 1936. For
many young people the cafeteria established by OMIKE (National Hungarian
Jewish Cultural Association) for poor Jewish university and college students
represented the sole opportunity to get free or at least affordably reduced-price
meals. The art historian Katalin Dávid based the following text about the love
of two art students on what she had heard from Margit Anna: “Since the beginning of the 1930s, she studied drawing in János Vaszary’s art school and in
the commercial art studio of OMIKE. … She met Imre Ámos [her future
husband] in this studio, where he and a few friends from the Art Academy
came to practice drawing. … They got married in 1936. Margit Anna recalls
that she had only one dress, but the president of OMIKE gave her a black-andwhite polka-dotted dress as a present: this became her wedding dress. The
‘festive’ wedding lunch at the OMIKE cafeteria was bean soup, followed by
noodles with poppy seeds.”244

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156. Photo album from about
1940 documenting the activities
of the Hanna Children’s Cafeteria, located in Kazinczy
Street, in Budapest’s old Jewish
quarter. Photographs by
Mr. Fekete, a Budapest
photographer.

9
Food
Industry
and
Trade
Kosher Food Factories
Kosher Wine Producers and Merchants
Food Shops and Street Vendors
Food Markets

F O O D I N D U S T RY A N D T R A D E

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KOSHER FOOD FACTORIES X

I

n the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth
centuries many factories specialized in producing foods according to the
laws of kashrut. Any rabbi with jurisdiction over the region who had an
opportunity to observe the ritual appropriateness of a product’s manufacturing
and processing could give a hechsher, a certificate testifying to the kosher nature
of it. Tragically, the tensions at the 1868/1869 Jewish Congress led to a split of
Hungarian Jewry into Orthodox, Neológ, and Status Quo Ante movements,
thus creating sharp divisions in their religious life and organization. This
hindered the general acceptance of the hechshers, since not everyone trusted
the issuer’s opinion. For example, since the Orthodox declared a general
prohibition against the Neológs (a branch of Hungarian Judaism promoting
modest religious reforms), Orthodox Jews didn’t accept a hechsher issued by
the Neológs, not even one by the highly conservative Status Quo Ante rabbis.
As another sign of these tensions, the Orthodox rabbis not only opposed that
a shochet should serve in Neológ communities, but they also didn’t allow them
to work for the Status Quo Ante branch of Hungarian Judaism, even though
it followed an Orthodox lifestyle. We can see this, for example, from a 1926
article printed in Zsidó Újság (Jewish Newspaper) about the Orthodox rabbis
declaring that a shochet whose kabole, permit to practice his trade, had been
issued by Orthodox rabbis may not become the ritual slaughterer of a Neológ
community.245 Furthermore, the Neológ rabbi József Schweitzer describes how
Orthodox authorities resisted that a shochet who had once been employed in
Status Quo Ante communities should be able to work for the Orthodox.246
Knowing these tensions, one can’t be surprised that factories producing kosher
foods asked mostly Orthodox rabbis to supervise their manufacturing processes
and to issue the hechsher attesting to its ritual appropriateness, since this was
the only way they could sell their products not only to the Neológs, but to
Orthodox people, too.
A few Jews in rural settlements made their own smoked goose meat in their
backyards. In addition, some kosher butchers sold meat they smoked in their
shop, and a few of them also made salamis and sausages. More typically,
however, specialized manufacturing plants produced the kosher smoked meat,
salamis, and sausages that were sold in the stores. Most of those plants were in

157. (page 298) The “Jewish”
side of the market on István
(today: Klauzál) Square in the
1890s. This side of the walkway
diagonally slicing through the
market was informally called
“Jewish” because it primarily
served the needs of such
customers. The sellers sold live
geese—much favored by the
Jews for their meat, fat, and
liver—from the baskets covered
with conical lids, which can be
seen at several sales stands
in the photograph. (Detail
of Fig. 183)

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F O O D I N D U S T RY A N D T R A D E

158. A clamp with which
inspectors of the Jewish
community sealed sacks or
bags of kosher food products
by pressing tin seals into the
bags’ folded tops. The
embossed text on the seals,
which are scattered around the
clamp, reads as follows: The
Rabbinate of the Pest Orthodox
Community. Such seals gave
assurance to buyers that the
contents of the bag were
certified kosher.

F O O D I N D U S T RY A N D T R A D E

159. Stamped imprints indicating
the kosher nature of products and
the receipt of gabella (communal
tax on kosher meat). The imprints,
starting from upper left: the
stamp of the rabbinical court (bet
din, Hebrew: “house of judgment”)
with the words “Orth. kosher,”
a stamp with the words “shel
Pesach” (for Pesach), a stamp with
the Hungarian words of “controller
of gabella tickets,” and other
stamps with the words “Orth.
kosher” and “shel Pesach.”
160. The big triangular stamp of
the rabbinical court (bet din) and
a rectangular one with the words
“shel Pesach”.

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161. A gabella was a receipt for
the surcharge paid after the
kosher slaughter of animals.
The collected surcharge went
to the Jewish community and
could be seen as an indirect tax
supporting it. These latenineteenth-century metal
gabellas, each a little less than
an inch in diameter and
carrying different face values,
were issued by the Jewish
community of Sopron, northwestern Hungary. Paper gabella
tickets and receipts resembling
postage stamps, frequently inkstamped by the community for
validation, were more common
than those made of metal.
People could later deduct the
value of the gabella from their
community tax. The arcane
Italian word of gabella ‒ which
means taxes, communal taxes,
or duty ‒ originally comes from
quabala, Arabian for “honor”
or “received.” In France, gabella
was the name of the salt tax,
collected until 1790.

Budapest, where there was the greatest demand for such products. True, only
a minority of the city’s Jewish population observed kashrut rules, but even this
meant far more people than the Orthodox population of any provincial town.
There were many such plants in the capital’s old Jewish quarter. In Dob Street,
for example, one could find one on practically every corner: Lipót Fleischmann’s salami factory was at number 11, Gyula Hoffer’s smoked meat plant
was at number 18, Ede Polacsek’s similar plant was for a while at 22, and Lipót
Skrek’s salami factory was located at number 27.247 The meat products of some
of the bigger Budapest factories were sold not only in the capital, but in
provincial towns as well.
The Rebenwurzl salami and smoked meat manufacturing company was
established a little later than the factory and retail shop of the Trenk Brothers at
25–27 Király Street, which specialized in similar products and is depicted in a
c. 1890 photograph (Fig. 4). But the Rebenwurzl plant, which was founded in
1885 and which by the 1930s also produced canned meats in addition to its
other products, survived far longer than the business of the Trenks. The sausage
manufacturing facility of Dezső Kővári, the successor of Rebenwurzl, continued
functioning until 2002 at the same location, at 41 Kazinczy Street. One of the
Rebenwurzl factory’s retail stores was in the Orczy House, but they had three
other such shops in Erzsébet- and Terézváros, two Budapest districts with large
Jewish populations. Lipót Skrek’s factory in Dob Street was the other big kosher
meat products manufacturing company, comparable to Rebenwurzl in capacity,
range of products, and wide distribution.
Ernő Schwarz, who was born in 1910 and whose family included several
kosher butchers, first learned the trade in his brother-in-law’s butcher shop in
Újpest and then worked as an apprentice in the Rebenwurzl factory from 1931
to 1933. “When I joined Rebenwurzl, I had a learned trade. There were two
big factories: the Skrek and the Rebenwurzl. Skrek had a big building in Dob
Street, a seven-story structure in which the shop occupied the street front. …
Those two owners only met when they were about to go to the slaughterhouse.
I was the intermediary between them. Old Samu Rebenwurzl told me: ‘Be so
kind and go to Skrek and tell him that I’ll be on the corner at ten in the

F O O D I N D U S T RY A N D T R A D E

morning.’ And they met before going to the slaughterhouse to discuss what
they would pay for the meat, so that one of them shouldn’t give more than the
other. There were seven apprentices at Rebenwurzl’s, I was the eighth. The old
boss allowed only one apprentice to observe when he mixed the meat for the
salamis and poured the paprika and pepper into it. He wouldn’t allow the rest
of us to get near. The other apprentices were cutting the meat. At first, they
didn’t permit me to work as an apprentice—they generally didn’t let young
apprentices work in the manufacturing—so I could only be a porter. We started
work in the factory at six in the morning. We delivered the goods by bicycle
to the shops. … I met my future wife when I was still with the factory. The
Rebenwurzls had about ten retail shops [this is incorrect: they had only four],
where they sold their goods and where the customers could get breakfast. My
wife, Helén Katz, led the shop in Garay Street.”248
Pareve category vegetable fats, which had been available since the 1910s,
were another important kosher product. They made the work of Jewish housewives significantly easier since they could be used in both fleishig and milchig

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162. Early-twentieth-century
advertisement of the Schmolka
and Kozma kosher salami and
smoked meat products factory
in Budapest. Retailers kept
stacks of such printed paper
slips and calculated the money
owed for the purchases on the
blank back sides of them.
163. Early-twentieth-century
advertisement of the Nagy and
Eichner kosher salami, sausage
and meat products factory with
branches in Budapest and
Vienna, Austria.
164. Hechsher (kosher
approval) stamp from Óbuda
from 1878. Most such stamps
included the rabbi’s monogram,
and they were used on
certificates stating the kosher
nature of food products and
nonfood items, such as
cleaning agents. The
certificates were issued by a
rabbi or a rabbinical court. The
stamps were also frequently
used on the packaging of
commercially sold products.
Hechsher stamps have a long
history: the Babylonian Talmud
(Shabbat 21b) mentions the first
example of such a kashrut seal
used by the kohen gadol (high
priest) on the storage
amphorae containing the olive
oil for the Menorah, the sevenbranched candelabrum that
provided light in the Jerusalem
Temple.

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165. The enameled metal sign of a Budapest store selling kosher poultry. The sign was either displayed
inside the store or in its shop window. It states that the store is under constant supervision of the
rabbinical authorities of the Autonomous Orthodox Jewish Community. It also warns that the supervision extends only to poultry sold whole, not to its cut-up pieces. The collection of the Museum
of Jewish Heritage in New York includes a similar enameled sign, made in Budapest in the 1930s.

F O O D I N D U S T RY A N D T R A D E

166. A Hungarian and Yiddish bilingual enameled
metal sign, which was displayed in a Budapest shop
to state that the goods sold there were under the
supervision of the rabbinical authorities of the
Autonomous Orthodox Jewish Community.

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dishes. Previously the dough of baked goods served in fleishig menus had to be
made with goose fat, while those in a milchig meal with butter. It was Dr.
Heinrich Schlink who discovered in late-nineteenth-century Germany how to
make cooking fat from coconuts. Initially, the product was called Mannheimer
Cocosbutter (Coco butter of Mannheim), but since 1894 it has been marketed
in Germany under the brand name of Palmin. In Austria a virtually identical
product was called Ceres, and in Hungary the best-known brand of such pareve
cooking fats had the same name. With time, rabbinical authorities officially
approved the sale of such cooking fats as kosher pareve cooking ingredients,
since they contained neither animal nor dairy products.
In addition to companies producing kosher cooking fats and oils, there
were also factories producing kosher dried pasta. Such pasta wasn’t allowed to
get in contact with any meat or dairy products or with equipment touched by
them. Furthermore, the eggs used in the manufacturing couldn’t contain any
blood drops and the flour had to be examined to make sure it had no worms
in it. While Jewish housewives purchased pareve cooking fats and oils in kosher
grocery stores, most of them made dried pasta at home. Nevertheless, there
were some women who bought it in the stores.

167. A double-page
advertisement from 1926 of
Lipót Skrek’s kosher salami and
sausage factory in Dob Street,
in Budapest’s old Jewish
quarter. The company also
manufactured smoked meat
products and goose sausages.
The photographs depict the
company’s modern manufacturing facility and retail store.
According to the ad, Skrek’s
products were also available
in all bigger provincial towns.

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168. Newspaper advertisement from
1927 of a Budapest factory
manufacturing kosher soap, cooking
fat, and cooking oil.
169. The Pest Jewish Community’s
ad from the April 13, 1894 issue
of Egyenlőség (Equality), a Jewish
weekly, in which the organization
declares that its members should buy
their matzo from the community’s
matzo bakeries, since its inspectors
are unable to supervise the
manufacturing of matzo coming from
other places, therefore they will
confiscate it.

170. An advertisement of the
Rebenwurzl kosher salami, smoked
meat, and canned meat products
manufacturing factory, which
celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in
1935. According to the ad: Rebenwurzl’s
canned meat has become popular not
only due to its tastiness but also since
“it is indispensable during foreign
travel, vacations, and excursions.”
171. A 1927 ad of the Franck brand of
chicory coffee substitute.

172. A 1935 advertisement of the
Ceres brand of kosher cooking fat.
This product, manufactured from
coconut oil, was marketed under
the name of Palmin in Germany
and Ceres in Austria and Hungary.
173. Advertisement of a kosher
dried pasta factory in Beled,
western Hungary.

174. Representatives of the
Pest Jewish Community visit
the community’s matzo bakery
in Tüzér Street in the 1920s.
Photograph by Kálmán
Boronkay.

Ever since the end of the nineteenth century more and more people
purchased machine-made matzo, which by the early twentieth century had
nearly supplanted the handmade ones, especially in the cities. According to
a 1914 newspaper report: “Electric power drives a legion of machines, and
a matzo-making shop in Budapest could easily be seen as a factory. Manual work
is reduced to a minimum and they produce more matzo in a day than formerly
in weeks. Here are some statistics: there are seven matzo-baking shops in the
capital, where approximately 200 workers find employment for fifty-five days.
The daily production of the shops varies between 4 and 7.5 tons and the seven
shops produce 40 tons of matzo in a workday. … Though this isn’t the main
issue, the Budapest Jewish community has 150,000 korona income from this
industry. The biggest matzo-baking shop is in Nyár Street. … Thirty-eight
employees work in the shop, most of them women, some unmarried, others
married. … The flour and water are placed in the mixing machine, which
produces the dough. The other machines knead it and roll it into a nearly paperthin sheet. The rolling machine is very cleverly combined with the perforating
and cutting equipment. This is a Hungarian patent, the invention of Nándor
N. Radó, which by now is used all over the world. It is similar to the constantly
revolving baking oven, which is also Radó’s clever invention. The machine
consists of a huge, tin-covered board on which two pairs of rollers move with
speeds to match the movement of the dough. This perforates the matzo. The

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cutting machine closely follows the perforating rollers and cuts perfect circles of
the dough, which are transferred, three or four at a time, into the revolving
baking oven. This oven is a simple, but highly inventive machine. It is a baking
hole, similar to those one finds in every bakery, only that its inside is constantly
revolving, just like the merry-go-round in the amusement park. Radó first used
it in 1895, and today it is used for baking matzo even in the most remote regions
of Russia. … One can’t help noticing the immaculate cleanness of the shop. …
Several employees of the Jewish community are constantly present during
manufacturing, and Rabbi Dr. Illés Adler also frequently comes to make his
thorough and conscientious rounds of inspection.”249

KOSHER WINE PRODUCERS AND MERCHANTS

Wine played a role in lots of Jewish religious ceremonies, and therefore traditional Jews needed to keep some of it in their homes, even if they didn’t drink
it with their meals. These Jews, however, couldn’t drink the Gentiles’ wine,
which religious rules considered the “wine of idolatry” and hence prohibited.
Instead, they needed so-called kosher wine that either had to be made by Jews
or produced under their continuous supervision. Hungarian Jewish communities must have used kosher wine earlier, too, but since the beginning of the
seventeenth century we have written records of its production. This was
especially significant in the wine-growing region of Tokaj-Hegyalja and in some
other areas of northern Hungary. According to Zsigmond Csoma: “Jews
wearing socks were treading the grapes, which they had purchased for this
purpose well before the grape harvest. They stored and fermented the treaded
grape juice in kosher barrels, which were kept in a special, kosher section of
the wine cellar. … In Tokaj non-Jews could be present at the production of
kosher wine, provided that the rabbi was there, too, and that they didn’t touch
the must, the fermenting juice, which would have made the wine treif, not
kosher. Cleanliness was the main thing. They kept the kosher wine barrels as
clean as their Pesach dishes.”250 But they produced kosher wine in other regions
too: “As early as in the mid-nineteenth century so-called kosher wine was
produced in great quantities in Kecskemét [a town in east-central Hungary].
… At the invitation of Herz Kecskeméti a large number of Jewish harvest
workers from Slovakia and Poland came to Kecskemét at grape harvest time;
they picked the grapes and they pressed the kosher wine into kosher
containers.”251 Bottled kosher wine was sold at many places in the country, but
naturally it was most in demand in cities, towns, and urban neighborhoods
with a fairly big Jewish population.

175. Stamp of the matzo bakery
of the Budapest Autonomous
Orthodox Community, which
was located in the basement
of the community’s building
in Dob Street, in Budapest’s
old Jewish quarter.
176. Hungarian-language
hechsher (kosher certification
of rabbinical authorities) stamp
of wine approved for consumption during Passover.

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177. Advertisements of two
kosher wine stores from the
1920s.
178. Advertisements of various
kosher groceries and poultry
shops in Budapest. Most of the
food items available in the
groceries were not prepackaged
but sold by weight. The stores
typically sold not only dry
goods, but also milk, butter,
cheese, oil, vegetable fat, and
cold cuts. One of the
advertisers also sold kosher
wine, slivovitz, and matzo for
Passover, and even firewood
and coal for heating.

Though drinking pálinka, a strong double-distilled spirit made of fruit, was
not mandatory at any religious service or holiday, it was customary in many
Jewish families to drink a small amount of it once in a while, for instance when
returning from the synagogue after the Yom Kippur fast or even more commonly
during Pesach. Some distilleries produced a special kind of slivovitz (plum
pálinka) for Passover, for which a rabbinical authority certified with a hechsher
that throughout the whole manufacturing process it hadn’t come into contact
with anything, be it food or nonfood, that is forbidden during the holiday.
Typically the label on the bottle included the words “Kosher for Passover” or
“kosher shel Pesach.” Gyula Krúdy (1878‒1933), a Hungarian writer whose works
frequently include sensuous descriptions of food and sympathetic portrayals of
Jews, mentions in his 1930 novel Boldogult úrfikoromban (In my late, lamented
youth) the slivovitz sold in Jewish liquor stores. He also describes that some
people considered the slivovitz made for Pesach the best. In the novel one of the
customers of the restaurant “To the city of Vienna” in Király Street sends a porter
to a nearby liquor store to buy plum pálinka for him. “Put this money into your
cap, since I wouldn’t want you to return and say that you had lost the money.
… You should walk on Király Street and in the third street counted from Vasvári
Pál Street … you will see a red-bearded Jew who at this time of the day certainly
will be standing in front of his store. … I would like to drink good, clean, real
slivovitz, the kind Jews make for their Easter. Tell this to that red-bearded Jew,
who in the third street is standing at the threshold of his store. Three steps lead
up to his store.”252 Based on this description, the liquor store must have been in
Rumbach Sebestyén Street. I have no idea whether the store really existed or was
the creation of the writer’s imagination, but around 1926 Mózes Zucker,
a Shabbat-keeping Jew, indeed had a wine store at 5 Rumbach Sebestyén Street,
an advertisement of which can be seen in Fig. 17.

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FOOD SHOPS AND STREET VENDORS

179. A kosher poultry store in
the 1930s in Budapest’s old
Jewish quarter, in Dohány
Street. The store was offering
freshly killed poultry, cold cuts
made of poultry meat, as well
as fruits and grocery items.

Jewish neighborhoods typically had groceries specializing in products needed
in the kitchens of religious households. People, for example, went to such stores
when they wished to buy sugar, nuts, and other baking ingredients for Passover.
If such articles were factory packaged they typically carried the Hebrew words
of “kosher shel Pesach,” that is, kosher for Passover. Of course, the stores sold
not only special products for Pesach, but also kosher articles for the rest of the
year. For instance, religious people bought their vinegar in such stores, since
the prohibition of the Gentiles’ wine extended to products made from it, such
as wine vinegar. The Zsidó Újság (Jewish Newspaper), which generally expressed
the views of the Orthodox, printed several articles in 1926 about the concerns
whether chocolate, candy, and sardines sold in the stores were really kosher.
The last article in this series stated the following: “The customers will know
that it is allowed to buy chocolate, candy, and sardines only when they were
manufactured in a plant under ritual supervision.”253 In addition to kosher
groceries one could find kosher butchers in nearly every town, even in small
towns like Moson, while in Budapest and in the bigger towns there were also
kosher poultry shops selling freshly killed birds.
Shops specializing in milk and dairy products, like the one in Budapest depicted in Fig. 20, were also quite common in urban neighborhoods with a large
Jewish population. An article in a July 1926 issue of Zsidó Újság (Jewish Newspaper) describes that such products were especially in great demand in summer,
during the Nine Days period.254 It was a bit harder to find stores specializing
in kosher cheese, but luckily a photograph (Fig. 21) from the 1890s depicts
such a store in Király Street, and what is more, one with a Yiddish signboard,
which was becoming rare by then in Budapest and could be infrequently found
outside this neighborhood.
People in Budapest bought their fish mainly in open-air markets or in
covered market halls, like at the fish seller in the Hold Street market hall seen
in Fig. 14. Salt herring could be purchased at the same markets, but in towns
like Munkács (Mukacheve, Ukraine), where some 44.4 percent of the population was Jewish in 1910, sometimes street vendors sold it, too (see Fig. 180).
Herring sellers were once common in many larger Jewish communities, because
herring was plentiful, needed no refrigeration when kept in barrels filled with
a strongly salted brine, was easy to transport to great distances by train in
barrels, and was therefore relatively cheap even in regions far from the sea, in
some places even cheaper than freshwater fish. Not only were most of the
herring sellers Jewish, but the majority of the importers, too. In the first quarter
of the twentieth century, Ignác Strasser, Laurent Stern’s maternal grandfather,

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owned such a business in Nagyvárad (Oradea, Romania). The herring was
shipped to him from Germany in barrels.
Before it could be eaten or used in cooking, salt herring had to be soaked
at home for days in several changes of water to rid it of saltiness. Jews most
frequently placed pieces of this fish in a marinade of vinegar, sugar, and raw
onions to make pickled herring, made rolls of its fillets (see recipe on page
157), prepared chopped herring by mincing the fillets and mixing them with
chopped, hard-cooked eggs and onions, or baked the desalted fish for a warm
meal. Laurent Stern’s mother in Budapest, like most Jews throughout the
country, never bought marinated filets in a store, but made it herself at home
by desalting and pickling salt herring. In summer, this was frequently the fish
course at their Saturday midday meal instead of jellied fish.

MARKETS

Most families before 1945—regardless whether they were Gentile or Jewish
and whether they lived in big cities or in small towns—purchased most of the
vegetables, fruits, and live poultry at markets, mostly open-air ones, although
in Budapest there were also large market halls filled with sales stands. My greatgrandmother in Moson, a small town near the Austrian border, bought the few
vegetables and fruits she didn’t grow in her garden, as well as the live fish and
young goose at the market that was held twice a week, on Thursdays and
Saturdays, along one side of Main Street. Of course, the Moson Jews used the
market only on Thursdays.
István (today: Klauzál) Square, the main marketplace of Budapest’s old
Jewish quarter, was only a short walk from the big Orthodox synagogue in
Kazinczy Street. “The market is divided into two sections: the Christian northeastern section and the Jewish southwestern section,” wrote the Jewish writer
Adolf Ágai in a book about nineteenth-century Budapest. “On the Gentile side
of the walkway dividing the market split pig carcasses are displayed, here on
the Jewish side, especially in wintertime, there are hecatombs of shochet-killed

180. Jewish woman selling
salt herring from a barrel
in Munkács (Mukacheve in
Ukraine) in the late 1930s.
Photograph by Roman Vishniac.
181. Advertisement of a store
offering dairy products and
freshly roasted coffee, and
another ad of a merchant
selling freshly killed kosher
poultry at the Garay Square
open-air market.

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182. The “kosher dividing line”
of the open-air market on
István (today: Klauzál) Square.
On the left side of the cartoon
we see the “Jewish section”
with a market woman selling
slaughtered geese and on the
right side the “non-Jewish
section” with a butcher selling
pork he had cut from the pig
carcasses hanging next to him.
This cartoon was originally
published in 1908 in Adolf
Ágai’s book Journey from Pest
to Budapest, 1843–1907. The
book’s title refers to the fact
that in 1843 Pest was still
a separate city, not yet incorporated into Budapest. So this
was a journey merely in time,
not to a different place. Ágai
was one of the best humorists
of his age and the editor of the
most popular comic magazine
in Hungary.

fattened geese. Those don’t grunt anymore in this direction, and these don’t
gaggle back at the pigs.” A cartoon illustrating Ágai’s book shows the walkway
diagonally dividing the market with the slaughtered geese sold on its left side
and the butcher selling pork on its right. The c. 1896 photograph of Fig. 183,
depicting the market from the direction of the “Jewish section”, must have
been made when fattened geese were not yet in season, since it shows the big
baskets in which farmers brought the live young geese to the market. According
to Ágai, there had been more geese for sale in the market in the earlier parts of
the nineteenth century than toward the end of it, when he wrote his book:
“But nowadays there are few geese on the market. They stood up for a long
time to the competition with the pigs. But the proverb claiming that a flock
of geese can defeat a pig proved wrong: the pigs won out over the geese.” What
was left of the open-air market moved to the huge market hall, which opened
in 1897 on one side of the square. “Pork, geese, and fish moved to the market
hall, and regular, indoor restaurants replaced the open-air eateries that once
had been popular at the market. … Now István Square has turned into a park.
In the spring flower clusters are swaying there on lilac bushes, spreading their
sweet scent, while in the summer sweating people who couldn’t leave the city
try to cool off in the shade of the wilting young trees.”

183. On the left side of this
1896 photograph we see the
“Jewish half ” of the István
(today: Klauzál) Square
marketplace and on the other
side of the diagonal path
bisecting the square the
so-called “non-Jewish half.”
Photograph by György Klösz.
184. Stamps to mark young
geese and hen. Owners of
poultry shops, butchers, and
maybe also sellers at the
markets used such stamps
on their records and invoices.
But it is also possible that
they used them on cut-up
parts of the poultry or on slips
of paper to indicate the type
of bird for sale.

10
Characteristic
Dishes
Challah
Gefilte Fish
Walnut Fish
Boiled Beef
Chopped Eggs
Cholent
Kugel
Ganef
Stuffed Goose Neck
Tzimmes
Flódni
Kindli
Hamantasche
Matzo Balls
Chremsel
Goose Giblets with Rice Pilaf

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

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M

ost of the specialties of Jewish cuisine are more or less closely tied
to religious holidays, but some of them are occasionally served at
other times, too. It would almost require a separate book if I tried
to discuss all the characteristic courses, but I will describe at least a few of them,
their histories, and how they were prepared in Hungary. In addition, I will
offer one or two authentic recipes for each. First, I will present the typical
courses of the Shabbat in the approximate order as they were generally served
at dinner on Friday and at midday meal on Saturday, then the dishes tied to
other holidays, and finally those Jewish specialties that are not connected to
any particular religious festival. I have described certain courses in some detail
in previous chapters, so I will not write about them here again.

CHALLAH

Like in other religions, bread is an important symbol in Judaism and an integral
part of several rituals. To understand the significance of the Shabbat challah
we have to go back about two thousand years to the period prior to the
destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. At that time when Jews made
some kind of dough they were required to bake a loaf from a part of it and
give it to the kohanim, the priests. In addition, every week twelve loaves of
bread, symbolizing the twelve tribes of Israel, were placed in the Temple. Those
loaves were made of unleavened dough and were flat, like some Near Eastern
flatbreads. After the destruction of the Temple, the dining table at home
symbolically replaced the altar (in fact, the home is called mikdash me’at, a
small Sanctuary, in Hebrew), and the two loaves of Shabbat bread replaced the
twelve loaves required in the Temple. Instead of the loaf that in ancient Israel
used to be given to the kohanim, religious Jews of later generations burn a small
portion of dough (this is a challah, a word that is used both for this portion
and the Shabbat loaves themselves) so as to avoid the appearance of personally
benefiting from it. Though opinions differ about the minimum quantity of
dough from which the challah must be taken, according to the most widely
accepted view one should separate and burn an approximately 1 ounce piece
from any batch of dough made with more than 2 pounds and 11 ounces of
flour.255

185. (page 320) Detail of
a picture postcard depicting
a Hassidic Jew as he dips
a piece of challah into salt
during the Kiddush ceremony
that greets the beginning
of Shabbat or another holiday.
The glass of wine in front
of him on the table was also
a part of the ritual.

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Dairy Challah (Butterbarches)
From Therese Lederer’s German-language Jewish
cookbook, published in Budapest in 1876.
Mix 2 liters of fine flour with 5 kr. [purchasable for
5 krajcárs] yeast and enough lukewarm milk to make
a soft dough. Knead into this a little salt, 12.5 dekas
sugar, 12.5 dekas butter, and as many big raisins as you
prefer. If you wish it to be especially tasty, mix a few
eggs into it, as well as grated lemon zest and chopped
almonds. When the dough is well kneaded, allow it to

rise at a lukewarm place, until it doubles in height.
Now divide this into two parts, and each half into
3 pieces. Knead all the 6 dough pieces once again, and
make 6 long, round sausages of each. But 3 of them
should be much longer than the rest. Now make
a braid from the 3 long sausages, and do the same
with the 3 shorter ones. Following this, lay the shorter
braid on the longer one, and squeeze both braids
together at their ends. Finally, sprinkle poppy seeds
over the barches and bake it.

The Babylonian Talmud, which was finalized in the sixth century but
incorporates earlier rabbinical opinions, is the first to mention (Tractate Shabbat
117b) that on Friday nights the benediction of bread must be said over two
loaves (lechem mishneh, Hebrew: “two loaves”). The two loaves are usually
thought to represent the double portion of manna gathered for the Shabbat.
(Manna is the wonderful “bread from heaven” sent by God to feed the Israelites
during the years of Exodus, the wandering in the desert.) At that time the name
of the Shabbat loaf was still lechem (plural: lechanim); the Austrian rabbi Joseph
ben Moses (1423–1490) was the first to refer to it in a document as “challah” in
the late fifteenth century,256 though even after that many people continued to
call it lechem. According to Joseph ben Moses, the Shabbat loaf he saw in the
Austrian home of Israel Isserlein, his German-born teacher, was kneaded with
eggs, oil, and a little water. German Jews started perhaps in the seventeenth
century to bake braided Shabbat loaves instead of the shape they had used earlier.
They probably adopted this braided form, which they called berches or barches,
from the Gentiles’ special Sunday loaves. Although there are scholars who
maintain that the tradition of the braided challah started in the Middle Ages, it
probably evolved much later since no source mentions it before the end of the
seventeenth century.257 The name is perhaps a corruption of the Yiddish broches,
blessings. John Cooper cites another explanation in his Eat and Be Satisfied: that
the name was derived from the first word of a Hebrew phrase frequently
engraved on the knives used for cutting the Shabbat bread: “The blessing of the
Lord, it maketh rich” (Proverbs 10:22). While in Germany, Austria, Alsace, and
in Hungary Jews adopted the name barches for their Shabbat loaves, in regions
east of Hungary, such as in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania, challah

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

continued to be the name of it. Ashkenazi Jews generally bake elongated braided
challahs, while Sephardim mostly use plain rectangular or round flat loaves,
though they, too, make fancier shapes for festivals.
With increasingly affordable sugar in the nineteenth century, sweet versions
of challah became popular, especially in Galicia and northern Ukraine, but for
certain holidays (like Purim and Simchat Torah) in Hungary, too. On the other
hand, most German, Austrian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, and northern Polish Jews
continued to prefer the salty version. With time barches became known among
Hungarian Gentiles, too, and eventually it came to mean in Hungary any similar
slightly salty braided egg bread, Jewish or not, that has been made shiny with
an egg glaze and sprinkled with poppy seeds.
Barches also existed in versions made without eggs (wasser challah), with
more than the usual number of eggs (eier challah), and with milk and butter
(butter challah), the latter one, for example, for Shavuot. People made unusually shaped challahs for certain holidays: for Rosh Hashanah, for instance,
round or spiral ones. They frequently mixed raisins or chopped dried fruit into
the dough on Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot. But regardless of whether the
challah had a regular shape or an unusual one, it had to be made of a finer
dough than the weekday bread in order to reflect the happy, festive mood of
the Saturday. Even those who could afford only dark bread during the week,

Challah (Barchesz)
From Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld’s cookbook A zsidó nő
szakácskönyve (The Jewish woman’s cookbook),
published in 1927.
Pour 1.5 kilos of fine, sifted flour into the kneading
trough. Cook 2 medium-sized potatoes, peel them and
mash them. Dissolve 2 dekas of yeast in a little
lukewarm water sweetened by 3 to 4 sugar cubes. Make
a recess in the middle of the flour heap, and into it add
one egg, the dissolved yeast, the potatoes, a level
spoon salt, and as much lukewarm water (about
¾ liter) as necessary for a dough slightly softer than
what you would use for bread. While kneading the
dough, add a little melted Ceres [a brand of pareve
fat]. Keep kneading it until it separates from your hand
by itself. Let it rise covered at a warm place for
2 hours, then divide it into parts and braid it. You

should bake 4 loaves for the Shabbat: a bigger one for
Friday evening, another big one for Saturday noon,
a smaller one for the Saturday afternoon meal, and
a fourth, small one for Saturday evening. (Serve
2 loaves with each holiday meal, but for Saturday
evening one will do. Before you start braiding the
challah, according to religious rule you must separate
an egg-sized piece from the dough, say the traditional
blessing over it, and throw it into the fire or offer
a comparable charitable gift.)

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Falshe Fish
(Hamis hal)
From Auntie Giti’s A zsidó
háziasszony könyve (The
Jewish housewife’s book),
published in 1935.
The book’s recipes are
meant for four people.
Grind the breast meat
of a hen or turkey. Mix it
well with a soaked and
strongly squeezed bread
roll, a little very finely
chopped onion, a little
salt, black pepper, sugar,
1 spoonful of chicken fat,
and 1 to 2 eggs. In a pot
cook 2 to 3 onions,
carrot, and parsley root,
plus salt, black pepper,
paprika, a little sugar,
and 1 spoon chicken fat
until the vegetables are
half tender. With
dampened hands form
dumplings or little fish
shapes from the meat
mixture, place them in
the hot liquid, and cook
them for 15 to 20
minutes. Transfer them
to a serving platter, and
strain the liquid over
them. If you made it with
not too much water and
kept it in a cool place, it
will jell by the next day.

usually made with a mixture of rye and wheat flours, used the more expensive
white flour for the challah dough.
Many Jews baked the challah at home, even though they purchased their
bread from a baker during the week or—as my great-grandmother had done
in Moson, western Hungary—took the homemade bread dough to him so he
could bake it in his big, professional oven. This was consistent with what they
had learned from the Shulchan Arukh, the compendium of rules pertaining to
the Jewish lifestyle: “Even in homes where, during the week, the bread is
purchased from a Jewish baker, in honor of the Shabbat it is proper to bake
[the challah] at home. In this manner, the women will be able to fulfill the
mitzvah of separating challoh. This shares an intrinsic connection to Friday.
Adam, the first man, was created on Friday. He was considered as the challoh
of the world. Through his wife’s sin, he was ruined. Therefore, it is proper for
women to compensate for and correct this matter.”258

GEFILTE FISH

For centuries Friday dinner started with some fish course, for example, with gefilte
fish (Yiddish: stuffed fish), fish in walnut sauce, poached sour fish, jellied fish,
or marinated herring. As mentioned, this tradition had to do with the meaning
of the Shabbat, which represents a foretaste of the happy Messianic Age for the
Jews. According to the Talmud (Bava Batra or Baba Bathra 74b and 75a) at the
dawn of this age the righteous will feast with great joy from the flesh of the giant
sea monster or fish, the Leviathan. Therefore, religious Jews ate fish at least once
a week. Jews considered the Friday fish course so important that they rather served
a dish called falshe fish (Yiddish: “mock fish”) if they had trouble getting good
quality fish or in families where people were not fond of the real thing. Some
Hassidic families ate such mock fish during Passover for a different reason:
because they worried that the real fish might have been preserved in grain alcohol
during transportation. Falshe fish pieces are poached dumplings, which look like
gefilte fish, but are really made of ground chicken or veal.
Auntie Giti (Mrs. Aladár Adler), the author of a Jewish cookbook published
in 1935 in Kecskemét, east-central Hungary, also emphasized the importance
of the Friday evening fish course: “Fish is virtually indispensable at the Friday
evening meal. We should rather make only a small quantity of it in periods when
fish is expensive, but shouldn’t just omit it. If we are not able to buy fresh fish,
we should serve on Friday evenings marinated herring, ‘Russian fish’, or falshe
fish as an appetizer.”259 The “Russian fish” (called ruszli in Hungarian), was
herring preserved in a brine of vinegar, salt, and onions.

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Stuffed Fish for Friday Night
(Gefilte fis – töltött hal, péntek estére)
From the book Régi zsidó ételek (Old Jewish dishes) by
Zorica Herbst-Krausz.
Ingredients: a pike weighing about 1 kilo, 2 slices of
challah, 1 egg, 2 onions, 2 parsley roots, 1 carrot, 2 garlic
cloves, salt, crushed black pepper.
Remove the innards and the inner parts of the gills from
the pike. With a sharp knife cut the skin around the neck
and push your hand under the skin. Carefully and
slowly, without tearing it, pull off the skin in the
direction of the tail. Now remove the fish meat from the
backbone and grind it. Mix the ground meat well with

the soaked and squeezed-out challah slices, salt, egg,
black pepper, and 1 of the onions, grated. Fill the fish
skin with this mixture. Prepare the liquid by cooking the
cleaned vegetables, the other onion, as well as the head
and backbone of the fish in a little salted water until
tender. Strain this liquid over the fish and cook it very
slowly. Transfer the fish to a serving platter, pour the
liquid over it, and allow it to jell.

Fish is an important symbol in other religions, too, but in Judaism more
kinds of symbolic meaning are attached to it than to any other food with the
exception of bread. It is not only a symbol of the arrival of the Messianic Age,
but also of good fortune, prosperity, and fertility. This last meaning comes from
what God ordered the fish to do when he created them: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas” (Gen. 1:22). Because of this association with
fertility, fish are frequently depicted on illustrated ketubot, religious marriage
documents. In addition to these meanings, fish can also stand for innocence,
since they didn’t perish in the Flood and as a result they are free of sin.
Gefilte fish used to be a frequent fish course on Friday evenings and on the
eves of other holidays, especially in Hungary’s northeastern regions. In the
chapter about regional and cultural differences I’ve already described how the
tradition of making gefilte fish, originally from medieval Germany, became
ubiquitous among Polish, Ukrainian, and Galician Jews, and how in the early
nineteenth century people migrating from those regions to the northeastern parts
of Hungary made it popular there, too. I also mentioned that instead of the
labor-intensive real stuffed fish preparation an easier-to-make version evolved,
which was also called gefilte fish, but in reality it dispensed with stuffing fish
forcemeat into fish skin and made poached dumplings or sliceable logs from a
mixture of chopped fish meat, challah or matzo crumbs, and eggs. As the
introduction to this book describes, one of the reasons for the popularity of the

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bone-free gefilte fish during Shabbat was that it presented a way to avoid the act
of borer, the removal of the inedible from the edible, like the tiny bones from
the poached fish slices, which counted as prohibited work on Saturdays.
Occasionally, Jews in other regions of Hungary also made stuffed fish,
which they rarely called gefilte fish, but the version of skinless dumplings was
most common in the northeastern regions. The pre-1945 Hungarian Jewish
cookbooks include recipes only for real stuffed fish, mostly pike, but none of
those volumes call this preparation gefilte fish. Those cookbooks weren’t
published in the northeastern regions, and probably this is why both the
poached dumpling version and the gefilte fish name are missing from them.
Although a cookbook of old Hungarian Jewish dishes by Zorica Herbst-Krausz,
published in 1984, includes two recipes with the title “gefilte fish,” they describe the preparation of real stuffed fish and not the dumpling version.

WALNUT FISH

Walnut fish was frequently served as a first course at Friday night dinners, but
it was also traditional at Purim and other holidays. Even within the Ashkenazi
Jewish culture, a dish that is most typical in one country can be quite peripheral
in another. Chopped liver and pickles, for example, occupy a less central role
in Hungarian Jewish cuisine than in the United States, and sorrel soup (schav),
a great favorite of Polish, Lithuanian, and American Jews, isn’t considered a
Jewish dish in Hungary. The situation is reversed in the case of fish in walnut
sauce, which used to be one of the best-known and loved Jewish dishes in

Walnut Fish (Diós hal Purimra)
From a c. 1905 recipe collection by Mrs. József Doros,
née Frida Berger (1882, Moson–1963, Budapest), my
great-grandmother Riza’s niece.
Comment: The only change I made in adapting the
original recipe was to cut the fish into thick slices
instead of poaching it whole. This eliminated the need
for a fish poacher and produced a more flavorful sauce
because the slices could be poached in less liquid than
the whole fish. The original recipe offered the option of

using either carp or pike for the dish; I like equally the
more assertive flavor of carp and the delicate flavor of
pike. A related recipe, called Jewish fish (Zsidóhal) can
be found on page 150.
Clean and salt a not too fatty 2 kilo carp or pike. Bring
3 liters water with 1 sliced onion, a little black pepper,
bay leaf, 1 sliced carrot and parsnip, and a little salt to
a boil. Cook this for c. 25 minutes and only then add the
fish, which you should simmer slowly until tender. When

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

it is tender, transfer it with a slotted lifter to a platter
and keep it warm. Purée the vegetables in the liquid,
mix 2 egg yolks with a spoonful of flour, and pour the
liquid over this. Add a little sugar and chopped walnuts
to this sauce, and pour it over the fish. Serve it with
cooked and halved potatoes or noodles.
Modern version:
Ingredients for 5 servings: 1 whole carp or pike, 1.8 to
2.2 kilos, cleaned and gutted, 1½ teaspoons salt,
1 medium onion, cleaned and thinly sliced, 1 big carrot,
cleaned and sliced, 1 parsnip, cleaned and sliced, 1 bay
leaf, ¾ teaspoon whole black peppers, coarsely
crushed, ½ teaspoon salt, 1½ liters water, 2 egg yolks,
1½ tablespoons flour, 12 dekas walnut, 2 teaspoons
sugar, 3 tablespoons chopped parsley.

Preparation:
1. Cut off the head and tail of the fish. Cut the fish into
5 or 6 slices, each about 1½” thick. Rinse the fish
slices, pat them dry with a paper towel, and sprinkle
them with 1½ teaspoons salt. Place them on a platter,
cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes
to 2 hours.
2. Meanwhile, clean and slice the vegetables and put
them into a 10” sauté pan. Add bay leaf, crushed
peppercorns, ½ teaspoon salt, and 1½ quarts water.
Bring it to a boil, lower heat, and simmer for
25 minutes. Preheat oven to 180°F.
3. Add the fish to this court bouillon in the pan by
carefully placing the slices on their cut sides so that
they can be submerged in the least amount of liquid.
If necessary, add a little more water to barely cover the
fish slices. Bring the liquid back to a boil, lower heat,
cover, and gently simmer for 12 minutes. With
a spatula, carefully lift the slices out of the liquid,

transfer them onto a large platter, loosely cover them
with aluminum foil, and place them in the preheated
oven to keep warm.
4. Place egg yolks in a medium bowl, whisk them, add
flour, and whisk well to make a smooth paste. With
a ladle, little by little add about 2 cups court bouillon,
allowing each time for the hot liquid to cool in the
ladle and always stopping to whisk the egg mixture
to make sure that there are no lumps of flour in it.
5. Bring the remaining court bouillon to a strong boil
and boil to reduce it by about half. Remove and discard
the bay leaf. Purée vegetables in the pan with a handheld blender, tilting the pan to make sure that the
head of the blender stays completely submerged in the
liquid. If you don’t have a hand-held blender, you can
purée the vegetables in a regular blender, a food
processor, or with a food mill.
6. Very slowly add the diluted egg mixture to the
puréed vegetables and stir to distribute. Slowly warm
the sauce in the pan over low heat, constantly stirring
it. Don’t bring it to a boil or the eggs will curdle. Stop
as soon as the sauce has thickened enough to coat the
back of a spoon.
7. Coarsely chop the walnuts and add them to the
sauce. Stir sugar into the sauce. The sauce should be
slightly sweet, but not cloyingly so. Add more sugar,
if you wish, and adjust the rest of the seasoning, if you
feel this is necessary.
8. Serve it with small boiled potatoes or boiled egg
noodles. Place a fish slice on each preheated serving
plate, ladle a little sauce over it, and sprinkle it with
a little chopped parsley.

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Hungary but is hardly known in the United States. This dish might be a rare
example of Sephardi influence in Hungarian Jewish cooking, because the few
similar recipes I found in foreign Jewish cookbooks listed them as typical
Sephardi dishes, mainly from Georgia, Turkey, or Iran. Perhaps it was also
Sephardim who transmitted it to Italy (pesce freddo all salsa di noce), where
some Jews liked to eat it during Shabbat and at Pesach. While it used to be a
favorite of Hungarian Jews, it is unlikely that it was as well known in other
parts of the Ashkenazi world, since it is missing from several important Jewish
cookbooks published in Central and Western Europe toward the end of the
nineteenth century: I couldn’t find it either in the 1875 Berlin edition of
Rebekka Wolf ’s work, in Sarah Cohn’s c. 1880 volume published in Pozsony
(Bratislava, Slovakia), in Flora Wolff ’s or Mrs. Joseph Gumprich’s works
brought out in 1888 in Berlin and Trier, and in the 1890 enlarged edition of a
comprehensive volume by Marie Kauders, put out in Prague. Although the
latter work includes a recipe for fish with almonds, that is a different dish
because of the almonds and various other dissimilar features. If walnut fish
indeed shows Sephardi influence, this would be quite unusual in the
predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish culture of Hungary.
But regardless of its origin, walnut fish had certainly been popular among
Hungarian Jews at least since the middle of the nineteenth century, perhaps
even earlier, which is documented by a previously quoted article in a February

186. The recipe of “Walnut fish
for Purim” from the collection
of Purim and Passover recipes
assembled by Mrs. József Doros,
née Frida Berger (1882, Moson–
1963, Budapest) around 1905.
Left of the description of
walnut fish, we can see the end
of her recipe for fláden (flódni),
a typical Purim pastry.

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

1864 issue of the magazine Vasárnapi Újság (Sunday Newspaper) about a poor
used-clothes peddler: “He gladly subsists on dry bread and onions during the
week, only to be able to sit at the head of the table on Friday evenings, …
when the room is filled with the wonderful smell of the carp in walnut sauce
on the table.” Decades after this, the dish was still popular, as can be seen from
an open letter Samu Haber wrote in 1895 to Porzó, one of the pen names of
the writer and editor Adolf Ágai, in which he jokingly complained that Ágai
hadn’t mentioned it in his article about Jewish cuisine: “And my dear Porzó,
how could you leave out walnut fish from Jewish cuisine? How could you scare
all the Jews this way, even some of those who are reform-minded? By leaving
out this dish, you are ignoring the best-loved course of Fridays and the eves of
holidays!”261 Both Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld’s 1927 cookbook and Auntie Giti’s
work from 1935 feature one or two recipes for walnut fish, and Zorica HerbstKrausz’s work even includes three versions of it. Walnut pike is also featured
in George Lang’s The Cuisine of Hungary. Although the dish was most common
among Jews, Gentiles served it too, only not as frequently.

BOILED BEEF

Perhaps it will surprise many that I mention this dish among the Jewish specialties. But boiled beef definitely belongs to this group: it was a nearly
indispensable course on the tables of religious Jews on Friday nights and some
other holidays. Of course, Hungarian cuisine is also fond of boiled beef—it
was one of the favorites of the great writer Gyula Krúdy (1878‒1933), who
wrote a good deal about it—but the dish was served less frequently in nonJewish households than among the Jews, especially among the religious ones.
Poor Jews rarely ate meat during the week, but they did everything to make
sure their Friday night table featured steaming plates of boiled beef. The weekly
menus recommended by Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld in her Jewish cookbook, first
published in 1927, might differ according to the seasonal ingredients, but they
agree in one thing: in spring, summer, autumn, and winter invariably boiled
beef served with a sauce follows the first course of soup at Friday dinner.
While earlier goose had been the characteristic festival food among Ashkenazim, in the late medieval period it was dethroned by beef. Before this, many
families kept cattle, but after the end of the sixteenth century the land, which
until then had been mainly used as pasture, was increasingly ploughed and
planted, and therefore beef became more expensive, though even so it remained a favorite of Ashkenazim. As the German rabbi Jair Chaim Bachrach
(1638‒1702) remarked: “The taste of poultry doesn’t highten the joy of a festival

Tasty
Boiled
Beef (Jóízű
marhahús)
From Mrs. Márton
Rosenfeld’s cookbook
A zsidó nő szakácskönyve
(The Jewish woman’s
cookbook), published in
1927.
Remove the finger-thick
slices of fatty and tender
boiled beef from their
cooking liquid and quickly
brown them in hot fat, so
that they become slightly
crisp on the outside. Place
them on a serving platter,
sprinkle with finely
chopped chives, and serve
immediately. Serve them
with small new potatoes
and with sorrel sauce in
a separate cup.

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Beef Boiled in Soup (Levesben kifőtt hús)
From Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld’s cookbook A zsidó nő
szakácskönyve (The Jewish woman’s cookbook),
published in 1927.
Comment: This is originally a Viennese dish, where they
call it Tellerfleisch (soup plate meat). In Hungarian it was
either called beef boiled in soup or tányérhús, the mirror
translation of the Viennese original. In Vienna it is
frequently served as a midmorning meal
(Gabelfrühstück).

a little hot, clear soup over it. Cut little balls from whole
cooked carrots, heat them in a little fat and chopped
parsley, and garnish the meat with these little balls and
two bunches of parsley on its sides. Serve the meat this
way, and sprinkle it with finely chopped chives.

Fatty, marbled short ribs and the thick, boneless meat
that is cut from the short ribs are the best for this dish.
Place the boiled meat on a prewarmed platter and pour

Braised Beef with Vegetables (Lébensült, Saftbraten)
From Auntie Giti’s A zsidó háziasszony könyve (The Jewish
housewife’s book), published in 1935. The book’s recipes are
meant for four people.
Take 1 kilo chuck [lapocka] in one piece. After you koshered
it, heat fat in a pot. Place the meat in it, and slightly brown
it on both sides. Remove the meat for a short while and add
the following things to the fat: 1 small head of thinly sliced
onion, 1 cleaned carrot and 1 parsnip, also sliced, 2 cloves of
garlic, and paprika to fit the tip of a knife. Return the meat

to the pot, braise it for a little while, and then add 2 to
3 spoonfuls of tomato, which you had mixed with ½ spoon
flour. Add also salt, crushed black pepper, and finally warm
water. Braise this covered. When the meat is tender, remove
it, and add as much warm water to the remaining things in
the pot as required for the consistency of a sauce. Purée it,
add the meat that you’ve cut into ½ centimeter thick slices,
and bring this to a boil once more. Serve it with semolina
[gríz or búzadara] dumplings or potatoes.

as does the taste of beef.”262 In spite of this, until the late nineteenth century
beef appeared only on rare, festive occasions on the dining table in most Jewish
families, since few people kept cattle and so they generally had to buy this meat
at the kosher butcher, therefore to a degree it counted as luxury, but perhaps
this also contributed to the perception that it was most appropriate for the
Shabbat, when one was to eat better than during the week.
Some middle-class Jews were so fond of boiled beef that they practically
couldn’t live without it and wanted to eat it nearly every day. An example of this

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

is what Carl Flesch (1873, Moson–1944, Luzern, Switzerland), the worldfamous classical violinist and music pedagogue, wrote about his physician father,
Dr. Salamon Flesch (1838, Rajka, northwestern Hungary–1907, Moson), my
great-grandmother’s neighbor and family doctor: “Altogether, in fact, his mode
of life was of Spartan simplicity. To the end of his days, he forced his entire
household to eat, lunch after lunch, soup and boiled beef with vegetables.”263
Although I wouldn’t wish to live completely on boiled beef, it happens to
be one of my favorite dishes, and I can well understand my ancestors who ate
it every week to celebrate the arrival of the Shabbat. Similar to some other
courses made with only one or very few ingredients, boiled beef represents for
me the very essence of its main component part, virtually its apotheosis. But
of course only if it is made with great care from best-quality meat, which has
been cut from a part of the animal that lends itself well to this kind of preparation. The boiled beef I had at Plachutta’s restaurant on Vienna’s Wollzeile
some years ago and the creamed spinach I ate in a simple, side-street eatery,
also in Vienna, belong to the great experiences of my life, far more than some
of the more complicated dishes at fancy places.
Boiled and braised beef generally constituted a significant share of dishes
in the menus of kosher restaurants, to a much greater extent than at their

Brisket (Császárszegy)
From Auntie Giti’s A zsidó háziasszony könyve (The Jewish housewife’s book), published
in 1935. The book’s recipes are meant for four people.
Use the point cut of brisket [szegyfej] for this dish. Cook it in salted water until half
tender. Cook sliced onions under cover and add paprika. Slightly salt the half-cooked
meat and cook it in the covered dish with the onions until very tender. Cut it lengthwise
into thin slices. Mix its juices with 3 to 4 spoonfuls of tomato sauce prepared without
sugar and bring this mixture to a boil. Strain a part of it over the meat and serve the rest
in a cup. Serve the dish very hot. You will need 60 to 80 dekas of meat for it, depending
on whether you eat more or less meat. It is easier to slice a bigger piece of meat.

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non-Jewish counterparts. For example, most of the time at Budapest’s Neiger
restaurant, the most elegant kosher place in the 1920s and 1930s, such dishes
were represented in the midday menu by braised brisket (császárszegy, Kaiserspitz), braised top round or standing rump (párolt fartő, Tafelspitz), braised beef
with vegetables (lében sült, Saftbraten), steamed beef cutlets (gőzben sült, Dampfbraten), boiled beef with garlic sauce, boiled beef with tomato sauce, boiled
beef short ribs with horseradish (csonthús, Beinfleish), and braised beef tongue.
Braised top round is the only dish in this list that makes me wonder, since the
rump or round of course comes from the rear half of the cattle, which is not
available at kosher butchers, because of the forbidden sciatic nerve and fats in
it. Perhaps they substituted some other cut for it. Elek Magyar, the food writer
and cookbook author, fondly recalls the similarly elegant Braun kosher restaurant of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which was located
near the Danube promenade, one of the most prestigious places in the capital:
“What fabulous, fatty boiled beef could one get there! This was served at
Braun’s by removing a two-finger-thick slice of beef from the cooking liquid,
sautéing it in sizzling hot goose fat, quickly turning it in the fat so that it should
become crisp on both sides, transferring it to a silver serving platter, sprinkling
it with chopped chives, and finally placing it within a split second on the table
of the customer. Its taste resembled the finest hazelnuts.”264 Wassermann’s
kosher restaurant in the Orczy House was about as old as Braun’s, though not
quite as elegant, but it became famous in the late nineteenth century for its
huge portions and also for serving beef boiled in soup (called Tellerfleisch in
Vienna and tányérhús in Hungary, see recipe on page 332) even in the wee
hours of early morning.
Jewish cookbooks always include many different sauces to go with boiled
beef: for example, Mrs. Rosenfeld’s 1927 book features not fewer than fifteen
and Auntie Giti’s 1935 volume seventeen varieties. In both works a third or half
of those sauces are made with fruit, which possibly has to do with the preference
for sweetish dishes in Hungarian Jewish cuisine and with the frequent mixing
of salty and sweet flavors. The cookbook Régi zsidó ételek (Old Jewish Dishes)
by Zorica Herbst-Krausz even offers versions of cucumber sauce and horseradish
sauce made with sugar and raisins. In Hungarian Gentile cooking, these are
savory sauces, made with no sugar or only a pinch of it. On some holidays, however, for example, at Seder evenings, Jews traditionally ate boiled beef without
a sauce.

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

CHOPPED EGGS

X

As early as in the eleventh century, French and German Jews ate hard-cooked
eggs and raw, salted onions during Shabbat, but separately, not mixed together.265 Later, though, they started to mix chopped eggs and onion with poultry
fat, and this marked the birth of one of the most popular Ashkenazi Jewish
dishes, the chopped eggs, gehakte eier in Yiddish. It is also called eier un schmaltz
(eggs and poultry fat), eier-tzibel (eggs and onion), or tzibeles. Tzibeleh is the
Yiddish diminutive for onion, otherwise it is called, tzibel. Chopped eggs were
mostly eaten as an appetizer before the cholent at the Saturday midday meal,
but one could encounter them on other occasions, too. At times they mixed
them with liver or herring, other favorite foods of Ashkenazi cuisine, to create
gehakte leber (chopped liver) and gehakte herring (chopped herring).
In the second chapter, which focuses on the history of Ashkenazi Jewish
cuisine, I’ve already written about the popularity of garlic, but the onion, both
raw and cooked, was an equally indispensable ingredient of this cuisine. The
vegetable was popular in most places of the ancient Near East—this is why it
is mentioned on Hammurabi’s column, the law code of the eighteenth-century
BCE Babylonian king, according to which a ration of bread and onions must
be given monthly to the poor. But its important role in Jewish cooking,
especially at the Shabbat meals, has to do with religious tradition as well. The
Torah says that during their years in the desert after their escape from Egyptian
slavery the Israelites recalled “the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the

Chopped Eggs for Saturday
(Cibel vagy Ejer-Cibel szombatra)
From Régi zsidó ételek (Old Jewish dishes) by Zorica
Herbst-Krausz.
Ingredients: 1 to 2 eggs per person, 1 large onion,
goose fat, salt.
Prepare as many hard-cooked eggs as the size of the
family requires. Peel them, finely chop them or crush
them with a fork, and add as much goose fat as is
necessary to make it spreadable. Finely chop a fairly
large onion, salt it, and mix it into the eggs. Should you
have leftover baked duck or goose liver at home, you
can add that, too.

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cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions [betzalim], and the
garlic” (Numbers 11:5). While wandering in the desert, they ate manna, the
food God sent from the heaven, which according to religious tradition based
on the Midrash (the ancient interpretation of the Bible) could assume the flavor
of any food with the exception of the five vegetables the Israelites recalled from
their time in Egypt. Since manna in this sense wasn’t “perfect,” some religious
commentators claimed that Jews had to make up for this during the Shabbat,
which gives a foretaste of the Messianic Age, and this was how they explained
the ubiquity of dishes made with onion and garlic on weekends. If this is true
then it is hard to understand why cucumber, melon, and leeks aren’t equally
common on Saturdays. As this shows, occasionally such explanations are a bit
strained, but at the same time they well express the thinking of religious Jews,
who wish to connect each little detail of everyday life with the rabbinical
traditions, that is, the profane with the holy.
But eggs, the other important ingredient of this appetizer, also deserve
attention. Although Jewish cuisine had known eggs earlier, they only became
widely popular in the fifteenth century, when Eastern European Jews started
to prefer chicken to goose meat, and the hens kept around the house provided
a plentiful supply of eggs. With time egg became an important ingredient in
many Jewish specialties, including the kugels, dumplings (knaidlach), noodles
(lokshen), potato pancakes (latkes), and egg cookies (eier kichlach).
In Jewish culture—like in some other religions—the egg evolved into an
important symbol and an indispensable part of many religious rituals. On the
one hand, it represents life, its cycles, and the continuity between life, death,
and rebirth, but on the other hand it can also stand for mourning. At the Passover Seder ritual, in which egg plays an important role, it primarily symbolizes
springtime renewal, the joy of escape from captivity, while in mourning—when
boiled egg is the first food of people returning from the funeral—the life cycles,
the continuity of life, and hope. In addition to representing renewal, the baked
egg during Pesach also reminds people of the sacrificial offering in the Jerusalem
Sanctuary (this was the so-called chagigah, the festival sacrifice), which were meat
offerings but are nevertheless commemorated with an egg as a sign of our mourning over the destruction of the Temple.
The writer, humorist, and editor Adolf Ágai was the first person in nineteenth-century Hungary to describe a version of the Jewish chopped eggs: “The
Jews of Ung, Bereg, and Máramaros Counties [which used to be parts of northeastern Hungary, but today belong to Ukraine and Romania] first peel the
cholent egg, then they chop it and mix it with fat, black pepper, and chopped
onions to dilute it into a sort of mush.” Ágai describes chopped eggs as coming
from the Jewish culture of the northeastern regions, which makes me suspect

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

that perhaps immigrants from Galicia and Ukraine were the people who had
introduced this dish to Hungary in the early nineteenth century, where it eventually became popular throughout the country. One of its Hungarian names,
lengyel tojás (Polish eggs), also points to an eastern origin. It might even indicate
Hassidic roots, since the term lengyelzsidó (Polish Jew) usually referred to unassimilated Hungarian Hassidic or Orthodox Jews in everyday usage. Chopped
eggs is considered today as one of the most characteristic Jewish specialties, and
obviously this is why it is frequently called Jewish eggs (zsidótojás) by both Jews
and Gentiles. Gizella Grosz, who lived in Szilágycseh (Cehu Silvaniei, Romania),
described chopped eggs in a 1901 letter, which she addressed to Madam Emma
(one of the pen names of the poet, critic and editor Ignotus, who was a man),
the editor of the women’s column in the magazine A Hét (The Week) and the
person in charge of the magazine’s recipe contest: “Dear Madam Emma, I wish
to participate as a foot soldier in your work and join your camp. I would like to
supplement the cholent egg recipe by Ignotus [Grosz of course couldn’t know
that Ignotus was Madam Emma], which is—you should taste it—such a fabulous
dish that you will surely become fond of it, just like our family physician had
done, who in spite being a Christian now offers such eggs to his guests. The hardcooked eggs—lets say only three eggs—are chopped, to which we add half of
a baked goose liver and a medium-sized onion, both of them finely chopped,
a spoonful of fat, salt, and black pepper, and we mix all this well. It is fabulous
when spread over toasted bread as an appetizer. … If you were here, I would gladly
treat you to my whole repertory of dishes, but until then you, too, should prepare
the cholent egg that Ignotus likes so much, and you will see how good it is.”266

CHOLENT

Cholent, one of the most ancient Jewish dishes, was created to satisfy two
seemingly conflicting requirements: though the Bible mandates that “You shall
kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the Shabbat day” (Exodus
35:3), it is at the same time a mitzvah, a religious command, to eat a hot meal
on Saturday. A hint at the solution to this dilemma was given by the Mishnah,
the third-century codification of the ancient Oral Laws. It suggests, according
to a phrase that was later incorporated into the Friday evening service, that hot
foods should be covered before the arrival of Shabbat to retain their heat. The
Hebrew phrase for this was tomnin et ha’hamin, “covered and warm” (Mishnah
Shabbat, chapter 2, part 7), and throughout the Diaspora most of the names
for the Shabbat stew are translations of the words “hot” and “covered” from
this. Sephardim call it hamin, from the Hebrew word for “hot,” or dafina,

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which comes from the Arabic word for “covered.” In Morocco it is known as
skhena, which also means “hot.” Ashkenazim call it cholent, sholet, or shalet,
probably all from chauld, the Old French word for “hot.” The essence of this
dish is that it must be cooked ahead of time in a tightly covered pot and kept
warm until it is served. Based on the Talmudic prohibition of cooking on
Saturdays, the Shulchan Arukh instructs people to cook the cholent and other
food for the Shabbat before the arrival of the holiday “so that, at the very least,
they would be fit to eat.”267 Many Jews, however, didn’t keep this rule and they
cooked, more precisely baked the cholent only until it was half done before
the Shabbat, and allowed it to continue baking slowly in a big oven that kept
the heat until Saturday noon. Others went even further and placed the cholent
in the oven so late in the afternoon that much of the baking could only be
done after the beginning of Shabbat.
Ede Vadász in an article he wrote in 1906 tells that those who baked their
cholent in the communal oven at bakers specializing in this task (most Jews

Bean Cholent (Bohnen Scholet)
A nineteenth-century recipe of Mrs. Bernát Berger, née Teréz Baruch.
Comment: This is an almost classically pared-down version of cholent, both in
cooking technique and ingredients. My great-grandmother doesn’t call for sautéing
the onion or browning the meat, and she doesn’t add pearl barley to the dish. Even
more idiosyncratically, she doesn’t use garlic, though in Hungary it is always a part
of cholent. But when I tried her recipe, it was just as good as the fancier versions.
Translation of the original German text:
For 4 servings a little more than half a meszely [about 7 fluid ounces] of beans are
sufficient. To this, take half a spoon of flour, 1 onion, some salt, a small piece of
fatty meat, and a pinch of dried ginger, black pepper, and paprika. Pour half
a meszely [about 7 fluid ounces] water over this, and it is done.
Her manuscript of the recipe can be seen in Fig. 187 on page 339.

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

[ 339 ]

didn’t bake the cholent at home) were unlikely to have been able to keep the
rule of fully cooking the cholent before the onset of the holiday: “I invite my
kind readers on Friday late afternoon to a Budapest neighborhood with a large
Jewish population so that they can look into a baking place where bakers setz,
place cholent in brick ovens that had been lege artis [according to trade rules]
heated. In the present Jewish year at us the earliest arrival of the Shabbat was
on December 22 and 29 at 4:00 in the afternoon, while its latest arrival will
be on June 15, 22, and 29, plus on July 6, 13, and 20 at 7:50 in the afternoon.
We must extend these afternoon times, when the Friday evening service starts,
by forty to fifty minutes, which is taken up by the recitation of the weekday
minhah [prayer before sunset], the six psalms of numbers 95–99 and 29, and
the Lekha Dodi [Hebrew: “come my beloved,” a liturgical song at the service
welcoming the Shabbat], and so we have reached the 92nd psalm and after that
the 93rd, recited by the hazzan [cantor], which takes another ten minutes. There
can be no doubt about the arrival of Shabbat on the above mentioned winter
Fridays at 4:50 and the summer ones at 8:40, but it is certainly questionable
that the cholent had finished cooking by then. How could it have finished
cooking before the onset of the holiday, when the baker could only seal his
oven late in the afternoon, and so the actual baking of the cholent couldn’t
have started before that. In short: the cholent isn’t cooked before the onset of
Shabbat, not only because of its late start, but also because its ingredients—
meat, marrow bones, dried beans or peas—require lengthy cooking. Therefore
someone who places great emphasis on not eating dishes cooked on Saturday
has to somehow store the food fully cooked on Friday in a way that keeps it as
warm as possible. The most strictly religious Jews of the medieval period, those
from Lotharingia and Provence, acted this way. They placed the food cooked
on Friday in beds and covered it with as much poor heat-conducting material
as possible.”268

187. Recipe for bean cholent
(Bohnen Scholet) in Mrs. Bernát
Berger, née Teréz Baruch’s notebook, which she started to write
in 1869. She wrote the recipes
in German, since – similarly to
a significant share of middleclass families in western Hungary
and Budapest in the nineteenth
century – her family preferred
to use this language at home.

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

In the cholent the cooking process is the decisive feature, not the specific
components, though at least the main ingredient is common to most versions:
fresh or dried legumes. In the Sephardi world it was usually made with hulled
grain kernels, chickpeas, or fava beans (and only after the sixteenth century with
the beans most widely used today, which were originally from Middle and South
America) mixed with onion and pieces of meat. Among Ashkenazim it was
initially made with fava beans, also largely replaced by today’s customary kinds
of dried beans after the sixteenth century, as well as with grain kernels, onion,
and meat to which they occasionally added potatoes and unshelled eggs. But
cholents not made with legumes also existed, which shows that beans were not
essential to the dish.
Even within Hungary there were many varieties of cholent. Bean cholent was
by far the most common, but I have also found recipes for rice, pea, lentil,
chickpea, and even pearl barley cholents in old Hungarian Jewish cookbooks. In
the first half of the nineteenth century, for instance, Moritz Gottlieb Saphir, the
Hungarian-born Austrian Jewish writer preferred pea cholent to the one made
of beans, and his slightly younger fellow author Adolf Ágai also mentions the pea
variety. When the cholent included pearl barley in addition to dried beans it was
generally called ricset. Some people added beef (fatty brisket in most instances)
to their cholent, others goose meat or both—either of which could be fresh or
smoked. Some made their cholent with small white beans, others—like my greatgrandmother—with the larger spotted red kind. According to an old Yiddish
saying: “One shouldn’t look too closely into the cholent or a marriage.”
Ede Vadász described a most unusual cholent in a 1910 article: “Wheat
cholent. Is there such a thing? Of course! But the wheat cholent appears on
the table only once a year on Saturday—and by no means everywhere. … On
this Saturday in some western Hungarian towns people remember the manna
with wheat cholent, because the parashah [the weekly Torah portion read in
the synagogue] includes the miraculous story of manna falling from the sky
and because according to Exodus 16:31 the manna ‘was like coriander seed,
white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.’ This makes the
Jews of those towns remember the manna with wheat cholent, since they
believe that those wafers were made with wheat flour in addition to honey.”269
I haven’t found a recipe for this wheat cholent, but my guess is that it was made
with cracked wheat or hulled wheat berries, onions, garlic, and perhaps also
brisket.
The casserole cooked on Friday and intended for Saturday originally evolved
among Near Eastern Sephardim, and was probably transmitted in the late twelfth
or early thirteenth century from Spain through Provence to other parts of France,
where they slightly modified it and named it schalet. A Viennese rabbi, Isaac ben

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Moses (c. 1200‒1260) was the first person to use the new name of the dish in
one of his writings, in which he described what he had seen around 1217 or
1218 at his teacher Rabbi Judah ben Isaac Messer Leon in Paris: “I saw in the
home of my teacher that sometimes their tsholnt, which was covered, was cooling
on the Shabbat. Near the time for eating the food, the [non-Jewish] servants lit
fires close to the pots, in order that they should be heated or moved them closer
to the fire.”270 According to Gil Marks, “at this point, the French rabbis permitted the cooking of the Shabbat stew on the home hearth and allowed
non-Jews to adjust the heat on the Shabbat according to the need of the dish,
practices the authorities farther east in Germany forbade.”271 The cholent tradition was very early transmitted from France to Germany and Bohemia. Since
stone or brick ovens large enough to stay warm without any adjustment of the
heat from Friday afternoon until Saturday noon were rare in the homes, people
typically left the cholent pot in the oven of a Jewish bakery in the town.
Jewish literature frequently reflects the significance of cholent in the
Shabbat tradition. For writers, like for all Jewish people, the fabulous aroma
of cholent signified the traditional Jewish home, and the mere thought of it
could instantly recall the festive atmosphere of Shabbat. Heinrich Heine
(1797‒1856), the great German Jewish poet, wrote “Börne [German Jewish
writer, 1786‒1837] assures me that, no sooner will the renegades who go over
to the new faith get a whiff of schalet than they’ll begin to feel homesick again

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188. A cholent pot made in
1579/1580 in Frankfurt am Main,
Germany. It is now in the
collection of the Jewish
Museum in New York. The pot is
made of cast and chased brass.
Like in other Jewish
communities, in the Frankfurt
ghetto – where this pot was
used – families on Fridays took
their cholents to the communal
oven operated by a baker. They
used a pot that bore the name
of its owner or some
distinguishing symbol or
perhaps merely a distinctive
color painted onto it, in order
to make it easily recognizable
on Saturday, when they would
pick it up from the baker. On
this pot, a Hebrew text gives
the year when it was made and
that it belonged to Hirtz
Popert’s wife, the daughter
of a man called Moses.

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

for the synagogue.” This didn’t keep Heine, a complicated man full of ambiguities, from becoming a Protestant. Even wittier than the above comment
is his parody of Schiller’s “And die Freude” (Ode to joy) included in the poem
“Prinzessin Sabbat” (Princess Shabbat), an affectionate and at the same time
ironic retelling of the Shabbat:
Schalet, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium!
Also klänge Schillers Hochlied,
Hätt er Schalet je gekostet.
Schalet ist die Himmelspeise
Die der liebe Herrgott selber
Einst den Moses kochen lehrte
Auf dem Berge Sinai ...
Schalet ist des wahren Gottes
Koscheres Ambrosia ...
(Cholent, beautiful divine spark,
maiden from Elysium!
That is how Schiller’s ode would sound
had he ever tasted cholent.
Cholent is the heavenly food
that the Lord God himself
once taught Moses to cook
on Mount Sinai …
Cholent is the true God’s
kosher ambrosia ...)

189. A cartoon by Alfréd Lakos
(1870‒1961) depicting the chef
of a kosher restaurant in
Rumbach (Rombach) Street, in
Budapest’s old Jewish quarter.
The caption of the cartoon
says: “Cholent is my specialty.”

Gyula Krúdy (1878–1933), one of the greatest Hungarian novelists, wasn’t
Jewish either by ancestry or by religion, but several of his writings include sympathetic portrayals of Jews. The following excerpt is from A pénteki vendég (The
Friday guest), a 1933 short story for which his own life provided the inspiration:
both his first and second wives were of Jewish origin. Like the central figure in
the story, Krúdy must have frequently eaten cholent at home, so much so that
the dish was among the family recipes his daughter published after the writer’s
death.272 You can find their cholent recipe on page 344.
“– My late wife (he kept talking in this formal way about the young woman
who ran away from him, until at the end perhaps even he himself believed that
she had died) came on her mother’s side from a distinguished Jewish family.
She was related to many well-known families in Pest—to the Ziofanti, Darius,

and Lancelotti clans, even to the Pest branch of the Mendelssohns—who in
spite of their European culture, golden Spanish past, and Polish noble titles
couldn’t give up their habit of eating a certain Jewish dish every week. And this
dish was nothing else but cholent, which especially the women liked in
addition to slightly sweet jellied fish—Mr. Friday said in a dreamy, forgiving
mood after dinner.—Indeed, I ate much cholent in the company of my ‘late
wife’. She usually attended the Franciscans’ church and socialized with the
crowd there, but on Saturday, as part of some ancestral tradition, she cooked
cholent for herself and me. That was when I got to know the large beans and
their unusual flavors.
Mr. Friday mused about the past (and turned the toothpick between his
teeth), as is the habit of elder gentlemen, while Ede Kraut [the waiter] most
patiently listened to the story of the Friday guest.
– When I was living with my late wife, these special cholents, for which she
always purchased the ingredients herself, of course were made with beef brisket.
Perhaps that was why we both became prematurely overweight. What’s more,

190. Gyula Krúdy (on the left
side of the picture) in the
company of his family and
friends is celebrating his
birthday at his home in 1930.
Zsuzsa Váradi, his second wife
sits next to him and behind
them their daughter Zsuzsa can
be seen. Photographer
unknown.

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

The Krúdy Family’s Bean Cholent
The recipe is from a collection used in the Gentile writer Gyula Krúdy’s home.
It is probably from the 1920s. Though Krúdy’s first and second wives were of Jewish
origin, they were secular or converted to another religion and therefore didn’t
follow the Shabbat rules in preparing their cholent. It is nevertheless a good
example for the general popularity of the dish and perhaps also for a desire to
preserve some elements of Jewish traditions.
We soak half kilo of large beans overnight. Then we transfer them into a heavy
casserole, mix them with fat or oil, finely chopped yellow onion, a little garlic, salt,
ground pepper, and paprika, and pour water over them. We place smoked meat and
well washed, unshelled raw eggs over them. We cover it and bake it over slow flame
in our oven for 4 hours. We periodically check that it has enough water over it,
otherwise it would burn at the bottom. Those who like it, could add 10 deka pearl
barley to the beans.

sometimes the eggs that cooked in the cholent were also so fatty that one could
hardly eat more than two or three of them.
Eduard Kraut bowed respectfully:
– I also know this unusual dish. When I was working in the Casino, there
was a Count, whom the other guests among themselves called ’Gábor Liberal’.
He was a slightly strange person!—Ede Kraut said with an emphasis, as if it could
explain everything when he called someone ’a strange person.’—The Honorable
’Gábor Liberal‘ at times demanded that people should bring him lunch from
Braun’s kosher restaurant at the Danube Promenade, since he wanted to eat
cholent.”273
Cholent is a wonderfully satisfying dish in which the aromas of meat,
seasonings, and beans are blended and heightened by the long cooking process—but diet food it is not. George Lang tells the following anecdote in his
book The Cuisine of Hungary: “The Jewish rabbi and the Catholic priest were
very friendly in a village in Hungary. The priest complained to the rabbi that
he was unable to sleep and the latter suggested the cholent recipe as a cure for
insomnia. A few days later they met again, and to the eager question of the
rabbi came the rueful answer from the priest: ‘I understand how you fall asleep
after you eat this dish, but what puzzles me is: how do you get up’” No wonder
it was traditional following Saturday lunch to either take a nap or take a walk,
which was called Sabbat-Spaziergang. They needed one or the other after eating
cholent.

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Cholent and the other heavy Jewish dishes caused indigestion in many, and
they tried to cure their heartburn with bicarbonate of soda. The Jewish-origin
writer and humorist Frigyes Karinthy (1887‒1938) also couldn’t live without it,
as one of his best friends recalled: “He ate spoonfuls of bicarbonate of soda,
a medication the Budapest humor called ‘Jewish morphine.’ It happened toward
the end of his life when they were living on Üllői Road. He noticed at dinner
that his indispensable bicarbonate of soda was missing from the table. ‘Bring it
in!’ he commanded. Cini, his teenage son volunteered with suspicious willingness that he would bring in the box of medication. Karinthy thanked him, and
true to his habit he poured a big spoonful of the white powder into his mouth.
… This was when he really spanked his younger son, who replaced the
bicarbonate of soda in the box with salt.”273

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191. The poet, writer, and
humorist Frigyes Karinthy
(1887‒1938) in his Budapest
home on Verpeléti Road with
his younger son Ferenc, Cini
by his nickname (1921‒1992).
A photograph taken by Zoltán
Seidner, probably in early 1930.
It appeared in the September
24, 1930, issue of Tolnai
Világlapja (Tolnai’s world
review), a weekly.

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

KUGEL H

The kugel (Yiddish: “ball” or “sphere”) was one of the traditional Shabbat courses
in much of the Ashkenazi world, including Hungary and Austria. Many varieties
of kugel existed, but all of them included eggs, fat, and flour or matzo meal or
some other starchy ingredient, like noodles or potatoes, to which frequently other
things—like diced bread rolls, diced fruits or vegetables, broken matzo, or sautéed
chopped onions—were added. Housewives mixed all this without adding any
water or other liquid and baked it in a round pot placed in the same oven where
the cholent was cooking. Some cookbooks, for example the Old Jewish Dishes by
Zorica Herbst-Krausz, use the term kugel also for dumplings made without eggs
and cooked in the same pot with the cholent, but this is misleading, since they
are really versions of ganef, a dish I will describe after this section.

Bread Kugel with Apples (Semmel-Kugel)
A nineteenth-century recipe from the collection of Mrs.
Bernát Berger, née Teréz Baruch
Translation of the original German text: Take
½ Viennese pound [c. 28 dekas] finely chopped hard
beef fat and 2 big kitchen spoons of firm poultry fat.
Blend them well with ¼ meszely [a little less than
½ cup] water and as much salt as you can pick up with
your five fingers. Add 8 to 10 eggs, 10 dekas of sugar,
4 diced apples, and 1 spoon of cinnamon. Stir this for
half an hour. Now take 5 soaked and 5 grated bread
rolls, ½ meszely [a little less than 1 cup] coarse
semolina, add these to the mixture, and pour the
whole thing into a well-greased pot.
Modern version
Ingredients for 8 generous portions: 3 bread rolls or
6 slices of white bread (c. 5 ounces), cut into ½" dice,
4 tablespoons rendered poultry fat or pareve
margarine, softened, 3 tablespoons sugar, 4 egg yolks,
¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon, pinch of salt, 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest, 2 ounces golden raisins,
2 Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored and cut into
½" dice, ½ cup white wine, ½ cup water, 1 cup dry
bread crumbs, ⅓ cup coarse semolina (gríz or búzadara

in Hungarian; farina is a rather poor substitute),
1 teaspoon pareve margarine or oil (to grease the
baking dish), 4 egg whites, 1 tablespoon sugar.
Preparation:
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place the bread cubes
on a baking sheet and dry them without allowing them
to brown, about 7 minutes. Don’t turn off the oven.
2. In a fairly large bowl, beat the poultry fat or
margarine until it gets foamy. Add sugar and egg yolks,
then continue beating until the mixture becomes fluffy
and very pale. Mix in cinnamon, salt, and lemon zest,
then fold in raisins and diced apples.
3. In another bowl, soak bread cubes for about
2 minutes in a mixture of wine and water, squeeze
them out and discard the remaining liquid. Add the
moistened bread to the first bowl and mix well.
4. Gently fold bread crumbs and semolina into the
bread and apple mixture and let it rest for about
10 minutes. Meanwhile, generously grease an about
7" diameter, c. 3½" deep soufflé dish or a similarly
sized pot, line its bottom with parchment paper,
then flip the paper over so that its top surface is
greased, too.

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

5. Whip egg whites to soft peak, add sugar, and
continue whipping until they form firm peaks. Stir
about ½ of the whipped egg whites into the bread
mixture, then gently fold the remaining egg whites into
the mixture.
6. Transfer the mixture into the greased and lined
baking dish, making sure that there are no voids, then
smooth the top surface with a rubber spatula. Cut a
round piece of parchment paper to fit inside your
baking dish and lay it on the mixture in the dish. Place
the dish on a baking sheet.
7. Bake it in the preheated oven for 25 minutes; remove
parchment paper from the top and continue baking for
an additional 25 minutes. Let it cool for 10 minutes in
the dish set on a cooling rack. Run a knife along the
side of the dish to release the kugel, and invert the
kugel onto a large plate. Peel off the parchment from
its bottom and allow it to cool for another 15 minutes.
Place an inverted serving plate over it, and with the

help of the plates carefully flip it over to transfer it
onto the serving plate, so that its top side faces up.
8. Serve it lukewarm or at room temperature. It is
terrific by itself, but served with a little raspberry
syrup it is even tastier and prettier.

Kugel might not be as ancient a dish as cholent, but its roots also reach back
to the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, and together with the cholent it has long
been part of the second Shabbat meal, the one at Saturday noon. In its original
form, it indeed was a large, vaguely ball-shaped dumpling, which was baked in
the same pot with the cholent, sort of like the ganef—another type of cholent
dumpling—is cooked nowadays. But by the medieval period most families baked
it in a small, round clay pot, which they placed on top of the ingredients in the
cholent pot. That was when in Germany it became known as Schalet Kugel, and
this is the source of its current name. The centuries-old names of Schalet Kugel
(cholent kugel) and Weck Schalet (bread cholent, which was a kind of kugel) both
attest to its close relationship with cholent. Later, they no longer placed the
round clay vessel of the kugel inside the cholent pot, but baked it separately,
usually in the communal oven.
Many types of kugel exist in addition to bread kugel: for example, versions
made with rice, noodles (Yiddish: lokshen kugel), potatoes, and cornmeal. In
addition to the savory kinds, sweet varieties also evolved, like the bread kugel
made with raisins and diced apples, one of my great-grandmother Riza’s specialties, which was only slightly sweet and therefore could be served as a side
dish to cholent. And finally there were more pronouncedly sweet ones, too, such
as the apple kugel and the sweet versions of noodle, rice, and bread kugel, which

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Bread Kugel (Semmel-Kugel)
From Therese Lederer’s German-language cookbook, published in Budapest in 1876.
Comment: This version of bread kugel is about contemporaneous with my greatgrandmother’s, but it differs from it in several ways: while it doesn’t contain apples,
it includes ground almonds.
Take 6 soaked and 3 grated bread rolls. Add 10 slightly beaten eggs, 25 dekas raisins,
sugar, cinnamon, lemon zest, ground almonds – among them some bitter almonds ‒
¼ kilo melted fat, some salt, and knead this into a dough. Transfer the dough into
a very well-greased kugel pot [this was usually a round, medium-height clay pot
with a lid] and bake it in the oven.

Matzo Kugel (Eine Mazzo-Kugel)
From Therese Lederer’s German-language cookbook, published in Budapest in 1876.
3 [broken] sheets of matzo will be soaked, well squeezed, and dried in hot fat in a skillet.
Following this, they should be mixed with ¼ kilo matzo meal, goose fat, 10 to 12 eggs,
some sugar, 5 dekas of ground regular almonds, 2 dekas of ground bitter almonds,
4 large grated cooking apples, lemon zest, and lemon juice. All this should be well stirred
together, poured into a well-greased kugel pot, and ¾ Viennese pound [42 dekas, which
seems way too much] of hot fat should be poured over it. This is how the kugel is placed
in the oven.

in most instances included raisins, nuts, or diced dried fruits. During Passover
they made them with matzo meal instead of flour and with broken matzo instead
of bread. A sixteenth-century German rabbi mentions Weck Schalent (bread
kugel) together with Vermicelles Schalent (noodle kugel) and Matzo Schalent
(matzo kugel). These days potato and lokshen kugel are more common than bread
kugel. But potato kugel is a relatively recent, nineteenth-century, innovation,
while bread kugel is at least as old as lokshen kugel. In fact, it is probably the
oldest variety. I agree with John Cooper, the author of Eat and Be Satisfied, that
the custom of making bread kugel and apple kugel probably spread from
Germany to Poland and Lithuania with eastward migrating German Jews after
the fourteenth century. Many further versions of kugel evolved in those eastern
regions, which were then transmitted back to Western Europe by later immigrants from the East. Several Jewish cookbooks published in the late nineteenth

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Meat Kugel (Fleischkugeln)
From Therese Lederer’s German-language cookbook,
published in Budapest in 1876. The instructions for
steaming the kugel are from her “Polish kugel” recipe.
Buy chopped meat at the butcher, but if it is not
available, first remove all the bones, veins, and sinews
from the meat and then chop it finely. For 1 kilo meat
count 12½ dekas of raw fat, which you should chop and
thoroughly mix with the meat. Add to this 2 lightly
beaten eggs, a generous amount of chopped onions,
pepper, salt, and 2 soaked bread rolls. All this should be

kneaded into a dough that sticks together. Shape it into
a ball. Now dip your hands into cold water and use
them to smooth the surface of the round mass. Pay
attention that there are no splits in it anywhere, since
those would make the kugel fall apart during the
steaming. The pot in which you steam the kugel should
be greased with goose fat or some other kind of fat.
After transferring the kugel into the pot, pour a few
spoonfuls of clear water over it. While the kugel is
steaming, it should be frequently basted with its own
juices until it turns brown.

century in Berlin, Trier, and Prague feature recipes for various kinds of kugel. In
Hungary, Therese Lederer’s German-language volume, published in Budapest
in 1876, was the first one to include such recipes, followed by Mrs. Rafael Rezső
Hercz (in the most literal sense of the word, since she copied her kugel recipes
from Lederer’s work) in her 1899 book, the first Jewish cookbook in Hungarian.
Jewish authors have commented on the importance of kugel in traditional
Jewish life. Heinrich Heine, for example, wrote the following in 1825 to his close
friend, Moses Moser, a highly cultured merchant: “I was at Cohn for Shabbat
lunch. He served a kugel, and I ate with a guilty conscience this holy national
dish, which has done more for the survival of Jewry than all three issues of Zeitschrift [a Jewish magazine] combined.”276
There are lots of Yiddish sayings about dishes, mainly about the most characteristic Jewish specialties. Such sayings exist about cholent, lokshen (noodles),
kreplach (filled pasta triangles), farfel (egg barley), kasha (buckwheat groats),
p’tcha (cooked calf ’s foot), tzimmes (sweet vegetable or vegetable–meat dish),
matzo balls, and many other dishes. The passage about Yom Kippur in Chapter
5 of this book include a few sayings concerning kreplach, and the sections of the
present chapter focusing on cholent, tzimmes, and matzo balls offer sayings about
those foods. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that such stock phrases exist about
the kugel, too. For example, when someone looks Jewish, people say that der
kugl ligt im afn ponim (there is kugel all over his face). And the saying mit im iz
gut kugl tsu esn (it is good to eat kugel with him) refers to a person who is not
good for anything else.
Other cultures and languages also include sayings about food, but probably
not as many as Yiddish. They are, for example, much scarcer in Hungarian,

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Ganef
From Auntie Giti’s (Mrs.
Aladár Adler) cookbook,
called A zsidó háziasszony (The Jewish
housewife) and
published in 1935 in
Kecskemét, east-central
Hungary. The book’s
recipes are meant for
four people.
Mix 15 dekas of flour
with 10 dekas of fat, salt,
black pepper, paprika,
and a little water. Knead
this, shape it into an
elongated dumpling, and
stick it into the cholent.
At serving time, cut it
into slices. You can also
make it separately in
a greased pot, in which
case you can make more
of it.

where most such phrases are about the basic ingredients of cooking (such as
vinegar, paprika, duck, etc.) and not about the dishes. Aside from “it will be
okay in a stew” (elmegy a pörköltbe), which refers to things of doubtful quality,
I don’t know sayings about the most typical Hungarian specialties, like gulyás,
pörkölt, and paprikás. The only turns of phrases about the other dishes of this
cuisine that come to my mind are: “he talks as if he had a dumpling in his
mouth,” when someone doesn’t articulate words well, and “he makes a pancake of someone,” if he badly beats up another person. This is indeed scant
compared to the strikingly many Yiddish sayings about food. The multitude
of such Yiddish phrases clearly has to do with the close relationship between
certain dishes and the Jewish religious lifestyle. Even though most such sayings
seemingly have nothing to do with religion, they nevertheless reflect a Jewish
way of thinking in which there is no sharp dividing line between lifestyle and
religion, between the secular and the sacred.

GANEF

This was a dumpling, which they baked together with the cholent in the same
covered pot. It resembled the original version of the kugel, which was a handshaped large dumpling that cooked on top of the cholent (or while buried in it)
in the same vessel, but unlike a kugel it was usually kneaded with water and
didn’t include eggs, a typical ingredient of the Shabbat pudding. In addition to
its simpler preparation, ganef (sometimes spelled ganev) has the added appeal
of an endearingly odd name: it means “thief ” in Yiddish, because as it cooks
together with the cholent it “steals” its flavor. In the “Transylvanian ganef ” twothirds of the flour was replaced with cornmeal.
The Hungarian-born Moritz Gottlieb Saphir (1795‒1858) recalled the
ganefs of his youth in an article he wrote in 1856: “This dish is called ganef,
because it is a dumpling made of raw dough that is filled in its middle with
rice, beans, goose breast, goose liver, and other delicacies. This dumpling is
then placed inside the covered dish [of the cholent] and baked for 24 hours in
the oven, during which time it absorbs, virtually steals all the fat, good aromas,
and good taste from the other things. Following this, it emerges from the pot
into the world like a changed person who succeeded to appropriate the good
qualities of others, and so this shapeless dumpling enters the world like a ‘heart
ganef ’, like someone who steals another person’s heart.”277 Ede Vadász described
a more typical version of this dish in 1906: “One of the customary preparations
that are served with cholent has a characteristic name: ganev. People frequently
place a half-dry, flour-based stuffing in the midst of the cholent, so that it

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

should absorb—so to speak, steal—the excess fat from it. Someone who steals
is a thief, and a thief is called a ganev in Jewish.”278 Samu Haber mentions a
completely different kind of ganef in 1895, the goose ganef, which people
made—provided I correctly understood Haber’s somewhat opaque text—by
stuffing a mixture of flour and crushed black pepper under the fat on the lower
back (the pelvis) of the goose, burying this in the cholent, and baking it over
very moderate fire.279

STUFFED GOOSE NECK

This was one of the most popular Jewish specialties. People ate it mostly during
Shabbat, but occasionally at other times, too, when of course it wasn’t cooked
on top of the cholent but in a separate skillet. Its Yiddish name is known in
several versions, such as helzel, helzli, and halsli, all of which go back to Hals,
the German word for neck. My mother, who had frequently eaten it in her
childhood spent in her grandmother Riza’s house, always called it halsli, and
that is how I will call it, too.
It thriftily makes use of the skin of the neck, an item that otherwise might
go to waste. It is one of several possible delicacies cooked and served with the
cholent; the others are: cholent egg, stuffed kishke or derma (stuffed beef casing,
the small intestine of a cow, which was common in the cholents of some other
Eastern European countries, but not in Hungary), cholent kugel, and ganef. At
times they made it from the neck skin of other poultry, for instance, turkey,
duck, or even a bigger hen, but the one made of goose was the most common,
not only due to its size, but also since the layer of fat on the inner side of the

Stuffed Goose Neck (Töltött libanyak)
From the collection Régi zsidó ételek (Old Jewish dishes) by Zorica Herbst-Krausz.
Ingredients: the skin from a goose’s neck, 6 dekas of turkey breast, 6 dekas of goose
meat, 2 cooked potatoes, 1 medium onion, salt, crushed black pepper, 3 tablespoons
goose fat, water.
Tie one end of the neck skin of a koshered goose. Mix the ground turkey and goose
meat with finely minced onion, mashed potatoes, salt, and pepper. Stuff the neck skin
with this, and sew or tie the other end of the skin. Place a little water and goose fat in
a pot, poach the stuffed neck in the hot but not boiling liquid, then cook it until no
liquid remains, only its own fat.

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goose’s neck skin made the halsli especially juicy and tasty. The thrifty housewife, after pulling off its skin, generally used the neck itself in a soup or in a
dish of goose giblets with rice (ludaskása, see recipe on page 367). There are
many kinds of traditional stuffing for goose neck: most of them include flour,
onion, goose fat, salt, pepper and paprika, but at times also chopped goose
meat, perhaps mixed with turkey meat as in the recipe I quote. In some versions
the flour is replaced by mashed cooked potatoes. A fancy version printed in
George Lang’s The Cuisine of Hungary also lacks flour, but this is more than
compensated for by the inclusion of goose meat and goose liver. The version
of my great-grandmother Riza, for which no recipe survived, but which I know
from my mother’s detailed description, is a lot simpler, though also quite
unusual. Contrary to nearly all the versions I have seen in various cookbooks,
its main ingredient is semolina, gríz or búzadara in Hungarian, Gries in German.
The coarse semolina expands when it absorbs moisture and the kernels make
this filling less dense than the mainly flour-based varieties.
Jeanette, who lived in Tornyospuszta (Tornjoš, Serbia), participated in the
1901 recipe contest of the magazine A Hét (The Week) with a letter she signed
only with her first name and sent to “Madam Emma,” the editor of the magazine’s ladies’ column and the manager of the recipe contest. In this letter, she
incorrectly equates ganef with stuffed goose neck and she is also wrong in her
claim that ganef means halsli in Hungarian, but these are not so big mistakes,
since both of them cooked on top of the cholent in the same pot and the stuffing
of halsli indeed often resembled a ganef. “No matter how knowledgeable dear
Madam Emma you are in the theory of cooking (I suspect you aren’t a practicing
cook), I don’t assume you are familiar with ganev (halsli in Hungarian). Well, it
is made the following way: we mix fat, flour, salt and especially paprika, stuff
this into the skin we pulled off in one piece from the goose’s neck, sew close
both its ends, place it in the cholent, and cook it together with that dish. …
This is the way it should be prepared, and I hope the esteemed jury will reward
my diligent efforts [with a price], which is sincerely deserved by your goodhearted friend who sent you this recipe, Jeanette.”280

TZIMMES

There are many kinds of tzimmes, which is essentially a vegetable/fruit/meat
stew. Vegetables, usually root vegetables, are the main ingredients in most of
them, frequently combined with some fresh or dried fruit, but there are varieties made with beef, potatoes, or even egg barley. According to some opinions,
its name comes from the Yiddish zum essen, “for eating,” others believe it is

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Carrot Tzimmes
(Sárgarépa főzelék ros hasánára)
From Régi zsidó ételek (Old Jewish dishes) by Zorica
Herbst-Krausz.
Ingredients: 3 fairly big carrots, 2 tablespoons goose
fat or oil, 1 tablespoon flour, honey or sugar.
Briefly sauté the cleaned and thinly sliced carrots in
goose fat, add honey, cover them, and cook them slowly
until tender. Remove the cover, and cook them until no
juices remain, carefully, so they don’t burn. Sprinkle it
with flour, and dilute it with meat soup or water.

derived from the Middle High German zuomuose, “side dish.”281 It could be
served as an appetizer, a first course, and perhaps even as a main dish, but most
typically it was offered as a side dish. The numerous varieties of tzimmes are
connected not only by their name, but also by their lengthy cooking process and
sweet taste.
The indisputably best-known version of this dish is made with carrots.
People associated sliced carrots with gold coins and so this vegetable became
the symbol of prosperity and good luck. Carrot tzimmes was a nearly
indispensable course at the Rosh Hashanah dinner, since the carrots, prepared
with honey to make them even sweeter, expressed the hope that the new year
would be “sweet” and lucky. This kind of tzimmes was also a customary dish
on Friday nights, as well as at Sukkot and Pesach. Long-cooked sliced carrots
sweetened with honey probably became Shabbat favorites in medieval Germany, and, like several other Jewish specialties, spread from there to Eastern
European countries. They became associated with the Shabbat in many Hungarian families, too, including the Orthodox parents of Laurent Stern in
Budapest, who served carrot tzimmes as a side dish to boiled beef at most of
their Friday dinners in the 1930s.
According to a 1916 article by Ede Vadász, “tzimmes can be described as a dish
made with a seasonal vegetable and some fruit. Savoy cabbage is usually cooked
with pears, also with chestnuts. The Feines Gemüse [German name for a dish of
mixed vegetables], prepared from a mixture of green peas, diced carrots, and diced
kohlrabi, becomes a tzimmes only when it is cooked with some fruit.”282

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Meat
Tzimmes
(Das goldene
Gemüse)
From Therese Lederer’s
German-language Jewish
cookbook, published in
Budapest in 1876.
You need very fatty beef
for this, which you should
start cooking in water
with spices and a little
salt. Later you should add
many small, peeled
onions, dried prunes,
which you had previously
rinsed in hot water and
dried, big raisins, lemon
zest, and a cinnamon
stick. Cover the dish, and,
when it is all well cooked,
sweeten it with sugar
syrup. Should it still have
some liquid, reduce it by
cooking it a little longer.
You should shake the pot
several times during
cooking, but don’t stir it.

Like many other Jewish foods, tzimmes is the subject of several Yiddish
sayings. “Makhn a tzimmes” (to make a tzimmes) is a common idiom for making
too much of a fuss, a big deal of something, as in: “Why are you making
a tzimmes out of this?” On the other hand, the expression “a moyd vie a tzimmes”
(a maiden like a tzimmes) refers to a buxom young woman.

FLÓDNI

The name of this pastry comes from the German Fladen and ultimately from the
Medieval Latin flado, a flat cake. Jewish cuisine long ago adopted from Gentile
cooking the idea of making a pastry in which some filling is sandwiched between
layers of dough. The multilayered flódni with its four different fillings is a late
nineteenth-century descendant of the single-layer fladen (pite in Hungarian).
A curd cheese–filled version seems to be the earliest in Jewish cooking; it is called
fluden in a tenth-century source about a discussion between two rabbis.283 Judging
from its frequent mention in early documents, it must have been one of the most
popular pastries among French, German, and Austrian Jews in the Middle Ages.
This original fluden, made with curd cheese, could only become a traditional
dessert at Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah meals because before the sixteenth century
Ashkenazim had to wait less time between eating meat and dairy courses.284 With
time, versions made with other fillings, like apples, raisins, walnuts, figs, and
poppy seeds, became popular, too. After the fourteenth century, however, fladen
became less common, not the least because Eastern European rabbis insisted on
a six-hour wait between meat and dairy courses, and even the three hours
mandated by German rabbis was too long to make it practical to serve a dairy
dessert at the end of a meat menu. The rarity of fladen in later centuries is
documented by the fact that it doesn’t appear in nineteenth-century German and
Hungarian Jewish cookbooks, at least in those I had the opportunity to examine:
three volumes published in Germany and six in Hungary.
But it never disappeared completely: the apple fladen remained a traditional
Simchat Torah dessert in Galicia and Ukraine. Perhaps even more than in those
regions, fladen seems to have retained its popularity in Hungary, and also in
Romania, where they called it flandi. The “four-story” version best known today
is a Hungarian specialty of relatively recent vintage: it was created and became
fashionable only in the second half of the nineteenth century. But the Hungarian
four-level flódni has a Viennese relative: the Fächertorte, which approximately
means a torte with several compartments or shelves. This torte is encased in short
dough, within which short-dough layers separate the poppy seed, walnut, and
grated apple fillings. My great-grandmother Riza’s nineteenth-century collection

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

also includes a related pastry, which she called Fledel-Fächer (it is almost untranslatable, but “layered flat pastry” is close). It is made with only two layers of
filling: walnut and apple, as opposed to three filling in the Fächertorte and four
(apple, walnut, poppy seed, and prune butter) in the flódni.
As far as I know, Samu Haber was the first to describe today’s flódni in an
article he published in 1895, both its usual rectangular version and a round,
torte-like one no longer made these days: “Flódni, flódni! … It contains all the
sweetness of childhood dreams: fillings of walnut, raisins, poppy seeds, plum or
apricot lekvár, and apples, each of them covered by a separate layer of dough. It
is not a dish for elderly gentlemen with stomach troubles. Sometimes they make
it into a wheel, like a wheel of Emmental cheese; on other occasions they square
this famous circle. … The dough gets a good spanking during the kneading,
then it must be stretched with a rolling pin to distribute the fat in it. The dough
acquires a silky sheen when it is rolled out, since the fat in it comes to the surface.
… In our home, Purim and Simchat Torah were always known by the flódni
served on those holidays, though we didn’t ignore kindli either.”285
In Hungary, ever since the nineteenth century, flódni has been one of the
most traditional desserts made for Purim, a little less frequently also for Sukkot.
It attests to its popularity that it is included in most Hungarian Jewish
cookbooks published in the first half of the twentieth century. In the last
decades it has become popular among non-Jews, too, and it is now sold in
many pastry shops of Budapest throughout the year.

Flódni
From Régi zsidó ételek (Old Jewish dishes) by Zorica Herbst-Krausz.
Ingredients: 50 dekas flour, 30 dekas butter or margarine, 4 eggs, 10 dekas
sugar, 1 deci wine. Its fillings are identical with those of kindli [see the
next section], but they also include apple and plum butter [lekvár].
Prepare the dough like you would do for kindli [see the next recipe]. After
letting the dough rest, divide it into 5 parts and roll each into thin sheets.
Spread plum butter on the first sheet, place the second sheet over this
and spread walnut filling on it, spread poppy filling on the next sheet,
then comes another dough sheet, over which you should spread grated
apples or stewed apples with a little cinnamon and sweetened with sugar
or honey, and cover this with the fifth sheet of dough. Brush it with a
whisked egg, so that it should become shiny and brown, and bake it over
a slow fire.

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I have been unable to find out how flódni has become so closely associated
with Purim. Walnuts and poppy seeds are traditional fertility symbols, but this
is at best a partial explanation. One of my ethnographer friends once joked
that in her field when people don’t know the real reasons for something they
can always claim that it is a fertility symbol. Flódni’s connection to Purim is
probably unique to Hungary. None of the older sources I have seen from other
countries mention it as a Purim dessert, with the sole exception of a book of
Jewish holiday recipes published around 1910 in Neu-Isenburg, Germany.
This, however, could have been a Hungarian influence as it was published after
flódni had become popular in Hungary.

KINDLI

Kindli and flódni are the two best-known pastries made for Purim in Hungary.
The shape and traditional pattern of the pastry supposedly represents a baby,
the meaning of the German–Yiddish kindli, wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Like the flódni, kindli is a Hungarian specialty, though this is rarely mentioned

Kindli
From Régi zsidó ételek (Old Jewish dishes) by Zorica
Herbst-Krausz.
Ingredients for the dough: 1 kilo flour, 4 egg yolks,
30 dekas goose fat, 10 dekas confectioners’ sugar,
a pinch of salt, 1 deka yeast, water, 2 decis kosher white
wine
Ingredients for the walnut filling: 25 dekas ground
walnuts, 3 tablespoons challah crumbs, 25 dekas sugar,
zest of ½ lemon, a few spoonfuls of kosher wine,
1 spoon lemon juice.
Ingredients for the poppy seed filling: 25 dekas ground
poppy seeds, 25 dekas sugar, 1 handful of raisins, zest
of ½ lemon, 1 teaspoon lemon juice.
Make a starter from the yeast and lukewarm water, and
let it ferment at room temperature for about

10 minutes. Mix the flour, fat, sugar, starter, egg yolks,
wine, salt, lemon juice and zest, and knead this well.
Let the dough rest for an hour, then divide it into
8 parts and roll out each of them. Fill each with walnut
or poppy seed filling and enclose the filling by folding
over the two sides of the dough. Pinch the top of these
packages so they become wavy. Fold the two ends
under the package to make the filling enclosed at each
end. Brush the top of the dough packages with egg, so
they turn nicely shiny and red during baking.

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Elegant Kindli (Szalonkindli)
An early-twentieth-century German-language recipe
from the collection of Mrs. József Schein, Erzsébet
Löwentritt.
Comment: The szalon (salon) designation is generally
used for an elegant or especially fine version of a food.
Make a dough from 25 dekas flour, a spoonful of fat,
1 whole egg, 2 egg yolks, sufficient amount of sugar,

a little salt, and as much white wine as you need for
a dough of about the hardness used for strudels. Cut
this into 3 parts, roll each to be as thin as possible, roll
the dough sheet up and cut it into 6 parts. Now roll out
each of these parts very thinly, and fold them the same
way. Roll them out the third time, spread a mixture of
walnuts, sugar, and egg white over them, roll them up,
and brush their tops with egg yolk.

even by the Jewish cookbooks published in Hungary. Some of the Jewish
cookbooks brought out in other countries in the last decades include a recipe
for this pastry, but only Gil Marks writes about the pastry’s Hungarian origin
in his comprehensive and excellent Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, published in
2010—perhaps based on a conversation I had approximately ten years ago with
the recently deceased author about this subject.
Unfortunately, some books about the history of Jewish cooking substitute
unfounded theories and guessing for factual research. True, it is usually difficult
to prove conclusively when a certain recipe appeared in a country, and where
it came from, but few writers on the topic tried to mine old cookbooks for
such information. Whether a recipe does or doesn’t show up in one old Jewish
cookbook cannot prove much. But if it does not appear in three or four such
books of the same country and the same period, a period when far fewer
cookbooks were published than today, this makes it highly unlikely that it
could have been a popular recipe at that place and time.
I used this method to check two statements that frequently crop up in the
literature about the history of kindli. One statement claims that this pastry has
been popular in Hungary for a very long time. The local Jewish cookbooks tell
a different story: it cannot be found in any of the six such works published in
Hungary in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, it appears in virtually
every such book brought out there in the first half of the twentieth century.
Therefore, it is likely that it became popular in Hungary in the last decades of
the nineteenth century.
There has been much confusion in the literature about the origin of kindli.
Bertalan Kohlbach, one of the pioneers of Hungarian Jewish ethnography, wrote
in 1914 that this pastry had come to Hungary from Germany. Joan Nathan, the

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

192. An advertisement from
February 1894 in which Jakab
Spitzer, a merchant and caterer
of prepared food in Budapest’s
inner city, offers to cater
seudahs, religiously prescribed
Jewish feasts. In addition to
catering, he made and sold
pastries and cakes, including
walnut and poppy seed kindlis
for Purim. The ad appeared
a few weeks before the holiday,
and this is why he emphasized
the kindlis in it.

author of the best-known Jewish cookbooks in the US, claims in one of her
books that kindli has been popular in both Germany and Hungary.286 Neither
statement is correct. I checked in three large Jewish cookbooks published in
Germany between 1875 and 1888, as well as in a similarly comprehensive
German-language cookbook published in 1886 in Prague, but couldn’t find any
trace of kindli in them, not even a crumb of it. This makes it most unlikely that
it was widely known in that period or even earlier in Germany.
It is possible that kindli evolved from Pressburger crescent (pozsonyi kifli),
a somewhat similar, but older kind of filled pastry. One of the earliest recipes
of these crescents, which is in an 1840 Hungarian cookbook,287 resembles the
kindli since it uses the same type of dough and doesn’t call for bending the
walnut- and poppy seed–filled packages of dough into crescents.
Another unsolved puzzle is what the child or baby, that lent this pastry its
name and inspired its shape, has to do with Purim. Two of the best and most
famous Hungarian Jewish folklorists offer equally unconvincing explanations.
Sándor Scheiber (1913–1985), a great scholar of Judaism, claimed that the name
and shape refer to Haman’s sons. But according to the Scroll of Esther, Haman’s
ten sons were adults, not babies in swaddling clothes when they were hanged.
Bertalan Kohlbach’s explanation isn’t any better: he states without the slightest
shred of proof, that the kindli was borrowed from a pastry made by German
Gentiles for the ancient German New Year, which was in March. He must have
liked to explain things with the lives of early Germans, since he also believed
that the origin of the braided challah had something to do with the sacrificial
customs of German women in ancient times. But it is easier to criticize than to
find a solution, and unfortunately I don’t know the answer to the question.
It is certain, however, that kindli was known in Hungary by the last decade
of the nineteenth century and probably even some years earlier, since in 1895
Samu Haber described it as a widely popular pastry. “Kindli! Is there anyone
who wouldn’t know this name? … How much tasty delight is in those
swaddling clothes! People pinch their tops, so that all that sweetness shouldn’t
escape from them, and the mothers guard them like they watch our youngest
fellow citizens. … Its dough is prepared similarly to the one for flódni, only
that while flódni resembles multistory houses, in which people live on three or
four floors, the kindli is all alone in its greasy coat, like some well-to-do
farmer.”288

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

HAMANTASCHE

The name of this filled pastry triangle means Haman’s pocket. Poppy seeds
and plum lekvár are the most typical fillings between its folded-up sides, but
according to a 1901 article in a Hungarian Jewish newspaper, a farmer cheese–
filled version existed, too. Several books about the history of Jewish cooking
maintain that these pastries are of German origin, which might be correct,
though I am not fully convinced, since they can’t be found in any of the
nineteenth-century German Jewish cookbooks I had a chance to study (three
volumes printed in Germany and one in Prague). According to most works
about Jewish gastro-history, the German filled sweets called Maultasche (mouth
pocket) and Mohntasche (poppy seed pocket, Maultasche’s poppy seed–filled
version) were the ancestors of Hamantasche. Supposedly Jews adopted Mohntasche in the late sixteenth century and made it one of their Purim specialties
by renaming it to Hamantasche (plural: Hamantaschen), a name that sounded
similar to Mohntasche and referred to Haman, the villain of the Purim story.
These historical works believe that migrating German Jews made this pastry
popular in Eastern Europe. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. The truth is that Hamantasche is quite different from Maultasche and Mohntasche, which are squareshaped or rectangular, sort of like overgrown raviolis or short strudels closed
at their ends. I rather suspect that this unusual, triangular pastry is somehow

Hamantasche (Hámán-táska)
From Auntie Giti’s A zsidó háziasszony könyve (The Jewish
housewife’s book), published in 1935. The book’s recipes
are meant for four people.
Comment: Poppy seed fillings are at least as common
as plum lekvár. It is also more typical when the
Hamantasche is not pasted together from two triangular
pieces of dough, but—as is described in the last sentence
of the recipe—is made of one round or triangular piece
that is folded over the filling on three sides.
This is a special Purim pastry. Rub 35 dekas of fine flour
with 15 dekas fat or Ceres [pareve vegetable fat] and
½ deka yeast. Blend in 10 dekas confectioners’ sugar,
a little salt, and grated lemon zest. Knead it with 2 eggs

and a little rum or wine. Roll it out and cut it into
triangular pieces. Fill the pieces with sweetened plum
lekvár. Paste two pieces together, brush them with egg
and bake them on a greased baking sheet. Another way
to make the pastries is to fold up the 3 ends of the
dough triangles, like you would do with a cheese delkel.

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

related to the similarly triangular kreplach, filled pasta soup garnishes, which
had long been traditional at the Purim meal. My theory is perhaps supported
by what John Cooper writes about an early form of kreplach, which used a
dough made with fat and honey and filled this with fruit, preserves, or nuts
and raisins: “In Poland in the seventeenth century, as in the Jewish community
in Prague, they kneaded the dough for the kreplekh with honey and spices,
filling them with fruit or preserves. Rabbi Joel Sirkes (c. 1561‒1640) added
that people kneaded the kreplekh with goose fat and filled them with raisins
and nuts.”289 This sounds somewhat similar to pastries, although the short
dough of Hamantasche includes eggs in addition to fat and sugar or honey.
Perhaps the reason why this pastry is missing from nineteenth-century
German Jewish cookbooks is because its roots weren’t there but in Galicia and
Ukraine, though this is merely a guess. Something Bertalan Kohlbach wrote
in 1914, however, also points in that direction: “In Munkács [Mukacheve,
Ukraine], as I hear it, there is a Purim pastry that is similar to kindli: the Hamantasche. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t describe it.”290 According to this, Kohlbach
—who was a rabbi and an expert in Jewish ethnography, including the
ethnography of Jewish food—was unfamiliar with Hamantasche, which seems
to indicate that it wasn’t widely known in Hungary of the period. It is also
worthy of attention that he considered it a specialty of northeastern Hungary,
where Munkács was, and where much of the Jewish population had Galician
and Ukrainian roots.
Zsigmond Kuthi’s article in a 1901 issue of Egyenlőség (Equality), describes
it as a once popular, but by his time slightly passé Purim delicacy: “What were
the Hamantaschen? My pen isn’t skilled enough to describe it! Its shape was a
right-angled triangle, like the hat of a French general, turned upside down. It
was made with fine flour that was kneaded with sugar and fat or butter into a
yeast dough and was allowed to rise. They used fat for the dough if it was filled
with lekvár, and butter if it had a farmer cheese filling. … This was, my dear
editor, the Hamantasche. And now please tell me and everyone who is
interested: where has this divine pastry gone? Why has it been struck from the
list of Purim desserts?”291 It is another indication of Hamantasche’s relative
neglect in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that it is missing
from all the Hungarian Jewish cookbooks of the period and it is Auntie Giti’s
1935 work that first includes a recipe for it. Its present popularity in Hungary
is probably the result of relatively recent foreign, mainly Israeli and American,
influence.
Hamantasche is usually made with short dough in other countries, but in
Hungary yeast dough was more customary. Kuthi’s 1901 article describes such
a dough, and this is how it is made in the cookbooks of Auntie Giti and Zorica

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Herbst-Krausz. Similar to most countries, people in the United States generally
make it with short dough, only the Hungarian-born Sándor Lichtman sold
the yeast-dough variety in his famous New York bakery.

MATZO BALLS

Matzo balls—originally created as a Passover specialty—are one of the great success
stories of Jewish cuisine. These dumplings have become so popular among Jews
that they make them throughout the year. Gentiles couldn’t resist their lure either,
and they became fairly standard fare in both the United States and Hungary,
where one can find matzo ball soup on the menu of many nonethnic restaurants.
This was how Adolf Ágai sang their praises in 1895: “When the practical and
clever Jewish woman waves her magic wand, the Easter dumplings emerge from
the depth of the cauldron in their full glory. … These soup dumplings can’t be
seen as mere dumplings but as pleasure balls cohered into an organic unit—even
more than that: poems, the microcosm of planet earth, in all its glory and without
any of its misery.”292 The Judaic scholar Sámuel Krausz was similarly rapturous
in a lecture he gave in 1904: “And the mastery of making matzo balls! There isn’t
a Jewish housewife who wouldn’t tie her reputation—I would almost say her
portfolio—to the cause of dumplings. Some less-than-observant Jews might not
pay attention to the rules of Pesach, but they wouldn’t give up their matzo
dumplings for all the world! Just to annoy them, I would say that their behavior
even lacks the merit of originality, since a Yiddish saying has stated it much earlier:
Me meynt nit di hagode als di kneydlekh. In other words: for some it is not the
holiday, its significance, the telling of its story, the Haggadah, and the Seder that
are important, but only the dumplings, the divine matzo balls. The Passover
dumplings marked the Jewry as much as the cholent.”293
Sweet matzo balls also existed: they were characteristic desserts for the days
of Passover. Adolf Ágai describes nineteenth-century varieties filled with farmer
cheese or lekvár (apricot or plum butter).294 One of my great-grandmother
Riza’s recipes is a sweet matzo-and-potato dumpling filled with lekvár, but
instead of including yet another recipe by her, I decided to print a roughly
similar one by someone else (on page 364). The recipe collection of Riza’s niece,
Mrs. József Doros, née Frida Berger, also includes sweet matzo dumplings,
though they are not filled (see her recipe on page 364), and Auntie Giti’s 1935
cookbook features instructions for preparing matzo dumplings filled with dried
prunes and coated with a mixture of ground walnuts and sugar.
According to Gil Marks, the idea of dumplings (all kinds, not just matzo)
first emerged in Europe in Italy (probably through contacts with Middle

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Matzo Balls (Osterknedel)
From the nineteenth-century recipes of Mrs. Bernát
Berger, née Teréz Baruch, and her sister, Mrs. Sándor
Berger, née Lujza Baruch.
Translation of the original German text: Mix well
a spoonful of hard fat with a little cold water, and add
a little salt, [ground] ginger, and 3 egg yolks. Then add
well soaked matzo of the size of half a bread roll and
the same amount of matzo crushed into coarse crumbs.
Make an appropriate dough of this, then add the
whipped whites [of the 3 eggs]. Test cook one dumpling
in hot soup to see whether it is satisfactory.
Modern version:
Ingredients for about 14 dumplings: 3 sheets (7” × 6½”)
or 4 sheets (6” × 6”) of matzo, 1 cup chicken broth or
water, 2 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons rendered chicken fat
or oil, 3 tablespoons chicken broth or sparkling water,
¾ teaspoon salt, ¾ teaspoon ground ginger (or
1½ teaspoons finely chopped fresh ginger), ¼ cup
unsalted matzo meal, 2 tablespoons finely chopped
fresh parsley, ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper,
2 egg whites, whipped.
Preparation:
1. Break half of the matzo into about 1" pieces, place
them in a medium bowl, add 1 cup chicken broth or
water, soak them for about 8 minutes, squeeze them
out well, and strain the broth for reuse. Break the
remaining matzo into about 2" pieces, place them in
the bowl of the food processor, and process them into
approximately ¼" pieces, about 10 seconds.
2. While the matzo is soaking, whisk egg yolks, chicken
fat or oil, and broth or sparkling water in a large bowl
until they are slightly foamy. Add salt, ginger, soaked
matzo, coarsely ground matzo, matzo meal, parsley,
and ground pepper. Mix them into a medium-soft
dough.
3. Whip egg whites until they form firm peaks.
Thoroughly stir half of the whipped egg whites into the
dough, then fold in the remaining egg whites. The
dough should be soft, almost runny. Let it rest for
½ hour; the dough will get firmer as it rests.

4. Check the consistency of the dough; it should be
medium-soft, barely firm enough to shape it into
dumplings. If it is too hard, mix in a little broth or
water. Place a bowl of cold water near your work
surface, dip you hands into it, then take about 1 heaped
tablespoon of the dough and form it between your
damp palms into a ball about 1½” in diameter. Place
it on the cutting board and proceed to make the
remaining dumplings until you have used up all the
dough. You should have about 14 dumplings. Let them
rest on the board for another ½ hour. Boil about 3" of
salted water in an at least 10"-diameter pot, then
reduce heat to a simmer.
5. Use a spoon to gently lower the dumplings into the
water, adjust heat, and cover. Cook them for 23 to
25 minutes in barely simmering water if you plan to
serve them immediately, about 2 minutes less if you
plan to reheat them. Carefully stir them halfway
through the cooking. The dumplings will expand to
almost 2" in diameter during cooking. Remove them
from the water with a slotted spoon and serve them
immediately in hot soup or keep them on a plate and
reheat them for 2 minutes in simmering soup.

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Easterners) and spread from there to Bohemia in the twelfth century,295 and to
southern Germany, Austria, and France in the thirteenth. From the fourteenth
century on people gradually switched to flour-based doughs for their dumplings, and there were also varieties made with coarse semolina, farmer cheese,
and cornmeal.296 Matzo balls aren’t the oldest type of dumplings, but they are
the best-known sort in Jewish cuisine, so much so, that in Yiddish matzo balls
are often simply called knaidel, kneidl, or knédli (from the German Knödel,
dumpling), almost as if other kinds didn’t exist.
Factory-produced matzo meal became available in the early twentieth
century, and since then some people use it as the main ingredient for their
matzo balls. But I prefer them if they also include broken pieces of matzo,
because I find their texture, even their taste more interesting than the blandness
and uniform sponge-like fluffiness of the version made with only matzo meal.
In most countries, including Hungary, these dumplings are served in chicken
(hen) or goose soup, though in some other regions, like in Alsace, occasionally
also in beef soup. Matzo balls in Hungary are frequently seasoned with dried
ginger, and it is customary to also add a little of that spice to the soup. The
dumplings can be cooked in the soup—in fact, most cookbooks suggest doing
so—but they can make it cloudy, therefore it is better to cook them separately
in salted water or in extra soup and then transfer them into the soup in which
they will be served.
Not only I myself prepare Riza’s matzo balls from time to time, but my
older daughter can’t imagine a Seder without them. About a dozen courses
from Riza’s collection have become parts of my permanent repertory of dishes,
and my daughter also occasionally prepares a few of them. In the past fifteen
or so years I have tested the vast majority of her 136 recipes, but those are the
ones in which I found the most favorable ratio between the amount of work
necessary and the quality of the result. In addition to this, the happiness of
eating some of the same dishes one of our ancestors tasted some 150 years ago
naturally also motivates both me and my daughter. Based on her recipes it
seems that Riza was a good home cook, but certainly not a gourmet one. Her
collection is primarily significant as an authentic document that has luckily
survived, and not because all the dishes in it are equally wonderful when judged
by today’s taste. Some of them are fabulous, others less so.
In addition to my great-grandmother Riza’s recipe for matzo balls, I have
another version from her older sister, Lujza, who was born in 1848. They could
have organized a contest between them for the best matzo balls. In the updated
recipe featured here, I decided to include ground pepper and chopped parsley
from Lujza’s version. I also took from her the idea of allowing the dumplings
to rest before cooking them, which is in addition to the usual resting of the

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Sweet Matzo-and-Potato
Dumplings (Édes laskagombóc)
An early-twentieth-century recipe from the collection of Mrs. József Doros, née
Frida Berger.
6 egg yolks, 2 handfuls of sugar, 10 dekas goose fat, 5 pieces of soaked matzo,
6 handfuls of matzo meal, 75 dekas of boiled and mashed potatoes, 6 whipped egg
whites. You should cook the dumplings in slightly salted water. Pour over them
a mixture of ground walnuts and sugar and sprinkle this with a little melted fat.

Filled Sweet Matzo-and-Potato
Dumplings (Krumplis maceszgombóc)
From the recipe collection of Mrs. József Schein, née Erzsébet Löwentritt.
Peel 4 potatoes, cut them into cubes, cook them in salted water, and mash them
while still hot. Mix this with a few handfuls of matzo meal, 1 whole egg, 3 to
4 spoons of goose fat, and salt. Knead the dough and shape it into dumplings,
each filled with an Italian plum [also known as prune plum] in the middle. Cook
them in salted water. When they float to the surface, remove them with a
slotted spoon. Brown matzo meal in a little oil, and roll the dumplings in this.
Serve them with cinnamon sugar.

dough before shaping the dumplings. I believe this produces unusually moist
and tender dumplings without running the risk of their falling apart in the
boiling water. Both women cooked their matzo balls in the chicken soup, but
I prefer adding them to the soup after they have been cooked in water because
the dumplings tend to absorb a great deal of cooking liquid and one would
need a lot of extra soup to compensate for this. I reduced the quantities of the
ingredients in the original recipe by about a third, since even this way they
produce roughly fourteen medium-sized dumplings, enough for five or so
servings.

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

CHREMSEL X

People prepared this kind of pancake mainly during Passover. It could be equally made from finely grated raw potatoes, grated boiled potatoes, mashed
potatoes, or matzo meal, most of which varieties existed in savory and sweet
versions. According to Gil Marks, its ancestors were long, thin fried noodles,
called vermesel by the Jews of medieval Germany. This name came from the
Latin vermis and Italian verme, meaning “worm” or “earthworm,” which in fact
the fried noodles vaguely resemble. The Italian vermicelli pasta, consisting of
long threads that are thinner than spaghetti, has the same etymology. I know
no other dish whose name and method of preparation mutated so much during
the centuries as the chremsel: in the fifteenth century the name vermesel first
changed to frimsel, then to grimsel, and finally to chremsel, the noodles in the
dish were replaced by other ingredients, and the method of preparation was
altered to become pancakes fried in a skillet.297
These pancakes became fairly common in Hungary, too, where they were
called chremzli, hremzli, or kremzli. They are included in Auntie Giti’s cookbook, published in 1935 in Kecskemét, east-central Hungary, and in Jenny
Ullmann’s volume, brought out in 1933 in of Nagyvárad (Oradea, Romania).
In the 1930s in Budapest the parents of Laurent Stern used grated raw potatoes
for their Passover chremsel, while the parents of E. G. in Nagyenyed, Transylvania, made them with boiled potatoes. This is how E. G. recalled the way they

Filled Matzo Chremsel (Chrimsel)
From Therese Lederer’s German-language cookbook, published in Budapest
in 1876.
People usually prepare this in the last days of Pesach. Knead a few handfuls of
matzo crumbs with 4 sheets of soaked matzo that you dried in [hot] fat, as well as
with 4 eggs, 12½ dekas sugar, 12 bitter ground almonds, and hot fat. Shape
6 elongated flat ovals from this dough, fill them, fold them over themselves so that
the filling is completely enclosed, and then fry them in a skillet in poultry fat while
you are diligently basting them until they become yellowish brown. The filling:
chop 4 to 5 big apples or cut them into small pieces, and mix them with finely
chopped almonds, 12½ dekas big raisins, some ground cinnamon, 12½ dekas
sugar, orange or lemon zest, and a little fat. Sauté this mixture for a few minutes
in a little fat in a hot skillet, let it cool, and fill the dough ovals with it. Many
housewives don’t sauté the mixture before using it for filling.

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CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

Sweet Chremsel (Édes chremzli)
From Auntie Giti’s A zsidó háziasszony könyve (The Jewish housewife’s book),
published in 1935. The book’s recipes are meant for four people.
Mix 4 egg yolks with a little salt, sugar, lemon [zest], and 1 spoon of melted fat.
Add as much matzo meal as necessary for a fairly soft dough. Let it rest for a little
while, then add 4 whipped egg whites, form pancakes with your hand or with a
spoon, and fry them in hot fat. Sprinkle the top of the chremsel with cinnamon
sugar or simple confectioners’ sugar.

Raw Potato Chremsel
(Nyers burgonyás kremzli)
From Jenny Ullmann’s A zsidókonyha művészete (The art of Jewish cuisine),
published in 1933.
Grate 6 peeled potatoes, let them stand for 1 to 2 minutes, and pour off the liquid
they generate. Mix 2 whole eggs and a little salt into the potatoes. Fry spoonfuls of
this mixture in a generous amount of hot fat.

had been prepared: “As a side dish to meat we made farfel [egg barley] from
matzo meal [see recipes on pages 108 and 178] and after it we had chremsel. …
For this, one first boils two or three potatoes. When they are fully cooled—
because if they aren’t cool, they stick to the grater—one grates them. Let’s say,
the person cooks them one day, and makes the chremsel on the next. One then
places the grated potatoes in a bowl, and for two bigger potatoes one takes two
or three eggs, depending on how the dough comes together. It has to have the
consistency of meat mixture for meatloaf patties. One certainly adds black
pepper, salt, and mixes all of this well. Then one heats oil in a skillet and drops
a spoonful of the potato mixture into the hot oil. But before doing it, one dips
the spoon into the oil, because this way the potato mixture would easily slide
off the spoon. The pancakes nicely puff up in the oil. This is such a terrific dish!
One can make it in a minute, and it is enough for a supper.”298

CHARACTERISTIC DISHES

[ 367 ]

GOOSE GIBLETS WITH RICE PILAF

Though this isn’t a typical Jewish specialty, any list of Jewish dishes—regardless
of how incomplete it is—must include at least one course made with goose, and
the stuffed goose neck, which uses only the skin of the bird, clearly can’t fulfill
that role. Like most goose dishes favored by Jews, this one is equally common
in non-Jewish cooking. But Gizella Grosz, who sent the following recipe for
goose giblets with rice pilaf (ludaskása) as her entry to the 1901 recipe contest
of the magazine A Hét (The week), called it a Jewish recipe, and this is why I
chose it as an example of the various goose dishes frequently prepared by Jews.
According to her description: “We prepare goose giblets with rice pilaf in
the following way: when the fat is sizzling in the pot, we toss in the sliced
onions, let them brown, then add the giblets and cook them covered until they
become tender, while stirring them frequently. Now we add a generous amount
of fine rice, and let it cook without allowing it to brown. We dilute it with
warm water, and each time the rice absorbs the water we keep adding more
until the rice gets tender. Next we stir in salt, paprika, and finely chopped
parsley. This dish shouldn’t be served until the rice has absorbed all the water
and only the fat remains on its surface. Jews call this dish rice pilaf paprikás.”299

193. Recipe collection that
Antónia Törzs (originally Bloch)
started to write at age seventeen in 1895. Photograph
by Teodóra Hübner.

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EPILOGUE

T

his book closes a long chapter in my life. It all started when sixteen
years ago I began something that had little to do with my earlier life
as an architect: I decided to reconstruct the daily life, household, and
cooking of my nineteenth-century great-grandmother, an observant Jew. My
book about her was followed by volumes examining various aspects of the daily
lives of Hungarian Jews between 1867 and 1940. With the present work
I return to the theme of the first. This time, however, I present not merely one
woman’s household, but the gastronomic culture of all the major groups within
Hungarian Jewry and the way it changed with time.
The idea of my first book came out of my attempts to prepare dishes from
my great-grandmother’s handwritten recipe collection. I had no further plans
with the reconstructed recipes; I experimented with them merely because of
my interest in what my ancestors ate. I enjoyed deciphering my great-grandmother Riza’s old-fashioned German handwriting, which almost made me feel
as if I had personally known her. Just as enjoyable was my research of old cookbooks, in which I was hoping to find analogous recipes that might aid in
interpreting Riza’s sketchy descriptions. They were sketchy and laconic because
she wrote them for herself, not for others. And I especially enjoyed the moment
when at long last I could taste one of her dishes—braised chicken pieces in
puréed vegetable sauce accompanied by cabbage dumplings—almost as if I had
been sitting at her table.
Our food traditions belong to the most important features of the culture
that produced and shaped us. In addition to intellectually and emotionally
affecting us, they can evoke the flavors of the past, thus creating a sensuous
connection between us and our ancestors. Preserving such traditions is
especially close to my heart. And I don’t think here only of Jewish gastronomic
traditions, but of other ethnic/religious groups as well, and not only their
general repertory of dishes, but even more so, the repertory of individual
families within those groups. I find it important to locate family recipe collections, to make copies of them available to researchers, and—what is even
more essential—to use our ancestors’ recipes when we cook for our loved ones.
I would like these notebooks to not be merely family memorabilia, but active
and useful parts of our daily lives.

194. A detail from the notebook
in which Teréz Baruch, my
great-grandmother wrote rough
drafts of her German-language
letters between 1873 and 1876.

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EPILOGUE

These old notebooks have a way of transporting us to the past and bringing
the person who wrote them back to life. Along with old letters they provide
a window into the everyday life of long ago. One can learn from them what
people ate, what kitchen utensils they used, what ingredients they could buy
in the stores, what cultural and culinary influences shaped them, and whether
they were religious. Sometimes one can also learn about their social lives,
because handwritten recipes frequently include the name of the person from
whom the writer got the recipe. Recipes, such as hadi Sacher (wartime Sacher
torte) in one of my family collections, tell me about shortages during World
War I and how people coped with them. I love the little quirky comments so
common in such collections, such as “this recipe is not quite kosher” by a relative who started to get casual about dietary rules. I could go on citing examples,
but I hope even from these few you get a sense of my passion for those old,
crumbling notebooks. Such recipe collections are important parts of family
traditions, but also of broader cultural traditions. They tell us the story of a vanished world and forge a link to our past.
If this book achieves nothing more than to make you take a closer look at
your old family recipe collections, I will be happy because it has served a good
cause. Cooking from such old recipes might take a little more time and require
a more experienced home cook than following modern cookbooks, but the
result is definitely worth the extra effort. It will be a tasty way to learn about
your cultural heritage.
Unfortunately, by now the richness of Hungarian Jewish cuisine—like that
of the traditional Hungarian cooking—has shrunk to a depressingly small
selection of dishes on the printed menus in restaurants and in the food
repertoires of the home cook. The rich choice of dishes that reflected the
diversity of Hungarian Jews has not only mostly disappeared, but has also been
forgotten. Few people in Hungary today know what bole was, although those
cinnamon-flavored, walnut- and raisin-filled spirals of yeast dough were so
popular toward the end of the nineteenth century that they made one of the
oldest Budapest cafés, the Herzl—where they were a specialty—famous among
both Jews and Gentiles. I also doubt that many in today’s Hungary have tasted
walnut fish, although it used to be one of the most characteristic foods of
Hungarian Jews. I hope this book will inspire you to try some new delicacies.
But perhaps even those who feel that their cooking and baking skills are not
sufficient for the preparation of the recipes, or those who don’t have time for
it, will be able to savor these old dishes, if only in their imagination. Examining
the customs related to foods and the culture that created them, however, is no
less important than studying the dishes themselves.

EPILOGUE

[ 371 ]

My interest in Jewish culture and its culinary heritage arose late in my life,
when listening to my mother’s recollections of her childhood I was amazed to
discover how much this religious tradition, which I had previously considered
a matter of the distant past, had influenced the lifestyles of my recent ancestors.
And perhaps it surprised me even more when I discovered in my own mentality
and habits vestiges of this tradition, something I had long thought alien to me.
Research into the idiosyncrasies of my ancestors’ daily existence quickly led to
an intense interest in the everyday lives of groups that were radically different
from them, while the reconstruction of my great-grandmother’s foods led to
a broader study of the diverse culinary traditions of Hungarian Jews. All this
made me realize the unusually close relationship that connected the lifestyles,
religious traditions, and culinary culture of the various Jewish groups. Way of
life, religion, and food were virtually inseparable in their existence, and it is
exactly this that makes the study of their culinary customs so interesting.
Although this was less applicable to secularized Jews, examining their eating
habits is equally justified, since it reflects the process of Jewish assimilation,
something that was of great importance for all of Hungarian society.
Although none of the four books I have written about the daily lives of
Hungarian Jews before World War II focuses on the Holocaust, the destruction
caused by it was clearly my main motivation for creating them. The impossibility of undoing the schism caused by that cataclysm, compelled me to try
my best in them to describe how people lived, cooked, and ate before it,
because I feel that even if reconstructions can never measure up to the richness
of actual life, they are still better than resignation to the disappearance of that
world.

195. (see page 372) Detail from
the recipe notebook of Mrs.
Sándor Indig, née Antónia
Törzs.

Függelék

APPENDICES

1. APPENDIX

Jewish Cookbooks
Published in Hungary
before 1945: An Annotated
Bibliography
Julie Löv [or Löw]. Die wirthschaftliche
israelitische Köchin, oder: neues vollständiges
Kochbuch für Israeliten. Ein unentbehrliches
Handbuch für wirthschaftliche Frauen und
Töchter. Nach vieljähriger Erfahrung
herausgegeben von Julie Löv [The thrifty Jewish
cook, or: a new and complete cookbook for
Jews. An indispensable handbook for hospitable
women and daughters. Published by Julie Löv,
based on many years of experience]. Pressburg:
Im Verlage von Philip Korn, Buchhändler, 1840,
227 pages, Second edition: 1842.
Unknown author. Nayes follshtendiges kokhbukh
fir di yidishe kikhe: ayn unentbehrlikhes handbukh
fir yidishe froyen und tökhter nebst forshrift fon
flaysh kosher makhen un khale nehmen, iberhoypt
iber raynlikhkayt un kashrut [A new and
complete cookbook of the Jewish cuisine: An
indispensable handbook for Jewish women and
daughters, with instructions for koshering meat
and separating challah, as well as for general
cleanliness and kashrut]. Vienna: Druck von
Adalbert della Torre/Pest: Verlag von M. E.
Löwy, 1854. 78 pages. The only surviving copy

of this book is kept in the University Library of
Amsterdam (Bijzondere Collecties, cat. no.:
002233947).
Unknown author. Die wirthschaftliche
israelitische Köchin, oder: neuestes geprüftes und
vollständiges Kochbuch. Enthält: Eine Sammlung
von mehreren hundert zuverlässigen und durch
vieljährige Erfahrung bewährten Vorschriften. Ein
unentbehrliches Handbuch für wirthliche Frauen
und Töchter [The thrifty Jewish cook, or: the
newest tested and complete cookbook. Includes:
A collection of several hundred reliable and
through many years of experience proven
instructions. An indispensable handbook for
hospitable women and daughters]. Fünfkirchen
[Pécs, south-western Hungary]: Druck und
Verlag von Jakob Schön, [1873?]. 503 pages.
Second edition: 1873. The same publisher also
brought out this book in Baja, south-central
Hungary, in 1873.

[ 373 ]

[ 374 ]

APPENDICES

Therese Lederer. Koch-Buch für israelitische
Frauen. Gründliche Anweisungen, ohne
Vorkenntnisse alle Arten Speisen, vorzüglich die
Originalgerichte der israelitischen Küche auf
schmackhafte und wohlfeile Art nach den RitualGesetzen zu bereiten. Nach 30-jährigen
Erfahrungen gesammelte u. geprüfte Recepte für
junge Hausfrauen, Wirthschafterinnen und
Köchinen, zusammengestellt von Therese Lederer,
geb. Krauss [Cookbook for Jewish women.
Thorough instructions for how to prepare,
without any prior knowledge, all kinds of dishes,
primarily the original dishes of the Jewish
cuisine, thriftily and in a tasty way while
observing the ritual laws. Recipes collected and
tested in accordance with her 30 years of
experience by Therese Lederer, née Krauss, for
young housewives, housekeepers, and cooks].
Budapest: Druck und Verlag von Max Dessauer,
1876. 266 pages. The work had at least five
editions. The fifth edition was published in 1884
by the M. E. Löwy’s Sohn publishing company
in Budapest.

elkészíthetők. Több évi tapasztalatai után gyűjtötte:
Hercz Rafael Rezsőné, szül. Bauer Leonora
[Cookbook for the households of religious Jews.
Detailed instructions for the tastiest preparation
of all kinds of dishes, but especially those of the
Jewish cuisine. Compiled by Mrs. Rafael Rezső
Hercz, née Leonora Bauer, based on her many
years of experience]. Budapest: Kiadótulajdonos
[publisher] Schwarz Ignácz. VII. district,
3 Király Street, 1899. 232 pages. The same
publisher brought out a second edition in 1908.

Sarah Cohn. Israelitisches Kochbuch. Zubereitung
aller Arten Speisen nach den Ritualgesetzen.
Originalberichte der israelitischen Küche von Sarah
Cohn, geb. Uhlfelder. Auf Grund 20-jähriger
Erfahrungen gesammelt. Mit Illustrationen [Jewish
cookbook: The preparation of all kinds of foods
according to the ritual laws. Original accounts
of the Jewish cuisine, collected by Sarah Cohn
based on her 20 years of experience. With
illustrations]. Pressburg [Bratislava, Slovakia]:
Gebrüder Schwarz, [c. 1900]. 259 pages.

Venetiáner, Lajosné. A befőttekről. Gyümölcs,
főzelék és a saláta épen való tartása. Édes és sós
sütemények. Kipróbált tapasztalatok után írta
dr. Venetiáner Lajosné [About preserves: How
to preserve fruit, vegetables, and salads: Sweet
and savory baked goods. Written by Mrs. Lajos
Dr. Venetianer, based on her tested experience].
Újpest and Budapest: A szerző kiadása [published
by the author]. Ritter Jenő könyvnyomdája
[Jenő Ritter’s printing shop], 1931. 45 pages.

Hercz, Rafael Rezsőné. Szakácskönyv vallásos
izraeliták háztartása számára. Beható utasítások,
a melyek által mindenféle ételek, de különösen
az izraelita konyha ételei a legízletesebb módon

Rosenfeld, Mártonné. A zsidó nő szakácskönyve
[The Jewish woman’s cookbook]. Subotica:
Minerva Nyomda kiadása, 1927. 372 pages.
Third expanded edition: Budapest: Schlesinger
Jos. könyvkereskedésének kiadása, 1938.
377 pages.
Ganz, Ábrahámné. Kóser szakácskönyve [Mrs.
Ábrahám Ganz’s kosher cookbook]. Dés,
Medgyesi Lajos könyvnyomdája [Lajos
Medgyesi’s printing shop], 1928. 118 pages.

Ullmann, Jenny. A zsidókonyha művészete, a mai
kornak megfelelő takarékossággal. Összeállította:
Ullmann Jenny [The art of Jewish cuisine, with
a thriftiness appropriate to our age. Compiled by
Jenny Ullmann]. Oradea [before 1920:

APPENDICES

Nagyvárad]. Sonnenfeld Adolf R. T. Grafikai
Műintézete [graphics’ shop of Adolf Sonnenfeld
Joint Stock Company], 1933. 79 pages.
Giti néni [Auntie Giti; Mrs. Aladár Adler, née
Gitta Rand]. A zsidó háziasszony könyve. Hasznos
tudnivalók. Kóser szakácskönyv (4 személyre)
[The Jewish housewife’s book: Useful
instructions: Kosher cookbook (for 4 persons)].

Kecskemét: Kiadja Ábrahám Márton
Könyvnyomdája. 1935. 244 pages.
Unknown author. A WIZO kóser szakácskönyve
[WIZO’s kosher cookbook]. Lugoj [before 1920:
Lugos]: Sidon József könyvnyomdája [József
Sidon’s printing shop], 1938. 139 pages.

[ 375 ]

[ 376 ]

APPENDICES

2. APPENDIX

Authors of the
Handwritten Recipe
Collections Used
in this Book
Bálint, Alice
Baum, Berta
Béres, Mrs. József, née Teréz
Klein
Berger, Mrs. Bernát, née Teréz
Baruch
Berger, Mrs. Sándor, née Lujza
Baruch
Borovic, Mrs. Ármin, née
Margit Schreiber
Deutsch, Mrs. Zsigmond, née
Júlia Pollák
Doros, Mrs. József, née Frida
Berger: “Appetizers, Pâtés”
Doros, Mrs. József, née Frida
Berger: “Desserts”
Doros, Mrs. József, née Frida
Berger: “Dishes for Passover
and Purim”
Grosz, Mrs. Mihály, née Margit
Schwarcz
Halász, Mrs. Ottó, née Edit
Berger
Hinsenkamp, Mrs. Alfréd, née
Lujza Molnár

Indig, Mrs. Sándor, née
Antónia Törzs
Kellner, Mrs. József, née Ilona
Pick
Körner, Mrs. Arnold, née Lea
Haas
Körner, Mrs. József, née
Katalin Halász
Losonczi, Mrs. Arthur, née
Róza Weisz
Löw, Elza
Löwinger, Mrs. Árpád, née
Aranka Reich
Nádas (Neubauer), Mrs. Ármin
Roth, Mrs. Jenő, née Irén
Weisz
Schein, Mrs. József, née
Erzsébet Löwentritt
Schneller, Mrs. Dezső, née Irén
Monáth
Somló, Mrs. Béla, née Elza
Domber
Spitzer, Mrs. Gyula, née Olga
Domber
Stern, Mrs. Sámuel, née Irma
Klein and her daughter

Mrs. Lajos Haskó, née Róza
Stern
Ungár, Mrs. Dr. Kálmán, née
Erna Hell
Unknown woman (first
nineteenth-century
manuscript in Hebrew
letters)
Unknown woman from
Vinkovci
Unknown woman (another
nineteenth-century
manuscript in Hebrew
letters)
Weisz, Mrs. Adolf, Ibolya
Winter (née Grosz)
Weisz, Mrs. M. Ferenc, née
Irén Domber

APPENDICES

3. APPENDIX

List of Quoted
Recipes
The recipes in this book are intended as illustrations to the text and
not as a comprehensive collection of all the characteristic Jewish dishes,
therefore some courses are missing. I quote the original text of the recipes
and made no attempt to update or correct them, since the recipes are
featured here primarily as documents and less as aids to practical cooking.
I haven’t tested the recipes. My great-grandmother’s recipes, which
I tested and updated for my first book, are the only exceptions to this.

DISHES
HOLIDAY DISHES
Shabbat dishes
Bean cholent ........................................ 338
(from the recipe collection of
Mrs. Bernát Berger,
née Teréz Baruch)
Bread kugel ......................................... 348
(from an 1876 cookbook
by Therese Lederer)
Bread kugel ........................................... 71
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. Sándor Indig,
née Antónia Törzs)
Bread kugel with apples ......................... 346
(from the recipe collection of
Mrs. Bernát Berger, née Teréz Baruch)

Cholent .............................................. 154
(from a description
by György Braun)
Cholent egg ......................................... 94
(from the July 20, 1901, issue
of the magazine A Hét)
Chopped eggs for Saturday ...................... 335
(from a cookbook by
Zorica Herbst-Krausz)
Cooked black fish .................................. 66
(from a nineteenth-century
manuscript in the
Hungarian Jewish Archives)
Falshe fish .......................................... 326
(from a 1935 cookbook
by Auntie Giti)
Ganef ............................................... 350
(from a 1935 cookbook
by Auntie Giti)

[ 377 ]

[ 378 ]

APPENDICES

Stuffed fish for Friday night .................... 327
(from a cookbook by
Zorica Herbst-Krausz)
Jewish fish .......................................... 150
(from the 1902 cookbook
of the magazine A Hét)
Marinated fish; a Polish Jewish recipe ........ 150
(from the 1902 cookbook
of the magazine A Hét)
Meat kugel ......................................... 349
(from an 1876 cookbook
by Therese Lederer)
Meat tzimmes ..................................... 354
(from an 1876 cookbook
by Therese Lederer)
P’tcha ............................................... 155
(from a cookbook by
Zorica Herbst-Krausz)
Pea cholent ......................................... 59
(from a c. 1900 cookbook
by Sarah Cohn)
Rice cholent with goose giblets ................. 82
(from an 1876 cookbook
by Therese Lederer)
Rolled herring fillets ............................. 157
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. Ármin Nádas)
Stuffed fish for Friday night ................... 327
(from a cookbook by
Zorica Herbst-Krausz)
Stuffed goose neck ............................... 351
(from a cookbook
by Zorica Herbst-Krausz)
The Krúdy Family’s Bean Cholent ........... 344
Walnut fish ......................................... 328
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. József Doros,
née Frida Berger)

Rosh Hashanah dishes
Carrot tzimmes ................................... 353
(from a cookbook
by Zorica Herbst-Krausz)
Pesach dishes
Egg Barley for Pesach ............................. 108
(from a 1953 cookbook
by Margit Löbl)
Matzo balls ......................................... 362
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. Bernát Berger,
née Teréz Baruch)
Matzo farfel ........................................ 178
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. József Schein,
née Erzsébet Löwentritt)
Matzo kugel ....................................... 348
(from an 1876 cookbook
by Therese Lederer)
Raw potato chremsel ............................ 366
(from a 1933 cookbook
by Jenny Ullmann)
Scrambled eggs with matzo .................... 178
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. József Schein,
née Erzsébet Löwentritt)

FOR OTHER OCCASIONS

Appetizers
Goose “bacon” .................................... 206
(from a cookbook by Tibor
and Róbert Rosenstein)

APPENDICES

A good meat soufflé ............................... 66
(from a nineteenth-century
manuscript in the
Hungarian Jewish Archives)
Pudding of smoked beef ........................ 106
(from a 1938 cookbook
of the organization WIZO)
Liver cheese .......................................... 95
(from the July 20, 1901,
issue of the magazine A Hét)
Toast .................................................. 94
(from the July 28, 1901,
issue of the magazine A Hét)
Soups and soup garnishes
Bean broth soup with tiny dumplings ....... 148
(from a description
by György Braun)
Beet soup ........................................... 135
(from a 1928 cookbook
by Mrs. Ábrahám Ganz)
Fish roe soup for Friday noon ................... 104
(from a 1938 cookbook
of the organization WIZO)
Fish soup ............................................. 79
(from a Yiddish cookbook
published in 1854 in Pest)
Fresh cherry soup ................................... 78
(from a Yiddish cookbook
published in 1854 in Pest)
Ginger-flavored soup biscuits .................. 130
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. Bernát Berger,
née Teréz Baruch)
Semolina soup .................................... 265
(a recipe of the Neiger
restaurant from 1935)

Main dishes, sauces, side dishes
Beef boiled in soup ............................... 332
(from a 1927 cookbook by
Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld)
Braised beef with vegetables .................... 332
(from a 1935 cookbook
by Auntie Giti)
Brisket .............................................. 333
(from a 1935 cookbook
by Auntie Giti)
Cabbage dumplings .............................. 147
(a recipe of Mrs. Bernát Berger,
née Teréz Baruch)
Djuvece ............................................. 132
(from a 1927 cookbook
by Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld)
Goose giblets with rice pilaf .................... 367
(from the September 1, 1901
issue of the magazine A Hét)
Pear stew ........................................... 103
(from a 1933 cookbook
by Jenny Ullmann)
Sauces (tomato, gooseberry, quince) .......... 148
(from a description
by György Braun)
Tasty boiled beef .................................. 331
(from a 1927 cookbook by
Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld)
The Inczes’ stuffed cabbage ..................... 242
(from George Lang’s The
Cuisine of Hungary)

[ 379 ]

[ 380 ]

APPENDICES

Preserves, compotes, fruit jellies

For Purim

Candied etrog ..................................... 211
(from a 1931 cookbook by
Mrs. Lajos Venetiáner)
Etrog in sugar ..................................... 210
(from the September 15, 1901
issue of the magazine A Hét)
Gooseberry jelly .................................. 213
(from a 1928 cookbook
by Mrs. Ábrahám Ganz)
Stewed quince .................................... 208
(from the September 15, 1901
issue of the magazine A Hét)
Tomato jelly ......................................... 71
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. Ármin Nádas)

Elegant kindli ..................................... 357
(from the recipe collection of Mrs.
József Schein, née Erzsébet Löwentritt)
Flódni ............................................... 355
(from a cookbook by
Zorica Herbst-Krausz)
Hamantasche ...................................... 359
(from a 1935 cookbook
by Auntie Giti)
Kindli ................................................ 356
(from a cookbook by
Zorica Herbst-Krausz)
Walnut cake ......................................... 95
(from the 1902 cookbook
of the magazine A Hét)
Walnut slices ....................................... 130
(from a 1931 cookbook
by Mrs. Lajos Venetiáner)
Walnut squares ...................................... 95
(from the September 29, 1901,
issue of the magazine A Hét)

BAKED GOODS, DESSERTS,
CHALLAH
For the Shabbat
Apple kugel .......................................... 62
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. Bernát Berger,
née Teréz Baruch)
Challah ............................................. 325
(from a 1927 cookbook
by Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld)
Yeast dough buns ................................. 149
(from a description
by György Braun)

For Pesach
Apple “strudel” for Passover .................... 180
(from the April 7, 1938, issue
of Egyenlőség, a Jewish weekly)
Carob torte ........................................ 180
(from a 1935 cookbook
by Auntie Giti)
Filled matzo chremsel ........................... 365
(from an 1876 cookbook
by Therese Lederer)
Filled sweet matzo- and potato
dumplings ......................................... 364
(from the recipe collection of Mrs.
József Schein, née Erzsébet Löwentritt)

APPENDICES

Matzo fritters ........................................ 70
(a recipe of Mrs. Sándor Berger,
née Lujza Baruch)
Sweet chremsel .................................... 366
(from a 1935 cookbook
by Auntie Giti)
Sweet matzo-and-potato
dumplings .......................................... 364
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. József Doros,
née Frida Berger)
Yellow torte ........................................ 170
(from a 1928 cookbook
by Mrs. Ábrahám Ganz)
For Shavuot
Dairy challah ...................................... 324
(from an 1876 cookbook
by Therese Lederer)
For the meal before the Tisha B’av fast
Sweet cream strudel ............................. 183
(from the August 25, 1901
issue of the magazine A Hét)

For other occasions
Baked doughnuts ................................. 131
(from a 1927 cookbook
by Mrs. Márton Rosenfeld)
Egg cake ............................................. 128
(from a 1935 cookbook
by Auntie Giti)
Farmer cheese biscuits ............................. 72
(from the recipe collection
of Mrs. Mihály Grosz,
née Margit Schwarcz)
Lekoch ............................................... 186
(from a cookbook by
Zorica Herbst-Krausz)
Pepper rings ........................................ 166
(from a 1931 cookbook
by Mrs. Lajos Venetiáner)
Pfeffer-kugli ........................................ 287
(Hermann Freund’s
nineteenth-century recipe)
Sweet butter biscuits ................................ 69
(a recipe of Mrs. Fülöp Berger,
née Regina Kauders)

[ 381 ]

196. Pages from the recipe collection
of Antónia Törzs (originally: Bloch),
which she started in 1895, when she
was only seventeen years old. She
didn’t maintain a kosher household
after her marriage, but as one can see
from the recipe for zsemlye kugli
(bread kugel), a traditional Jewish
specialty, occasionally she prepared
those types of dishes.

[ 383 ]

Notes
001

Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, vi.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Kitchen Judaism,” 80:
“Treyf cookbooks like that of ‘Aunt Babette’
reveal how Jewish identity was constructed in
the kitchen and at the table through the
conspicuous rejection of the dietary laws and
enthusiastic acceptance of culinary eclecticism.”
003
Kiss, “Zsidó gasztronómia Magyarországon”;
Balázs Fényes, “Zsidó folklór és a rabbinikus
hagyomány” [Jewish folklore and the rabbinical
tradition], in“Őrizzétek meg őrizetemet ...”; János
Oláh, “Szimbolikus áskenáz szombati ételek”
[Symbolic Ashkenazi Shabbat dishes], in
Terézvárosi Vallásközi Évkönyv 2015, ed. József
Szécsi (Budapest: Avilai Nagy Szent Teréz
Templom és Keresztény–Zsidó Társaság, 2015),
55–68; János Oláh, “Ünnepek, jeles napok ételei
[Foods of holidays and life-cycle events], in
Judaisztika by János Oláh, 232–237.
004
Kushner, To Life!
005
Porzó [Adolf Ágai], “A zsidó konyha:
Antiszemita ínyencek épülésére” [The Jewish
cuisine: For the education of anti-Semitic
gourmets], in Az örök zsidó by Adolf Ágai,
201–202. First publication in Egyenlőség
[Equality], February 8, 1895.
006
Emma asszony, A Hét szakácskönyve, 106.
007
Roden, The Book of Jewish Food, 21.
008
Zsidó Újság [Jewish Newspaper], July 9,
1926, 12.
009
Porzó [Adolf Ágai], Utazás Pestről, 280.
010
Zsigmond Csoma and Lajos Lőwy, “Kóser vágás
és a kóserborok, a nemzsidó vallású magyar
parasztság tudatában” [Kosher slaughtering and
002

kosher wine in the minds of non-Jewish
Hungarian farmers], in … és hol a vidék
zsidósága?, ed. Deáky, Csoma, and Vörös,
106–107.
011
Árpád Csiszár, “A szatmári és beregi aprófalvak
zsidósága és a falu kapcsolata a századfordulótól
az 1940-es évekig” [The relationship between
the Jewry and the rest of inhabitants in small
villages of Szatmár and Bereg Counties between
the turn of the century and the 1940s], in … és
hol a vidék zsidósága?, ed. Deáky, Csoma, and
Vörös, 174.
012
“Ernő Galpert,” Centropa,
http://www.centropa.org/hu/biography/galperterno.
013
Csoma and Lőwy, “Kóser vágás,” 107.
014
Csiszár, “A szatmári és beregi aprófalvak,” 174.
015
“Milk and Meat in Jewish Law,” Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_and_meat_
in Jewish_law: “Many 20th-century Orthodox
rabbis say that washing the mouth out between
eating dairy and meat is sufficient.”
016
Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied, 35–36.
017
Csiszár, “A szatmári és beregi aprófalvak,” 173.
018
Frojimovics et al., Jewish Budapest, 194.
019
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 440.
020
Talmud, Avodah zarah 29b.
021
Magyar Zsidó Oklevéltár [Hungarian Jewish
archives] 8 (1609): 242; quoted in Csoma and
Lőwy, “Kóser vágás,” 113.
022
Tamás Raj, “A kóser bor” [Kosher wine],
http://www.zsido.hu/receptek/bor.htm.
023
“Leopold Karpelesz,” Centropa, http://
www.centropa.org/de/print/78398.

[ 384 ]

NOTES

024

“E. G.,” Centropa (manuscript).
Rékai, A munkácsi zsidók, 85.
026
“Bella Steinmetz,” Centropa, http://www.
centropa.org/cs/print/76537.
027
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Kitchen Judaism,” 80.
028
Pesti Hírlap, June 2, 1844, 376.
029
Komoróczy, A zsidók története Magyarországon,
vol. 1, 1077.
030
Csoma, “Másság – tolerancia,” 85.
031
Mrs. Vilmos Vázsonyi, “Széder-esték” [Seder
evenings], Egyenlőség [Equality], March 28,
1934, 5.
032
Ede Vadász, “A zsidó konyhából” [From Jewish
cuisine], Magyar Zsidó Szemle [Hungarian
Jewish Review] 33 (1916): 50.
033
Csoma and Lőwy, “Kóser vágás,” 109–112.
034
Roden, The Book of Jewish Food, 17.
035
Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied, 85.
036
Vadász, “A zsidó konyháról,” 83.
037
Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied, 175.
038
I based my presentation of the Jewish cuisines
of the different countries mainly on the
following works: Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied;
Roden, The Book of Jewish Food; and Marks,
Encyclopedia of Jewish Food.
039
Porzó [Adolf Ágai], “A zsidó konyha,” 203.
040
Schulhof is quoting the Bible here (Micah IV. 4).
041
Schulhof, Budai krónika, 5–6.
042
Frojimovics et al., A zsidó Budapest, 28.
043
Ibid., 29.
044
Schulhof, Budai krónika, 42.
045
Ibid., 18–20.
046
Frojimovics et al., A zsidó Budapest, 26.
047
Hungarian National Archives (Magyar Országos
Levéltár). (1681) Inv. no.: OL. 1322. 175.
cs., 141.
048
Magyar Zsidó Oklevéltár [Hungarian Jewish
archives] 5.1: 506.
049
Adolf Ágai, “Az én dédatyámról” [About my
great-grandfather], in Az örök zsidó by Adolf
Ágai, 101.
025

050

Moritz Gottlieb Saphir, “Die Gastronomie der
Juden. Eine Jugend-Erinnerung” [Jewish
gastronomy: Recollections of my youth], in
Meine Memoiren und anderes, by Moritz
Gottlieb Saphir.
051
Quoted in Fenyves, Képzelt asszimiláció?, 55.
052
Cohn, Israelitisches Kochbuch, 25.
053
Porzó [Adolf Ágai], “A zsidó konyha,” 196–203.
054
Samu Haber, “Még valami a zsidó konyháról.
Nyílt levél Porzóhoz” [Some additional things
about Jewish cuisine: An open letter to Porzó],
Egyenlőség [Equality], February 15, 1895.
055
Kiss, “Zsidó gasztronómia Magyarországon.”
056
Löv, Die israelitische Köchin.
057
Stolz, Kochbuch für Israeliten.
058
Stolz, Kochbuch für Israeliten, III-IV.: “...
benutzte ich mit Vergnügen die Gelegenheit,
welche ich mir darbot, die Kochkunst in den
Häusern der gebildetsten hiesigen Israeliten zu
beobachten, und, nachdem ich den Gebrauch
derselben hinlänglich kennen gelernt hatte,
manches in der Kocherei der Israeliten zu
verbessern … dass das Ganze … rücksichtlich
des Geschmacks den Forderungen der bessren
Kochkunst entspräche.”
059
Montefiore, The Jewish Manual.
060
Nayes folshtendiges kokhbukh fir di yidishe kikhe.
061
Bloshteyn, Kokhbukh far yudishe froyen.
062
Henry Notaker, “Old Cookbooks and Food
History: Jewish Cookbooks, 1815–1945,”
http://www.notaker.com/bibliogr/jewish.htm.
063
Notaker: A History of Cookbooks: From Kitchen to
Page over Seven Centuries. 240.
064
“M. E. Löwy, Sons, Budapest, 1. Király-Street
… Founded in 1786 by M. E. Löwy, later
owned by Lipót Löwy, then by Mrs. Lipót
Löwy,” in Magyar könyvkereskedők évkönyve [The
yearbook of Hungarian booksellers), vol. 6
(1895), III. Könyvkereskedelmi czímtár
[Addresses of the book trade], 203.

NOTES

065

According to the German translation by Larissza
Hrotkó from the Yiddish original: “Es bleibt
also zweifellos, dass ein Kochbüchlein in jedem
Hause ein notwendiges Buch ist, und ich habe
mir daher die Mühe genommen aus den
neuesten, besten Kochbüchern das Beste,
Gesündeste und Geschmackvollste der Speisen
und ihrer Zubreitung zu sammeln, woraus
gegenwärtiges Kochbüchlein entstanden ist.” In
Nayes follshtendiges kokhbukh fir di yidishe kikhe, 1.
066
Die wirthschaftliche israelitische Köchin. The
same publisher put out this book in the same
year in Baja as well.
067
Lederer, Koch-Buch für israelitische Frauen.
068
Wolf, Kochbuch für israelitische Frauen, iii: “Es
trifft sich nicht selten, dass Töchter im elterlichen Hause nicht Gelegenheit haben, sich mit
diesen religiösen Gebräuchen bekannt zu
machen und deshalb in grosse Verlegenheit
gerathen, wenn religiös gesinnte Männer sie zu
Hausfrauen begehren. Für diese jungen Mädchen, ist diese, in allen Anforderungen einer
religiös-jüdischen Wirthschaft belehrende Buch,
ganz besonders bestimmt.” Quoted in Mecklenburg, “Birnen, Bohnen und kein Speck.”
069
Cohn, Israelitisches Kochbuch.
070
Cserna-Szabó, “‘Budapest, 5659,’” 12.
071
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 140.
072
Notaker, “Old Cookbooks and Food History.”
073
Kohlbach, Zsidó néprajz.
074
Vadász, “A zsidó konyháról,” 179–180.
075
Bertalan Kohlbach, “Sütemények a zsidó
szertartásban” [Baked goods in Jewish rituals], in
Az Izraelita Magyar Irodalmi Társulat évkönyve
[The almanac of the Jewish Hungarian Literary
Society] (Budapest, 1914).
076
Sámuel Krausz, “A zsidó konyha” [The Jewish
cuisine], in A kolozsvári izr, 63.
077
Krauss, “Aus der jüdischen Volksküche.”
078
Ibid., 5: “Und wie ist es denkbar, dass in die
jüdischen Häuser, wohlgemerkt in die jüdischen

Häuser des germanischen Mittelalters, auch nur
der leiseste Anstrich eines heidnischen
Opferbrauches hätte Eingang finden können?”
079
Grunwald, “Aus dem jüdischen Kochbuch,”
Mitteilungen.
080
Ibid., 40.
081
Ibid., 44.
082
Ignotus, Emma asszony levelei, 57.
083
András Lengyel, “Egy-két adat Ignotus Hugó
‘magántörténetéhez’” [One or two pieces of
information about the personal history of Hugó
Ignotus], Kalligram, December 2014,
http://www.kalligram.eu/Kalligram/Archivum/
2014/XXIII.-evf.-2014.-december/Egy-ketadat-Ignotus-Hugo-magantortenetehez.
084
Ferenc Molnár, “Disznótor a Lipótvárosban”
[Pig-killing feast in Lipótváros], in Hétágú síp,
by Ferenc Molnár.
085
Ibid., 200–201.
086
Quoted in Ágnes Széchenyi, “Vészi József, a műhelyteremtő és dinasztiaalapító” [József Vészi, the
workshop builder and dynasty founder], Budapesti Negyed, May 2008: 268–269.
087
I didn’t have a chance to examine the first
edition, but I know its publication date from
a later statement by the author herself. Mrs.
Rosenfeld, the author, in her preface to her later
work Kis céna szakácskönyv (Small tzena
cookbook), mentions her earlier cookbook
“published 25 years ago.” Since the preface is
dated November 1952, her A zsidó nő
szakácskönyve (The Jewish woman’s cookbook)
must have come out in 1927. Róbert Kovács in
his study (A kóser konyha határtalan, in
http://mediafiles.hu.josu.rs/2014/12/A-KÓSERKONYHA-HATÁRTALAN1.pdf ) states that the
book “according to existing data … came out
before 1925.” I have no way of knowing what
the “existing data” are, but presumably not
a date printed in the first edition, otherwise
Kovács would have said so.

[ 385 ]

[ 386 ]

NOTES

088

What I write about the lives of the Span sisters is
based on Joan Nathan’s book, The Jewish
Holiday Baker.
089
A WIZO kóser szakácskönyve.
090
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Cookbooks.”
091
Herbst–Krausz: Magyarországi zsidó ételek.
092
Czingel, Szakácskönyv a túlélésért, 14.
093
Krúdy, Etel király kincse, 148.
094
According to information provided by Gábor
Schweitzer.
095
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, viii.
096
Roland Barthes, “Toward a Psychosociology of
Contemporary Food Consumption,” in Food
and Culture: A Reader, eds. C. Counihan and
P. van Esterik (New York: Routledge, 1997), 20.
097
Emma asszony, A Hét szakácskönyve, 47.
098
“Iván Moskovics,” Centropa, http://
www.centropa.org/hu/
biography/moskovics-ivan.
099
Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied, 178.
100
Herbst-Kraus, Régi zsidó ételek, 47.
101
According to information provided by Ivan
Sanders.
102
Vadász, “A zsidó konyháról,” 50.
103
Rékai, A munkácsi zsidók, 113.
104
Ede Vadász, “Zsidó szokások és szólamok”
[Jewish customs and sayings], Magyar Zsidó
Szemle [Hungarian Jewish Review] 23 (1906):
49.
105
Kovi, Transylvanian Cuisine, 116.
106
Grunwald, “Aus dem jüdischen Kochbuch,” 42.
107
“Anna Éva Gáspár,” Centropa, http://www.
centropa.org/hu/print/biograph/
gaspar-anna-eva.
108
József Farkas, “Adatok a mátészalkai zsidóság
életéhez, táplálkozási szokásaihoz” [Data about
the lives and eating habits of the Jewry in
Mátészalka], in … és hol a vidék zsidósága?, ed.
Deáky, Csoma, and Vörös, 131‒145.
109
Morton, The Art of Viennese Cooking, 82: “These
so-called noodles are actually dumplings, a

robust old dish that comes from Emperor Franz
Josef ’s turn-of-the-century court. I have the
recipe from Herr Direktor Fritz Feldmar of
Vienna’s Kerzenstüberl restaurant. He learned it
forty years ago, as an apprentice to the
Emperor’s former pastry chef. Franz Josef liked
to eat his Kraut-nudeln for a main course, with
cucumber salad.”
110
Vasárnapi Újság [Sunday Newspaper], February
7, 1864, 57.
111
For example: Lev. II. 13.
112
“Magda Fazekas,” Centropa, http://
www.centropa.rog/node/78618.
113
Károly Gerő, “Jámbor elmélkedések az ünnepi
sütemények fölött” [Gentle thoughts about
holiday pastries and cakes], Egyenlőség
[Equality], February 26, 1888.
114
Samu Haber, “Zsidók lúdja” [The goose of
the Jews], Egyenlőség [Equality], November 15,
1896.
115
Witwe Joseph Gumprich: Vollständiges
Praktisches Kochbuch für die jüdische Küche.
[Complete practical cookbook for the Jewish
cuisine] Trier: Verlag von Kaufmann & Co.
1888. I examined the 1899 third and the 1914
seventh editions of this work.
116
Kauders, Vollständiges israelitisches Kochbuch. She
calls her pea cholent Melange (Scholit) von Gansfleisch (Mixture [cholent] made with goose meat).
117
Haber, A mi ünnepeink, 3–5.
118
“Ernő Galpert.”
119
“Salesüdesz, a ‘harmadik lakoma’ a Csáky-utcai
templomban” [Shaleshudes, the “third meal” in
the Csáky Street synagogue], Egyenlőség
[Equality], May 5, 1934.
120
Ede Vadász, “Zsidó szólások és szólamok”
[Jewish sayings and turns of phrase], Magyar
Zsidó Szemle [Hungarian Jewish Review] 23
(1906): 48.
121
Adolf Ágai, “Jom kippur” [Yom Kippur],
in Az örök zsidó by Adolf Ágai, 177‒178.

NOTES

122

Ede Vadász, “Szükesz” [Sukkot]. In: Magyar
Zsidó Szemle (Hungarian Jewish Review),
volume XXV, 1908, 381.
123
Gil Marks: Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 256.
124
Rudolf Szentesi (József Kiss): Budapesti rejtelmek
[Mysteries of Budapest], Pest: Deutsch
Testvérek, 1874 part 2, vol. 3, ch. 8.
125
Mrs. Vilmos Vázsonyi, “Purimi emlék” [Purim
memories], Egyenlőség [Equality], February 24,
1934.
126
Arnold Kiss, “Régi szép purim” [Beautiful Purim
of old], Egyenlőség [Equality], February 24,
1934.
127
“E. G.”
128
Mihály Kertész, “Régi purimok régi boldogsága”
[Past happiness of past Purims], Egyenlőség
[Equality], March 10, 1938.
129
Oláh, “Szimbolikus áskenáz.”
130
Cardozo, Jewish Family Celebrations, 106.
131
Frojimovics et al., Jewish Budapest, 186.
132
Adolf Ágai, “Húsvét” [Easter, meaning Pesach],
in Az örök zsidó by Adolf Ágai, 171.
133
Samu Haber, “Készülődés” [Getting ready],
Egyenlőség [Equality], March 24, 1907.
134
Csiszár, “A szatmári és beregi aprófalvak,” 176.
135
“Ernő Galpert.”
136
Ibid.
137
Ibid.
138
Ede Vadász, “Zsidó szokások és szólamok”
[Jewish customs and sayings], Magyar Zsidó
Szemle [Hungarian Jewish Review] 23 (1906):
47; and Oláh, “Szimbolikus áskenáz.”
139
Mrs. Vilmos Vázsonyi, “Virágos, boldog
pünkösd” [Happy, flower-filled Pentecost],
Egyenlőség [Equality], June 1, 1934.
140
A Hét [The Week], August 25, 1901.
141
Ede Vadász, “A születés körüli szokások”
[Customs related to birth], Magyar Zsidó Szemle
[Hungarian Jewish Review] 25 (1908): 384.
142
“Shalom Zachar,” Wikipedia, https://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalom_Zachar.

143

Oláh, Judaisztika, 236.
Ede Vadász, “A születés körüli szokások”
[Customs related to birth], Magyar Zsidó Szemle
[Hungarian Jewish Review] 33 (1916): 51.
145
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 359.
146
Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied, 118.
147
Kohlbach, “Sütemények a zsidó szertartásban,”160.
148
The Song of Solomon, ch. 4, 11.
149
Vadász, “A zsidó konyháról,” 51.
150
Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Gittin, Folio 57a.
151
Adolf Ágai, “Lakodalom” [Wedding], in Az örök
zsidó by Adolf Ágai, 160–161.
152
Mrs. Ernő Winkler, née Noémi Munkácsi,
“Zsidó lakodalmi szokások Máramarosszigeten”
[Jewish wedding customs in Máramarossziget],
in Magyar Zsidó Szemle [Hungarian Jewish
Review] 55 (1937): 163.
153
Vázsonyi, “Virágos.”
154
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 612.
155
Jeremiah 16:7.
156
Talmud Eruv. 65a.
157
For example: Jonah 3:6, Job 2:8, etc.
158
Oláh, Judaisztika, 237.
159
“Mózes Katz,” Centropa, http://www.
centropa.org/hu/biography/katz-mozes.
160
Tóth, “Márton lúdja,” 222–225.
161
Ínyesmester [Elek Magyar], “Fejezetek az
ínyesmesterség köréből. Márton napján”
[Chapters from the sphere of gastronomy: On
Martin’s day], Pesti Napló [Pest Diary],
November 5, 1933.
162
Munk, Életem történetei, 17–18.
163
Dr. G., “Az antiszemiták lúdzsírja” [The goose
fat of anti-Semites], Egyenlőség [Equality],
January 17, 1886.
164
“Leopold Karpelesz.”
165
Csiszár, “A szatmári és beregi aprófalvak,” 175.
166
“Mrs. J. W.,” Centropa, http://www.
centropa.org/hu/print/biography/w-j-ne.
167
“Sára Székely,” Centropa, http://www.centropa.
org/hu/print/biography/szekely-sara.
144

[ 387 ]

[ 388 ]

NOTES

168

“Mózes Katz.”
Quoted in Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food,
354.
170
Porzó [Adolf Ágai], “A zsidó konyha,” 202.
171
Porzó [Adolf Ágai], Utazás Pestről, 97.
172
Ínyesmester [Elek Magyar], “Fejezetek az
ínyesmesterség köréből. A libamáj sütéséről”
[Chapters from the sphere of gastronomy:
About baking goose liver], Pesti Napló [Pest
Diary], November 10, 1933.
173
“Györgyike Haskó,” Centropa,
http://www.centropa.org/node/78353.
174
“Zsuzsa Diamantstein,” Centropa,
http://www.centropa.org/hu/biography/
diamantstein-zsuzsa.
175
Farkas. “Adatok a mátészalkai zsidóság életéhez,”
134 and 138.
176
“Mrs. J. W.”
177
“Magda Fazekas.”
178
“Mrs. Béla Pollák,” Centropa,
http://www.centropa.org/hu/biography/
pollak-belane.
179
“Mrs. Imre P.,” Centropa, http://www.
centropa.org/cs/print/85032.
180
Munk, Életem történetei, 155–156.
181
Auntie Giti, A zsidó háziasszony könyve, 3.
182
Egyenlőség [Equality], April 11, 1925, 24.
183
“Vázsonyi Vilmosné főzőiskolát nyit” [Mrs.
Vilmos Vázsonyi opens a cooking school], in
A Reggel [The Morning], January 24, 1927.
184
Roden, The Book of Jewish Food, 21.
185
According to information provided by Laurent
Stern, Hermann Stern’s son.
186
According to information provided by Ivan
Sanders.
187
According to information provided by Andrew
Romay.
188
“Sára Székely.”
189
“E. G.”
190
Ibid.
191
Ede Vadász, “Zsidó szokások és szólamok”
169

[Jewish customs and sayings], Magyar Zsidó
Szemle [Hungarian Jewish Review] 29 (1912):
121–122.
192
Auntie Giti, A zsidó háziasszony könyve, 5–6.
193
Ibid., 6–7.
194
Rékai, A munkácsi zsidók, 74.
195
“Leopold Karpelesz.”
196
“E. G.”
197
István Csupor, “Rituális edényhasználat Szatmárban és Máramarosban” [Ritual use of dishes
in Szatmár and Máramaros], in Közelítések.
Néprajzi, történeti, antropológiai tanulmányok
Hofer Tamás 60. születésnapjára [Approaches:
Ethnographical, historical and anthropological
studies for the sixtieth birthday of Tamás Hofer]
(Debrecen: Ethnica, 1992), 130.
198
Munk, Életem történetei, 155.
199
Goldziher, Napló [Diary]. Budapest: Magvető,
1984, 22.
200
Hegedüs, Előjátékok egy önéletrajzhoz, 64–65.
201
Farkas, “Adatok a mátészalkai zsidóság életéhez,”
139.
202
Hegedüs, Előjátékok egy önéletrajzhoz, 77.
203
According to information provided by Andrew
Romay.
204
“Az új elnök” [The new president], Egyenlőség
[Equality], November 23, 1929.
205
Incze, Színházi életeim. The quotes by Incze’s
wife can be found in Péter Ábel’s introduction
to the book.
206
The original article puzzlingly calls this “Holland
körités” (Dutch side dish), which I translated as
“Vegetables in hollandaise sauce.” The fleishig
version of hollandaise sauce substitutes melted
fat and meat broth for softened butter. Usually
asparagus is served with hollandaise sauce, but
this banquet was in November, when they must
have served it with some other vegetable.
207
“Zsidók a fehér asztalnál” [Jews at the white
table], Egyenlőség [Equality], November 12,
1921, 15–17.

NOTES

208

Színházi Élet (Theater Life), April 20–May 17,
1924, 133.
209
Fenyves, Képzelt asszimiláció?
210
Izrael Singer, “Emlékkönyv 50 éves néptanítói és
hittantanári működésemről” [Book in memory
of my 50-year carreer as a teacher of general
subjects and Jewish religion] (Sátoraljaújhely:
Alexander Vilmos könyvnyomdája, 1904), 65;
quoted in Fenyves, Képzelt asszimiláció?, 133.
211
Munk, Életem történetei, 87; quoted in Fenyves,
Képzelt asszimiláció?, 132.
212
Ármin Vámbéry, Kűzdelmeim [My struggles]
(Dunaszerdahely: Lilium Aurum, 2001), 58;
quoted in Fenyves, Képzelt asszimiláció?, 133.
213
Jónah, “A modorról” [About manners],
Egyenlőség [Equality], February 15, 1903.
214
Géza Komoróczy, “Várostérkép héber betűkből”
[City map of Hebrew letters], in Ami látható,
ed. Török, 19.
215
According to Kinga Frojimovics (Szétszakadt
történelem, 127): “The well-known statistician
József Kőrösi thought that in the 1880s, 3.5 to 4
percent of Budapest’s Jewish population was
Orthodox, which means 4,000 people.
According to 1929 data the Budapest Orthodox
Community had already 36,000 members in
that year, which meant nearly 20 percent of the
capital’s Jewish population.”
216
Balla, A kávéforrás, 52–53.
217
Egyenlőség [Equality], May 19, 1938, 7.
218
Ínyesmester [Elek Magyar], “Fejezetek az
ínyesmesterség köréből. Egy kis rituális
vendéglő” [Chapters from the sphere of
gastronomy: A little kosher restaurant], Pesti
Napló [Pest Diary], April 10, 1932.
219
Cserna-Szabó, “‘Budapest, 5659,’” 10.
220
Ínyesmester, “Fejezetek az ínyesmesterség
köréből. Egy kis rituális vendéglő.”
221
“Jóllaktam! Neigerről” [I am full! About Neiger],
Színházi Élet [Theater Life], April 20–May 17,
1924, 133.

222

Ballai and Tábori, “Negyven év.” The quotation
is from the index of the book.
223
Lóránt Barabás, “A Fészek leghíresebb kártyaanekdotái” [The most famous card anecdotes of
the Fészek Club], Színházi Élet [Theater Life]
30 (1930), 11.
224
Ínyesmester [Elek Magyar], “Fejezetek az
ínyesmesterség köréből” [Chapters from the
gourmet crafts], Pesti Napló [Pest Diary], March
4, 1934.
225
Egyenlőség [Equality], April 20, 1932, 33.
226
“Ilona Seifert,” Centropa, http://www.centropa.
org/biography/ilona-seifert.
227
The recollections of Borbála Hirschler; quoted
in Tárkányi, Elfeledett soproniak, 94.
228
Vámbéry, Küzdelmeim.
229
Frojimovics et al., Jewish Budapest, 86.
230
Gundel and Harmath, A vendéglátás emlékei,
207–208.
231
Béla Bodó, “Café Orczy. Riport” [Café Orczy:
Report], Pesti Napló [Pest Diary], May 24, 1936, 8.
232
Ibid.
233
Balla, A kávéforrás, 39.
234
Ibid., 61–62.
235
Ínyesmester [Elek Magyar], “Fejezetek az
ínyesmesterség köréből. A dunaparti Brauntól
a vácikörúti Herz Rafael Rezsőig” [Chapters
from the sphere of gastronomy: From the Braun
restaurant near the Danube to the one owned
by Rafael Rezső Herz on Váci Boulevard], Pesti
Napló [Pest diary], March 4, 1928.
236
Balla, A kávéforrás, 56.
237
Ínyesmester, “Fejezetek az ínyesmesterség
köréből. A dunaparti Brauntól…”
238
g. w., “A zsidó Ruszwurm. Látogatás a Freundféle cukrászdában” [The Jewish Ruszwurm: Visit
to the Freund pastry shop], Egyenlőség
[Equality], August 15, 1925.
239
Julia Richers, “‘Jótékony rablás’ csupán?
A Pesti Izraelita Nőegylet tevékenységi körei
(1866–1943)” [Is it only “charitable robbery”?

[ 389 ]

[ 390 ]

NOTES

Areas of activities of the Pest Jewish Women’s
Association (1866–1943)], in A zsidó nő, ed.
Toronyi, 70.
240
Jób Paál, “Zsidó diákok között az Alföldivendéglőben” [Among Jewish students in the
Alföldi restaurant], Egyenlőség [Equality], March
20, 1920.
241
Gábor Dombi, “Az orthodoxia elfeledett hősnője
– Heiden Dóra” [The forgotten heroine of the
Orthodoxy – Dóra Heiden], forthcoming essay
in the magazine The Hungarian Orthodox.
242
“Kétszáz gyermeket nyaraltat ebben az évben
a ‘Hanna’” [The “Hanna” sends 200 children to
summer camp this year], Egyenlőség [Equality]
July 9, 1927.
243
Jób Paál, “Riport a Páva-utcai népkonyháról,
ahol mindennap kétszázhetven szegény ember
ebédel és ahol diétás kosztot adnak
a betegeknek” [Report about the soup kitchen
in Páva Street, where every day 270 poor people
eat lunch and where the sick gets dietetic food],
Egyenlőség [Equality], November 2, 1929.
244
Katalin Dávid, Anna Margit [Margit Anna]
(Budapest: Corvina, 1980), 7–8.
245
Béla Ackermann, “Vígyázat a baromfivágásnál!”
[Watch out for the slaughter of poultry!], Zsidó
Újság [Jewish Newspaper], September 8, 1926.
246
József Schweitzer, “Egy különleges
magyarországi zsidó közösség” [A special kind of
Jewish community in Hungary], in “Uram, nyisd
meg ajkamat” by József Schweitzer, 67–74.
247
Dóra Szegő, “Jellegzetes foglalkozások: üzemek,
műhelyek, iparosok” [Typical occupations:
factories, workshops, craftspeople], in Ami
látható, ed. Török, 157–158.
248
“Ernő Schwarz,” Centropa, http://www.
centropa.org/hu/biography/schwarz-erno.
249
Jób Paál, “Hogyan készül a laska?” [How is matzo
made?], Egyenlőség [Equality], March 29, 1914.
250
Csoma and Lőwy, “Kóser vágás,” 115–116.
251
“Régi kecskeméti zsidók” [Kecskemét Jews of

olden times], Egyenlőség [Equality], March 5,
1932.
252
Gyula Krúdy, “Boldogult úrfikoromban” [In my
late, lamented youth] In: Etel király kincse by
Gyula Krúdy, 153–154.
253
“Csokoládé, cukorka és szardinia” [Chocolate,
candy, and sardines], Zsidó Újság [Jewish
Newspaper], December 17, 1926.
254
Zsidó Újság [Jewish Newspaper], July 16, 1926.
255
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 97.
256
Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied, 175.
257
Ibid.
258
Kitzur Shulchan Arukh, Chapter 72, point 6.
259
Auntie Giti, A zsidó háziasszony könyve, 21.
260
Vasárnapi Újság [Sunday Newspaper], February
7, 1864, 57.
261
Haber, “Még valami a zsidó konyháról.”
262
Quoted in Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 45.
263
The Memoirs of Carl Flesh, 7.
264
Ínyesmester, “Fejezetek az ínyesmesterség
köréből. A dunaparti Brauntól...”
265
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 171.
266
A Hét [The Week], September 1, 1901,
575–576.
267
Rabbi Shlomo Gazfried, Kitzur Shulchon Oruch
(New York: Moznaim Publishing, 1991), ch. 72,
par. 19.
268
Ede Vadász, “Zsidó szokások, közmondások és
szólamok” [Jewish customs, proverbs, and
sayings], Magyar Zsidó Szemle [Hungarian
Jewish Review] 23 (1906): 164–165.
269
Ede Vadász, “Zsidó szokások és szólamok”
[Jewish customs and sayings], Magyar Zsidó
Szemle [Hungarian Jewish Review] 27 (1910):
369.
270
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 127.
271
Ibid.
272
Gyula Krúdy: Az emlékek szakácskönyve, 195.
273
Gyula Krúdy: Váci utcai hölgytisztelet. Válogatott
elbeszélések 1931–1933, Volume 1, 394 –404.
274
Kosztolányi, Karinthy Frigyesről, 135–136.

NOTES

275

Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied, 187–188.
Quoted in Nathan, Quiches, Kugels and
Couscous, 248.
277
Saphir, “Die Gastronomie der Juden,” 88.
I translated the quoted part from this later
edition, but the writing was first published in
Vienna in 1856.
278
Ede Vadász, “Zsidó szokások, közmondások és
szólamok” [Jewish customs, proverbs and
sayings], Magyar Zsidó Szemle [Hungarian
Jewish Review] 23 (1906): 164.
279
Haber, “Még valami a zsidó konyháról.”
280
A Hét [The Week], August 11, 1901, 507.
281
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 598.
282
Vadász, “A zsidó konyháról,” 83.
283
Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied, 187–180.
284
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 203.
285
Haber, “Még valami a zsidó konyháról.”
286
Nathan, Joan Nathan’s Jewish Holiday Cookbook,
304: “These yeast-dough cookies, served by
Hungarian and German Jews at Purim, resemble
little children wrapped in blankets – thus the
name kindli.”
287
Czifray, Magyar nemzeti szakácskönyv, 440:
276

“Posonyi finom mákos kalács” [Fine poppy
seed-filled cake from Pozsony].
288
Haber, “Még valami a zsidó konyháról.”
289
Cooper, Eat and Be Satisfied, 193.
290
Kohlbach, “Sütemények a zsidó szertartásban,”
159.
291
Zsigmond Kuthi, “Purimi levél” [Purim letter],
Egyenlőség [Equality]. March 3, 1901, supp. 3.
292
Porzó [Adolf Ágai], “A zsidó konyha,” 202–203.
293
Krausz. “A zsidó konyha,” 76.
294
Porzó [Adolf Ágai], “A zsidó konyha,” 202.
295
Marks, Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, 319.
296
Ibid., 166–167.
297
Ibid., 131.
298
“E. G.”
299
A Hét [The Week], September 1, 1901,
575–576.

[ 391 ]

[ 392 ]

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Nathan, Joan. Jewish Cooking in America. New
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Nayes follshtendiges kokhbukh fir di yidishe kikhe:
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makhen un khale nemen, iberhoypt iber
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Roden, Claudia. The Book of Jewish Food. New
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Rosenfeld, Aranka. Kis céna szakácskönyv [Small
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Rosenfeld, Mártonné. A zsidó nő szakácskönyve
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Saphir, Moritz Gottlieb. Meine Memoiren und
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Schweitzer, József. “Uram, nyisd meg ajkamat” –
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[ 397 ]

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Venesz, József. Hungarian Cuisine. Budapest:
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Venetiáner, Lajosné. A befőttekről. Gyümölcs, főzelék
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sütemények. Kipróbált tapasztalatok után írta dr.
Venetiáner Lajosné [About preserves: How to
preserve fruit, vegetables, and salads: Sweet and
savory baked goods. Written by Mrs. Dr. Lajos
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Budapest: Self-published, 1931.
Vizvári, Mariska. Treasure-Trove of Hungarian
Cookery. Budapest: Corvina, 1981.
Werblowski, R. J. Zwi, and Geoffrey Wigoder, eds.
The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion. New
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Wex, Michael. Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language
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Wolf, Rebekka, geb. Heinemann. Kochbuch für
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verschiedensten Koch- und Backarten.
Einrichtung und Führung einer religiös-jüdischen
Haushaltung [Cookbook for Jewish women,
featuring the most diverse dishes and baked
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Wolff, Flora, Frau Prediger, geb. Pfeffer. Koch- und
Wirthschftsbuch für jüdishe Hausfrauen
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[ 399 ]

Sources
of Illustrations
The name of the source is followed by
the serial numbers of the pictures.

Berko Estate/Gitterman Gallery, New York (copyright: The Estate of Ferenc Berko. Courtesy of Gitterman
Gallery): 20 // Budapesti Történeti Múzeum, Kiscelli Múzeum: 1, 4, 21, 117, 118, 120, 132, 139, 143, 157,
183 // Centropa: 14 // Corvina Books: 53 // ELTE Egyetemi Könyvtár: 29 // ELTE Hebraisztika Tanszék:
36 // Fortepan: 79 // Fővárosi Szabó Ervin Könyvtár, Budapest Gyűjtemény: 106, 121 // Getty
Images/Hulton Archive: 55 // Teodóra Hübner: 6, 8, 33, 34, 85, 93, 95, 96, 138, 146, 156, 158, 159, 160,
165, 193, 195, 196 // Jewish Museum, New York: 188 // Krisztina Kelbert: 77 // Kereskedelmi és
Vendéglátóipari Múzeum: 46, 56, 57, 81, 82, 83, 109, 110, 111, 129, 130, 141 // Kertész Estate, New York:
89, 144, 145 // András Koerner: 10, 15, 16, 17, 22, 31, 35, 37, 38, 45, 48, 52, 54, 69, 71, 74, 76, 84, 92,
116, 123, 124, 125, 126, 133, 147, 148, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178, 181, 182, 185, 186,
187, 192, 194 // Mrs. István Köves: 49 // Lukin family: 58, 60 // Magyar Autonóm Orthodox Izraelita
Hitközség/Tamás Lózsy: 7, 8, 18, 19, 67, 68, 154, 155, 156, 159, 166, 175, 176, 184 // Magyar Nemzeti
Múzeum: 30, 41, 80, 107, 112, 114, 131 // Magyar Zsidó Múzeum és Levéltár: 73, 75, 78, 97, 98, 99, 101,
102, 103, 105, 113, 150, 151, 152, 164, 174, 179 // Néprajzi Múzeum: 11, 65 // Országos Széchenyi
Könyvtár: 28, 39, 40, 42, 44, 47, 50, 51, 90, 115, 140, 142 // Országos Színháztörténeti Múzeum és Intézet,
Táncarchivum: 104, 108 // Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum: 43, 91, 190, 191 // Pisarek Estate/Bildagentur akgimages: 59, 62 // Miklós Rékai: 12 // Noémi Saly: 119 // Laurent Stern: 2, 3 // Young Suh: 32 // András
Szántó: 13, 72, 122, 127, 128, 162, 163, 189 // Sándor Tárkányi: 9, 94, 100, 134, 135, 136, 137, 149, 161
// Vishniac Estate, International Center of Photography, New York: 5, 63, 86, 87, 180 // YIVO Institute for
Jewish Research, New York: 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 88, 153 // Zempléni Múzeum, Szerencs: 61, 64, 66, 70

[ 400 ]

Index
of Personal
Names
EXPLANATORY NOTES

[square brackets]: in a recipe
italics: in a caption

Abelesz, Samu, 17
Acton, Elisa, 85, 86, 392
Adler, Mrs. Aladár (Auntie Giti),
55, 102, 104, [128], 132, 133,
[180], 184, 217–218, 220,
225, 238, 326, [326], 331,
[332], [333], 334, [350], [359],
360, 361, 365, [366], 375
Adler, Illés, 244, 311
Ágai, Adolf, 14, 17, 55, 60–65, 61,
86, 162, 174, 191, 205, 284,
317–318, 318, 331, 336, 340,
361
Akiva or Akiba ben Joseph, Rabbi,
24
Ámos, Imre, 297
Anna, Margit, 297, 390
Arányi family, 242
Aussy, Legrand d’ (Baptiste, Pierre
Jean), 205
Bacharach, Samson, Rabbi, 52
Bachrach, Jair Chaim, Rabbi, 331
Back, restaurant owner, 263, 265
Baruch, Mrs. Ede, née Katharina
Kauders, 225
Balla, Vilmos, 260, 283
Bartl, coffeehouse owner, 281
Batthyány, Kristóf, Count, 54–55
Batyra, Judah ben, Rabbi, 24
Baum, Berta, 75, 376
Benedek, Elek, 91

Ber Birkenthal, Dov (Ber of
Bolechów), ix
Béres, Mrs. József, née Teréz Klein,
72, 376
Berger, Mrs. Bernát, née Teréz
(Riza) Baruch, [62], 65, 67, 67,
69, 93, 96, 112, [130], 133,
142, 143, 146, [147], 149, 151,
152, 162, 170, 172, 178, 199,
209, 212, 215, 220, 223, 226,
[338], 339, [346], 347, 351,
352, 354, 361, [362], 363,
369, 376
Berger, Frigyes, 146
Berger, Mrs. Fülöp, née Regina
Kauders, [69], 71
Berger, Mrs. Sándor, née Lujza
Baruch, 69–71, [70], 209, 212,
[362], 363, 376
Berkey, Irving, see Berkowitz
(Berkey), Irving
Berkó, Ferenc, 28
Berkowitz (Berkey), Irving, 205
Bismarck, Herbert, 286
Blau, Jónás, 277
Bloshteyn, Oyzer, 392
Blum, tailor, 149
Blumberger, Vilmos, 263
Bodó, Béla, 278, 281–283
Bojm, H., photographer, 46
Boronkay, Kálmán, 310

Borovic, Mrs. Ármin, née Margit
Schreiber, 75, 376
Borsody Bevilaqua, Béla, 280
Böhm, Salamon, 87
Börne, Ludwig, 341
Braun, György, 146–149, [148],
[149], [154], 199, 212, 239,
377, 379
Braun, Miksa, restaurateur, 265
Braun, Nándor, restaurateur, 265
Braun restaurant, 264–266, 334,
344
Bródy, Mrs. Lajos, [210–211]
Cardozo, Arlene R., 392
Chagall, Marc, 55
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor,
125
Chorin, Áron, Rabbi, 16
Chorin, Ferenc, 241
Chorin, Mrs. Ferenc, née Daisy
Weiss, 241
Cohn, Sarah, [59], 83, 83–84, 330,
374, 392
Colman, Marcia, 396
Cooper, John, 324, 348, 360, 392
Cserna-Szabó, András, 84–85, 110,
264, 392
Csiszár, Árpád, 24, 174
Csoma, Zsigmond, 17, 33, 311,
393
Csupor, István, 227

INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES

Czingel, Szilvia, 108, 133, 393
Dávid, Katalin, 297
Deutsch, Mrs. Zsigmond, née Júlia
Pollák, 69, 71, 376
Diamantstein, Zsuzsa, 208
Divald and Monostory,
photographers, 270, 271
Dombi, Gábor, 294
Domonyi Brüll, Miksa, 275
Doros, Mrs. József, née Frida
Berger, 69, 71, [328–329], 330,
361, [364], 376, 378, 381
Drucker, Dávid, 31
E. G., 30, 168, 222, 226, 365
Eisner, Aranka, 211
Elek, Marika, 215
Emma, Madam, see Ignotus
Engel, photographer, 42
Ephraim ha-Kohen, Rabbi, 52, 54
Escoffier, Auguste, [62]
Ezra, Abraham ibn, 166, 170
Farkas, József, 146
Fazekas, Magda, 153, 214
Fehérvári, Sarolta, 274
Feinsilber, Róbert, 292
Fekete, photographer, 295, 296,
297
Feleki, Béla, 246
Fényes, Balázs, 415
Fenyves, Katalin, 254, 384, 389,
393, 415
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke, 177
Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria
and King of Hungary, 147, 177
Fisch, Henrik, Rabbi, 191
Fischmann, Simon, Rabbi, 128
Fleischmann, Charles Louis (born
Lajos Károly Fleischmann),
117, 118
Fleischmann, Lipót, 22, 22, 304
Flesch, Carl (Károly), 333
Flesch, Salamon, 333
Fränkel, Ignác, 263
Freund, Hermann, 287
Freund, Ödön, 90, 284, 286–289,
[288] (Freund pastry shop)
Freund, Sándor, 287
Friedmann, Andor, see Andrew
Romay
Friedman, Sarolta, 275

Friedmann, poultry merchant, 296
G., Linus, 183, 211, 402
Gaff, James, 117
Galpert, Ernő, 156, 175–176
Ganz, Mrs. Ábrahám, 55, 98, 100,
100, 102, 133, [135], 136,
[170], [213]
Gáspár, Anna Éva, 136–137
Gelbmann, Ignác, 263
Gelléri, Mór, 246
Gerő, Károly, 154
Goldmark, Károly, 246, 249
Goldziher, Ignác, 237
Gróf, Árpád, fishmonger, 151
Grosz, Gizella, 214, 337, 367
Grosz, Mrs. Mihály, née Margit
Schwarcz, [72]
Grünhut, Irén, 211
Grunwald, Max, 90, 136
Grünwald, Mór, 262, 263
Gundel, Károly, 270–271
Guttmann, Mór, 260
Haber, Samu (Sándor Komáromi),
64–65, 86, 155,174, 284, 331,
351, 355, 358
Hahn, István, 191
Halász, Mrs. Ottó, 376, 405
Hammurabi, Babylonian king, 335
Hámori, Gyula, 190
Harsányi, Aranka, [210]
Harsányi, Zsolt, 243
Haskó, Györgyike, 207
Hatvany-Deutsch family, 111, 242
Hazlinger, lottery ticket seller, 260
Hegedüs, Géza, 239
Heiden, Dóra, 294–295
Heine, Heinrich, 342–342, 349
Herbst, Berta, 118, 120–121
Herbst, Mrs. Péter, neé Zorica
Krausz, 55, 107, 108, 128,
[155], [186], [206], [327], 328,
331, 334, [335], 346, [351],
[353], [355], [356], 360–361
Herbst, Sándor, 118, 120–121
Hercz (or Herz), Mrs. Rafael Rezső,
née Leonóra (or: Leonka)
Bauer, 51, 84–85, 85, 133, 264
Herz (or Herz), Rafael Rezső,
263–264, 389
Herz, Simon, 264

Herz, Kecskeméti, wine producer,
311
Hevesi, Simon, Rabbi, 272
Hirsch, Nóte (or Nátán), 168–169
Hirschler family, 172, 230
Hirschler, Borbála, 273, 274
Hirschler, József, 224, 273, 274,
275
Hirschler, Judit, 274
Hirschler, Salamon, 273
Hirschler, Mrs. Salamon, 273
Hirschler, Szidónia, 273
Hoday, chief constable, 192
Hoffer, Gyula, 304
Horn, Franz, 58
Horovitz, József, Rabbi, 187
Horváth, Ilona, 136
Hrotkó, Larissza, 78, 79, 385
Huberman, Bronisław, 241
Ignotus, Hugó Veigelsberg
(“Madam Emma”), 14, 91,
91–93, [94], 96, 118,
[210–211], 337, 352
Ignotus, Sára, 91
Ilka, maid at Mrs. Sándor Berger,
209
Incze, Sándor (Alexander), 104,
237, [242], 243, 244, 379, 388,
394
Indig, Mrs. Sándor, née Antónia
Törzs, [71], 72, 73, 371
Isaac ben Moses, 340–341
Jakab, Ödön, 91
Jacob ben Asher, Rabbi, 160
Jacob ben Moses Halevi Mölln, 127
Jászi, Oszkár, 240
Jelfy, Gyula, 246
Jose the Galilean, Rabbi (Yose
HaGalili), 24
Judah ben Isaac Messer Leon,
Rabbi, 341
Joseph ben Moses, Rabbi, 324
Josephus Flavius, 165
Kacyzne, Alter, 39, 45
Kalonymus ben Kalonymus, 165
Karikás, Miska, 264
Karinthy, Ferenc, 345
Karinthy, Frigyes, 345, 345, 395
Karo, Joseph ben Ephraim, 43

[ 401 ]

[ 402 ]

INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES

Károly III, Hungarian king, see
Charles VI, Holy Roman
Emperor
Karpelesz, Leopold, 28, 202, 226
Katz, Helén, 305
Katz, Icik, 199
Katz, Jenő, 21
Katz, Mózes, 199, 205
Kauders, Marie, [66], 155, 330
Kecskeméti, Adolf, 218
Kerpel, Pál, 187
Kertész, André (Andor), 216, 284,
287
Kertész, Mihály, 168
Kirchan, Elchanan, 43
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara,
viii–ix, 4, 32, 77, 383, 384,
386, 395, 415
Kiss, Arnold, 167
Kiss, Bettina, 67, 77
Kiss, Ferenc, 22
Kiss, József, 91, 167, 221
Kiss, Ottó, 221
Klösz, György, 263, 319
Kner, Albert, 229
Kohlbach, Bertalan, 86, 87, 89,
186, 187, 357, 358, 360
Kohn, Arnold, 87
Kohn, Mrs. Jakab, 277
Kohn, baker, 207
Kohn, Salamon, 263
Kohner family, 242
Komáromi, Sándor, see Haber,
Samu
Komoróczy, Géza, 24
Kon, Meyer, 39
Kossuth, Lajos, 32–34
Kozmata, Ferenc, 61
Kővári, Dezső, 304
Kovi, Paul, 136
Kramer, Bertha F., 99
Krausz, Sámuel, 88, 89, 186, 252,
361
Kriehuber, Josef, 57
Krúdy, Gyula, 108, 110, 265, 312,
331, 342, 343, [344]
Kushner, Harold, 8
Kuthi, Zsigmond, 360
Lajta, Béla, 185
Lakos, Alfréd, 342

Lánczy, Leó, 244, 246
Láng, George, [242], 244, 331,
344, 352
Lederer, Sándor, 218
Lederer, Therese, 59, 78, 81, [82],
83, 84, 85, [324], [348], [349],
[354], [365]
Lesznai, Anna, 240
Lichtman, Sándor, 361
Lindau, Paul, 286
Lorant, Stefan, 97
Löbl, Margit, 106, 107, [108]
Löw (Löv), Julie, 75
Löw, Lipót (Leopold), 32, 33
Lőwy, Lajos, 17
Löwy, M. E., bookshop and
publishing house, 78, 79, 83
Lukács family, 242
Macsi, András, 249
Magyar, Elek, 136, 201, 206, 265,
266, 270, 283, 284, 286, 334
Mandelbaum, Mrs., ‘Auntie
Chocolate’, 167
Mandl, Márton, 277
Marggraf, Andreas, 111
Margit, maid at the Stern family, 1,
155, 215
Marks, Gil, 3, 25, 112, 171, 186,
194, 195, 341, 357, 361, 365
Mauthner, Alfréd, 241
Mauthner, Mrs. Alfréd, Weiss Elza,
241
Meir ben Baruch, Rabbi, 42
Meisel, Alois Wolfgang, 78
Mendelssohn, Moses, 33, 79
Metternich, Countess Richard, 14
Molnár, Ferenc, 97, 98, 135
Moser, Moses, 349
Moskovics, Iván, 127
Munk, Meir Ávrahám, 201, 215,
237, 254
Munkácsi, Bernát, 215
Müller, Antal, 246
Nádas, Mrs. Ármin, [71], 73, 74,
[157]
Nagy és Eichner, producers of
salami, sausage and meat
products, 305
Nathan, Joan, 357

Neiger, Jakab, 193, 265, 266, 268
Neiger, Jenő, [265], 267, 268
Nikoletti, József, [265]
Nilkenfeld, Kálmán, 263
Notaker, Henry, 77
Oláh, János, 178, 195
Oppenheim, Moritz, 179
Orczy, József, 78
P., Mrs. Imre, 215
Parnes, Moses, 42
Paula, Teréz Berger’s maid, 143,
151, 152, 167, 170, 209, 214
Pisarek, Abraham, 145
Polacsek, Ede, 304
Polányi (Pollacsek), Laura, 240
Pollacsek, Cecília, 240, 242
Pollacsek, Mihály, 240
Pollák, Mrs. Béla, 214
Popert, Hirtz, 341
Rabinowicz, Baruch, 156
Radó, Nándor N., 310, 311
Raj, Tamás, 28
Rákóczi, János, 136
Rashi, rabbi of Troyes, 42
Rebenwurzl, Samu, 304
Reich, Adolf, 292
Reichard, György, 274
Rékai, Miklós, 31, 128, 129, 161,
226
Révész and Bíró, photographers, 91
Riemer, Ilona, 272
Roden, Claudia, 16, 40
Rokeach, Israel, 26
Romay, Andrew, 32, 220, 240, 388,
415
Rómay (Friedmann), Andor see
Andrew Romay
Rosenbaum, Gyula, 263
Rosenberg, Elvira, [95]
Rosenberg, Margit, 95, 150
Rosenberg, Mrs. Sándor, 296
Rosenfeld, Mrs. Márton, Span
Aranka, 131, [132], 133, 185,
[325], [331], [332], 334
Rosenstein, Róbert, [206]
Rosenstein, Tibor, 73, 157, [206]
Roth, H., 120
Rothschild, baron, 14
Sanders, Ivan, 128, 220, 386, 388,
415

INDEX OF PERSONAL NAMES

Saphir, Moritz Gottlieb, 57–60,
63–65, 86, 94, 340, 350
Sárközi, Márta, 98
Scheiber, Sándor, 358
Schein, Mrs. József, Löwentritt
Erzsébet, 72, [178], [357], [364]
Schermann, restaurant owner, 262,
263
Schlesinger, Jakab, 263
Schlink, Heinrich, 308
Schiller, Friedrich, 342
Schmolka és Kozma, producers of
kosher salami and smoked
meat, 305
Schönfeld, Ilona, 270
Schreiber, Béla, 22
Schreiber, Mrs. Béla, 22
Schulek, Sándor, 19n10
Schulhof, Isaac, 51–54
Schwarcz, Ignácz, 84, 85
Schwarz, Aranka, 211
Schwarz, Ernő, 304
Schwarz, J. H., 265
Schweitzer, József, Rabbi, 73, 301,
390, 397
Schweitzer, Mrs. József, 415
Schweitzer, Gábor, 386, 415
Seidner, Zoltán, 345
Seligman, Jakab, 230
Shakespeare, William, 58
Singer, Izrael, 254
Sirkes, Joel, 360
Skopall, J., 67
Skrek, Lipót, 207, 304, 308
Solomon, king of ancient Israel, 89
Sopher, Chatam, 3, 86
Span, Erzsébet (Elisabeth), 99, 100
Spiegel, Miksa, [25]
Spiegel, Mrs. Miksa, [25]

Spira, Chaim Eleazar, 156
Spira, Salamon, 245, 246
Spitzer, Mrs. Gyula, Domber Olga,
73, 75, 376
Spitzer, Jakab, 358
Mr. Spitzmann, 281
Stein, Mór see Incze, Sándor
Stein, Emil, 249
Steinmetz, Bella, 32
Stern, Hermann, 5, 152, 153, 157,
158, 162, 182, 220, 238
Stern, Mrs. Hermann, 152, 207
Stern, Laurent, 1, 2, 3, 13, 35, 126,
128, 135, 137, 152, 153, 160,
177, 178, 207, 215, 221, 240,
241, 275, 277, 314, 317, 353,
365, 388, 415
Stern Márton, 263
Stern, Samu, 241
Stolz, Joseph, 75, 76
Strasser family, coffee-house
owners, 278
Suh, Young, 69
Szabó, Ervin, 240
Szabó, Vladimir, 278, 281
Székely, Ferenc, 244
Székely, Sára, 204, 220
Széll, Kálmán, 34
Szemző, Elemér, 268, 269
Szergényi Geist, Jenő, 187
Szergényi Geist, René, 187
Szinnyei, József, 43, 77, 82
Szófér, Kszáv, 128
Tardy, Lajos, 28
Tieck, Ludwig, 58
Tóth, Béla, 200
Tóth, Richárd, 18, 224, 275, 291
Trenk brothers, [13], 22, 304
Uher, Ödön, 261

Ulászló II., king, 200
Ullmann, Jenny, 102, [103], 133,
170, 365, [366]
Vadász, Ede, 338, 340, 350, 353
Vadnay, Andor, 201
Vámbéry, Ármin, 254, 280
Vaszary, János, 297
Vázsonyi, Vilmos, 192
Vázsonyi, Mrs. Vilmos, 34, [103],
167, 181, 192, 218, 219
Veigelsberg, Hugó, see Ignotus
Venesz, József, 136
Venetianer, Lajos, 102
Venetianer, Mrs. Lajos, Terka
Pásztó, 101, 102, [103], [166],
[211]
Vészi, József, 98, 125, 134
Vészi, Margit, 125, 134, 135
Vishniac, Roman, 14, 156, 202,
204, 317
Vízvári, Mariska, 136
Vogl, restaurant owner in Vienna,
57
W., Mrs. J., 202
Wassermann, Jónás, 260, 261
Weinberger, Mayer, 263
Weinberger, Sári, 211
Weinwurm, Antal, 13, 31, 260, 283
Weiss, Manfréd, 241, 292
Weisz, Magda, [94]
Weisz, Mór, 288, 289
Weisz, Salamon, 263
Werner, Adolf, 262
Werner, Henrik, 262, 263, 265
Wohl, Janka 250, 261, 253
Wolf, Rebekka, 59, 82, 85, 330,
398
Zahler, Emil, 244
Zucker, Mózes, 312

[ 403 ]

[ 404 ]

Index
of Subjects
EXPLANATORY NOTE:

italics: in a caption

Alsace, 324, 363
Amsterdam, 40, 77
anniversary of death (yahrzeit), 129
Ashkenazi
cuisine, 41–47, 118, 335
dishes, 43, 76, 136, 325, 331, 338, 346
influence (in Hung. Jewish cuisine), 39, 55
Jews, 16, 22, 39–41, 43, 44, 46, 80, 111, 131, 134,
328, 346, 354
traditions, 88, 89, 166, 200, 328
assimilation, 5, 8, 73, 82, 98, 116, 215, 248, 253, 371
aufruf, 188
Austrian
Empire, 44, 47, 76. See also Austro-Hungarian
Monarchy.
Imperial Troops, 53
influence, 47, 98, 126, 131, 132
Jews, 54–55, 125, 324–325, 354
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 272
Austro-Hungarian dishes, 81, 180
Balkans, 7, 40, 53, 55, 134
bar mitzvah, 129, 188
basar, basari (meat), 22, 224
benedictions, 152, 324
Berlin, 14, 47, 59, 82, 144, 330, 349
betrothal, 188, 189
bevarfen. See aufruf
Bialystok, Poland, 39, 41
birth ceremonies, 89, 183–184
blessings
before or after meals, 129, 158, 190, 239, 253
holiday, 152, 190, 230, 324 (see also Kiddush)
piece of dough, 80, 151
shochet’s, 17
tableware, 222
the ruler, 201
Torah, 188, 244

Blessed Days of My Youth (novel by Krúdy), 110, 265,
312
blood (cleansing of, prohibition of ) 17–22, 80, 224,
308
bocher, 237
Bohemia, 118, 125, 131, 174, 341, 363
influence of, 126, 132–133,
Jews in, 43, 46, 54, 55, 125, 224, 341
migrants from, 125, 127, 131, 133
borer, 2–3, 328
Bosnia-Herzegovina, 47
Bratislava (Pozsony), 3, 14, 59, 76, 79, 83, 83, 86, 133,
200–201, 287
Britain, 85
brit milah. See circumcision
Buda (before incorporation into Budapest), 51–54, 77
Bulgaria, 47, 135
influence of, 47
butchers, See kosher
Central Europe, 46, 118, 277. See specific countries
by name
East-Central Europe, 155
chalavi (dairy), 22
chametz, 26, 171, 174–76, 178, 180–181, See also Pesach
charity, 166, 289, 292, 293, 295
kitchens, 289, 292–297
cheder, 88, 89, 129, 184–187, 254
circumcision (brit), 19, 65, 90, 184, 186
Conservative Judaism, 99
cookbooks, 5, 9, 14, 16, 75, 77, 79, 80, 91, 99, 106,
118, 171, 330, 348, 357, 363, 370
American-Jewish, 99, 118, 358
British-Jewish, 76, 85–86
Czech-Jewish, 66, 88, 135, 330, 349, 358, 359
German-Jewish, 59, 60, 75–76, 82–83, 85, 88, 131,
133, 155, 358–360

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Hungarian, 91–96, 136, 214, 244
Hungarian-Jewish, 6, 51, 55, 60, 75–86, 88, 91,
93, 98–99, 102–108, 133, 178, 209, 218–219,
264, 328, 334, 340, 346, 352, 354–355,
357, 360
Israeli, 106–107
publisher of, 78–79, 83–85, 104
Yiddish, 77–80, 83
cooking schools, 99, 218–219
Croatia, 54, 75, 126, 272
influence of, 126, 133
Czechoslovakia, 238
Czech (region, cuisine), 47
influence of, See Bohemian influence
dairy (milchig), See meet and dairy for prohibition of
mixing
courses, 13, 21, 22, 24, 25, 143, 161–162, 181, 183,
220, 222, 226–227, 283
meals (menus), 26, 75, 181, 182, 184, 308
products, 28, 30, 31, 44, 165, 308, 314
substitutions, 34, 76, 193
Dairy Days (Nayn Tog, Nine Days), 103–104, 161,
182–183, 314
Derekh eretz, 250–253
Eastern Europe, 7, 16, 39, 40, 99, 104, 127, 136, 190,
336, 351, 354, 355, 359
Egypt, 55, 178, 205
emancipation, 32–33
engagement ceremony, 186, 188–190, 232, 240
plate, 188, 232
England, 202, 294
ethnography, Jewish, 21, 86–90, 136, 357, 360
Exodus, 162, 171, 227, 230, 335, 336
fasts (fasting), 96, 98, 104, 113, 160–162, 182–183,
312. See also Dairy Days
fertility symbols, 25, 88, 153, 159, 165, 188, 327, 356
festivals. See specific holidays by name
fleishig. See meat
food metaphors, 7, 33
food symbolism, 6–8, 25, 114, 153, 158–160,
164–165, 172, 176, 177, 182, 184, 192, 195,
232, 323, 327, 336, 353. See also fertility
symbols
forshpil, 188–189, 192
France, 39, 40–47, 160, 186, 294, 340–341,
363. See also Alsace, Provence Jews, 354
gabella (kosher meat tax), 303, 304

Galicia, 2–3, 28, 44, 45, 47, 55, 64, 111, 125–128, 131,
136, 155, 156, 179, 201, 220, 239, 325, 327,
337, 354, 360
influence of, 2, 3, 126, 128
gebrochts, 3, 128, 176, 181
Georgia, 330
Germany, 39, 41–44, 47, 75, 76, 83, 85, 89, 127, 136,
155, 160, 185, 209, 238, 308, 317, 324, 327,
341, 347–348, 354, 356–359
influence of, 131–132, 354, 357–359
Jews, 16, 39, 42, 43, 88, 160, 324, 335, 348, 354,
359, 365
grocery stores, See kosher
Haggadah, 2, 179, 361
hamotzi, 164, 190
Hanukkah, 165–166, 185, 186
Hassidim, 3–6, 21, 54, 66, 87, 125, 128–129, 149,
150, 156, 167, 175, 181, 254, 323, 326, 337
Havdalah ceremony, 142, 170
hazzan, 280, 339
hechsher (kosher approval), 26, 301, 305, 311, 312
heritage, 114–116, 127, 370–371
holidays, 2, 3, 9, 13, 17, 20, 25, 32, 42, 53, 57, 65, 72,
76, 80, 89, 96, 100, 104, 107, 110, 112–115,
126, 141–143, 155, 158, 160, 161, 171, 178,
180, 183, 186, 200, 215, 216, 226, 238, 323,
325, 327, 328, 331, 334, 353. See also specific
holidays by name
Holland, 284, 294
Holocaust, 6, 31, 66, 75, 104, 371
Hoshana Rabba, 161
hospitality
domestic, 100, 183, 237–244
commercial (banquets), 244–249. See also kosher
boarding houses, coffeehouses, hotels,
restaurants.
Hungarian influence, 118, 356
Iberian Peninsula, 39
Iran, 40, 330
Iraq, 40
Israel (Ancient), 21, 171, 200, 323
Israel (Modern), 39, 99, 106, 107, 180, 181, 360.
See also under cookbooks
influence of, 360
Italy, 42–44, 55, 136, 272, 330, 361
influence of, 98, 365
Jerusalem, 153, 165, 182, 188, 323, 336
Jewish Congress of 1868/1869, 301

[ 405 ]

[ 406 ]

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Jewish Quarter in Budapest, 1, 13, 19, 22, 31, 72, 135,
167, 222, 239, 244, 263, 265, 274, 284, 288,
297, 304, 308, 311, 314, 317–318, 342
Kabbalah, 210
kabole (shochet’s work-permit), 301
kapparot, 161
Karaites, 43
kashrut rules, 4, 7, 13, 14, 16, 22, 24–26, 31–33, 35, 39,
57, 64, 66, 72, 73, 76, 77, 79, 80–83, 96, 97,
99, 103, 107, 110, 114, 202, 215, 219, 221,
259, 301, 304
Ashkenazi, 16, 21, 22, 113
Sephardi, 16, 21
loosening of, 4, 32, 72, 95, 96, 115, 116
Kiddush, 8, 129, 142, 152, 159, 164, 188, 227, 230,
231, 232, 323
kitniyot, 171
kittel, 162, 179
kohanim, 153, 253, 323
kohen gadol, 305
kosher
bakeries, 52, 175, 207–208, 288, 289, 310–311,
326, 338–339
boarding houses, 182, 259, 272, 274, 275, 277
butchers, 17, 19, 21, 22, 35, 52, 72, 113, 153, 207,
301, 304, 314, 332, 334
coffeehouses, coffee shops, 239, 271, 277, 285
grocery shops, 207, 308, 314
food industry, 22, 26, 31, 44, 51, 172, 209, 289,
301, 204–205, 308, 310 –312, 314, 363
hotels, 272
households, 31, 52, 67, 71, 82–84, 96, 100, 114,
142, 146, 149, 215, 218–220, 223, 224, 227,
239, 314, 239
kitchen, 13, 99, 219–227, 259, 267, 277
milk and cheese shops, 28, 30
pastry shops, 90, 284, 286, 288, 289
restaurants, 85, 136, 246, 259, 262–264, 267,
272, 333
soap, 26, 44, 100, 102, 221, 309
koshering,
meat, 19, 21–22, 35, 79, 80–81, 102, 221–222
pots, utensils, 222–223, 226
Ladino, 40, 284
lechem, 324
lechem mishneh, 324
Leviathan, 153, 326
Lipótváros, 97–98, 216, 248, 249

Lithuania, 26, 39, 44–45, 77, 111, 242, 324, 325,
328, 348
Lotharingia, 334
lulav, 211
Maccabees, 165
Machzor Vitry, 160, 186
maids, servants, 1, 19, 52–53, 63, 72, 152, 155,
207–209, 214–216
marketplaces, 19, 42, 78, 151, 202, 206–208, 212,
215, 259, 283, 284, 314, 317–318
mashgiach, 17
measuring units, 67
meat (fleishig), See meet and dairy for probihition of
mixing
courses, 4, 13, 21, 26, 112, 136, 141, 143, 220,
223, 296, 354
menus, 26, 76, 146, 184, 223, 245, 308, 354
products, 22, 30, 219, 301, 304, 305
meat and dairy (milchig and fleishig) See also kashrut
rules; kosher
prohibition of mixing, 13, 21, 22, 24, 75, 76, 97,
96, 149, 219, 354
separation of pots and tableware, 24, 75, 219–223,
225–227, 276
wait between meat and dairy courses, 22, 24, 354
Mediterranean, 178. See also specific countries by name.
Megillat Esther. See Scroll of Esther
melamedim, 280
manners, 249, 250, 255, See also Derekh eretz
during meals, 253–55
Melaveh Malkah, 157
Messiah, 25, 232
Messianic Age, 151, 153, 177, 326–327, 336
Middle Ages, 39, 41, 42, 69, 88–89, 165, 167, 171,
200, 205, 219, 324, 354
Middle East. See specific countries by name
Midrash, 336
mikveh, 215, 277
milchig, See dairy
mishloach manot (shlach mones), 166, 169, 170,
231, 232
Mishnah, 8, 31, 41, 43, 200, 337
Miskolc, 32, 86, 220, 240
mitzvah, 237, 326, 337
Mizrachim, 40
mohel, 19, 184
Moravia, 46, 55, 125, 131–133, 224
influence of, 126, 132, 133
Morocco, 55, 221, 338
mourning, 161, 182, 195, 336

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Munkács (Mukacheve), 14, 19–20, 22, 31, 129, 156,
175–176, 226, 314, 317, 360
Nagyvárad (Oradea), 2, 3, 14, 102, 127, 135, 215,
239–240, 254, 317, 365
Near East, 39, 40, 55, 323, 335, 340. See also specific
countries by name.
Neológ (branch of Hung. Judaism), 74, 99, 239–241,
246, 301
Netherlands, See Holland
New York City, 32, 116, 118, 120–121, 127, 230, 361
Óbuda 77, 87, 259, 260, 263, 305
Oral Laws. See Mishnah
Orthodox Judaism, 3–5, 14, 16, 2, 66, 86, 87, 128, 149,
152, 155, 167, 182, 215, 220, 238, 239, 241,
254, 259, 272, 284, 294, 301, 304, 314, 317,
337, 353
Ottoman Empire, 51–55, 118, 134
influence of, 47, 57, 153, 135
Ottoman occupation in Hungary, 51, 53–55, 118,
125, 134
Palestine, 24, 27, 104, 178
Pannonia, 39
pareve, 25–26, 129, 190, 193, 222–226, 305, 308
Passover. See Pesach
Pécs, 74, 80, 153, 202, 213
Persian Empire, 166
Pesach, 3, 16, 26, 34, 55, 63, 64, 71, 76, 80, 81, 90,
100, 102–104, 115, 127, 128, 136, 141, 171,
174–179, 180, 181, 201, 207, 222–226, 232,
311–312, 314, 326, 330, 336, 348, 353,
361, 365
Pest (before incorporation into Budapest), 33, 55,
77–80, 91, 167, 259, 260, 287
Poland, 28, 43–45, 47, 111, 155, 156, 179, 239, 311,
324, 348, 360
influence of, 44, 45, 93, 126–128, 136, 327
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 44
Portugal, 39, 284
Pozsony. See Bratislava
Prague, 47, 51, 57, 79, 87, 155, 330, 349, 358, 359, 360
Provence, 43, 165, 339, 340
proverbs about food, 87
Prussia, 44, 46
Purim, 47, 65, 71, 72, 88, 102, 103, 120, 129, 161,
164, 166–170, 178, 186, 231–232, 292, 325,
328, 355–356, 358, 359, 360

rabbis, 3, 13, 16–18, 22, 24, 26, 28, 32, 42, 51, 52, 57,
74, 78, 86, 87, 90, 102, 128, 136, 156–157,
160, 162, 165, 167, 171, 175, 181, 190, 201,
244, 246, 272, 295, 301–311, 324, 331, 341,
344, 348, 354, 360
recipe collections, handwritten, 6–7, 65–75, 127, 216,
370
Reform Judaism, 99
Roman Empire, 39, 205
Romania, 2, 15, 32, 44, 55, 64, 98, 102, 104, 126, 127,
129, 134–137, 168, 191–192, 202, 208, 220,
243, 254, 317, 336–337, 354, 365
influence of, 126, 129, 134–137
Rome, 43, 155
Rosh Chodesh, 158
Rosh Hashanah, 53, 72, 141, 158–160, 164, 186, 201,
325, 353, 354
Russia, 44–47, 55, 136, 179, 311, 324–325
Russian Empire, 44–47, 242
sayings about food, 86, 87, 90, 349, 350, 354
sciatic nerve (gid hanashe), 21, 113, 334
Scroll of Esther, 166, 168–170, 178, 232, 358
secularization, 4, 96, 97, 115, 116, 215, 244, 259, 371
Seder, 1–3, 8, 34, 81, 83, 96, 114, 128, 143, 172,
176–177, 179, 226, 231, 232, 292, 336,
361, 363
Sephardi, 16, 21, 39–41, 43, 53–57, 76, 80, 90, 126,
134, 284, 325, 330, 337, 340
communities in Hungary, 51–57, 134
cuisine, 16, 40, 55, 78, 80, 90, 325, 337, 340
culture, 16, 21, 40, 43, 55
dishes, 55, 57, 76, 283, 284, 330
influence in Ashkenazi cuisine, 39, 51–55, 126,
134, 284, 330
Jews, 39–40
Serbia, Serbs, 47, 54, 69, 98, 99, 106, 118, 132–133,
135, 352
influence of, 47, 118, 126, 133, 135
seudah, 358
Seudah Maphseket, 182
Seudah Mitzvah, 188, 190
Seudah Shlishit, 157
Shabbat
ceremonies, 2, 72, 141, 142, 170, 188, 227, 230,
237, 238, 271, 312, 324
dishes, 8, 25, 43–44, 57, 58, 60, 63, 80, 88, 89, 90,
112–113, 127, 143, 151–158, 214, 264, 323,
333, 335, 337–343, 346–351, 353, 354
hospitality, 156–157, 237–238

[ 407 ]

[ 408 ]

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

oven, communal, 40, 58, 63, 214, 338–339,
341, 347
preparations, 17–19, 20, 100, 103, 143, 151, 152,
215–216, 326, 339
prohibitions, 2–3, 53, 96, 141, 177, 214, 328, 338
shaleshudes, See Seudah Shlishit
Shalom Zachar, See zachar
shammas, 165
Shavuot, 90, 141, 179, 181–182, 192, 325
shaynes, 161
Shemini Atzeret, 141
shirayim, 156–157
shochet, 13–14, 17–21, 25, 35, 52, 79, 151–152, 176,
202, 277, 301, 317
Shulchan Arukh, 22, 31, 43, 160, 162, 326, 338
Silesia, 45, 90, 111
Simchat Torah, 63, 104, 164–165, 296, 325, 354, 355
Slovakia, 3, 21, 28, 57, 76, 83, 87, 129, 132–133, 186,
201, 238, 246, 254, 277, 311, 330
influence of, 126, 132–133
soup kitchens, See charity kitchens
Southern Europe, 39
Spain, 39, 40, 43, 69, 160, 284, 340
Status Quo Ante (branch of Hung. Judaism), 301
sukkah, 162
Sukkot, 141, 161, 162–164, 230–231, 325, 353, 355
superstitions related to food, 87, 159–160
synagogue, 1, 53–55, 65, 72, 90, 129, 141, 149,
152–162, 164–165, 182, 184, 186, 191, 192,
195, 208, 237, 277, 317, 340, 342
Syria, 40
Talmud, 26, 43, 80, 89, 127, 129, 151, 160, 165, 184,
190, 195, 210, 230, 250, 305, 324, 326, 338
Tel Aviv, 99, 106
Temple/Sanctuary (in Jerusalem), 165, 182, 188, 323, 336
Terézváros, 219, 274, 286, 304
Tisha B’av, 104, 161, 182–183
Torah, 8, 13, 16, 20–21, 24, 78, 79, 104, 141,
164–165, 181, 186, 188, 230, 244, 254,
335, 340
Transylvania, 2, 28–31, 47, 55, 100, 104, 134–137, 153,
204, 208, 214, 220, 222, 239–240, 272, 350
treif, 4, 13, 17, 32, 99, 202, 223–224, 226, 311
Turkey, 55, 134, 330
tzaddik, 156
tzena, 106
Ukraine, 31, 39, 44–46, 47, 55, 64, 111, 125–127, 131,
136, 156, 167, 179, 205, 226, 314, 324, 325,
327, 336–337, 354, 360

Ungvár (Uzhgorod), 127
United States of America, 26, 99, 118, 120–121, 136
influence of, 360
Venice, 43
Vienna, 47, 53, 57, 77, 79, 132, 241, 249, 312,
333, 334
Vojvodina, 47
Warsaw, 47, 99
weddings, 34, 89, 165, 186, 188–195, 200, 297,
215, 240. See also engagement ceremony
menus, 14, 90, 165, 186, 190, 193, 194, 194,
289, 297
women
in cooking, 215–219
in family, 216
in traditional Judaism, 215, 218
Western Europe, 44, 277, 284, 330, 348. See specific
countries by name
WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organisation),
104, 105, 136
World War I, 2, 6, 87, 99, 201–202, 216, 227, 239,
249, 267, 272, 289, 370
World War II, 21, 53, 66, 96, 102, 108, 111, 202,
227, 249, 295, 371
Yemen, 40
yeshiva, 24, 57, 215, 237
Yiddish, 2, 3, 8, 9, 13, 13, 25, 31, 34, 39, 39, 42, 42,
44, 46, 53, 60, 77–80, 83, 87, 90, 93,
125–127, 129, 131, 136, 143, 156, 157, 159,
161, 164, 166, 167, 182, 184, 188–190, 220,
232, 237, 255, 284, 314, 324, 326, 335, 340,
346, 347, 349–352, 356, 361, 363
Eastern Yiddish, 77
Eastern Yiddish culture, 131
sayings about food, 87, 90, 161, 340, 349–350,
354, 361
Western Yiddish, 77
Yom Kippur, 53, 72, 96, 98, 104, 141, 158, 160–162,
312, 349
zachar (or zócher) meal, Shalom Zachar (welcoming
the male), 183–184
zemirot, 57
Zohar, 128

[ 409 ]

Index
of Foods
This index includes mentions within the text,
but not among the ingredients of recipes.

almond, 69–70, 150, 168, 180, 182, 188. See also
tortes; turkey
bitter, 348
ground, 67, 70, 118, 180, 182, 348, 365
macaroons, 40, 168
milk, 66–67
vanilla crescents, 118
with fish, 330
altajvner lemplach (lemplach from Óbuda), 87
anchovy-stuffed eggs, 146
apple, See also kugel; strudel
butter, 86
cake à la Pest, 77
charoset, 8
ungarischer Äpfelkuchen, 77
“strudel” for Passover, 180
apricot butter (baracklekvár), 118, 335, 361
aspic, 245
bacon, 31, 43, 64, 94. See also goose “bacon”
barches/berches. See challah
barley, 58, 64, 171
pearl, 104, 154, 178, 267, 340
basil, 134
beans, 16, 60, 63, 81, 97, 149, 154, 169, 171, 182, 199,
213, 338, 340, 343–344, 350. See also specific
beans by name
vegetarian baked, 26
broth with tiny dumplings, 148
dried, 59, 155, 195, 339–340
fresh, 283
in a roux sauce, 293
smashed (törtpaszuly), 148, 149
beef, 19, 52, 54–55, 59, 81, 108, 112–113, 354
boiled, 112, 146, 152–153, 260, 265, 330–334
boiled in soup (tányérhús, levesben kifőtt hús), 260,
332, 334
brain, 80, 98

braised with vegetables (lében sült), 332, 334
brisket, 64, 102, 264, 267, 333, 334, 340, 343
cutlets, pan-braised (serpenyős rostélyos), 262, 264
cutlets, steamed (gőzben sült), 334
good meat soufflé, 66, 67
goulash (gulyás), 77, 81, 84, 118, 350
hindquarter of, 21, 32, 113
lung (lungen), 21, 80, 108, 110, 143
pörkölt, 81, 84, 262
roasted meat, 112, 148, 191
short ribs (csonthús), 333, 334
smoked, 58, 63, 146, 178
smoked in pudding, 106
spleen (miltz), 80
sweetbread, 80
tasty boiled, 331
tongue, braised, 334
tongue, Polish-style sour, 93
tongue, smoked, with sliced vegetables, 77
top round, braised (párolt fartő), 334
tripe or stomach, 21, 80, 110
beets, 136, 179, 213. See also borscht; cibere; rosl; soups
sugar 45, 111
bejgli (pastry roulades filled with walnuts or poppy
seeds), 81, 118, 168, 295
béles. See delkel
bicarbonate of soda, 272, 345
bird, 13, 14, 19–20, 161, 200, 202–206. See also eggs
and specific birds by name
kosher, 13
biscotti in memory of the late Crown Prince Rudolf,
132, 289
biscuits, 69, 72, 108, 130, 132
pogácsa, 69, 72, 118, 120, 168
farmer cheese, 72
soup bisquit, 130, 132, 296
sweet butter, 69

[ 410 ]

INDEX OF FOODS

bison, 13
blini, 46
Bohemian tongue, 133
bole, bola or bolesz, 162, 283–284, 370
boreka, 57
de espinaka, 57
borscht, 46, 136, 179
dairy, cold, 136
meat, hot, 136
brain. See beef, veal
bread, 32, 53, 143, 151, 206. See also challah;
focaccia; kugel; matzo; soup
crumbs, 146, 176, 180
dark, 45, 325
dough, 133, 171, 207, 326
egg, 88, 325
flatbreads, Near Eastern, 323
juhtúrós lángos (flatbread with sheep’s-milk cheese),
133
lángos, 143
penets. See toasted or fried bread
pita, 171
rolls, 195, 346
rye, 45, 171, 326
Shabbat, 88–89, 230, 323–326
symbolic use of, 7, 153, 158, 323–324
toast, 79, 93–94
unleavened, 171, 174, 323
yeast, 118, 287, 324–326
buckwheat, 46, 349
burbot, 14
butter, 31, 76, 143, 308, 360
cabbage, 40, 42, 164. See also sauerkraut.
dumplings, 147, 369
green, 149
in tomato sauce, 74
layered, 143, 164
red, 164, 212
salad, 296
sautéed chopped, 4, 111, 146
Savoy, 164, 353
stewed, 271
strudel, 164, 245, 246
stuffed, 111, 127–128, 143, 149, 164, 169, 244
white, 149, 164
cakes, 26, 47, 143, 158, 162, 184. See also tortes and
specific cakes by name

calf, 31, 80
foot. See p’tcha
head, 194
liver, 146, 219
candy, 314
canning, 179, 209–214
capon, 168
capretto per pesach, 55
carob, 178, 180
carp, 40, 44–45, 127
baked, 191
head, 79
Hungarian, 81, 84
in walnut sauce, 151, 328–329, 331
jellied, 245, 264–265
minced, 76
paprika (cold, jellied), 194, 245, 265
poached (or boiled), 127, 153, 191
carrots, 40, 112, 149, 152, 159, 161, 184, 213, 353.
symbolic use of, 158, 159, 353. See also tzimmes
catfish, 14, 98
cattle, 17, 21, 78, 113, 199, 331–334
cauliflower, 146, 219, 246
caviar, 95
celery knobs, 263
Ceres (brand of kosher cooking fat), 26, 308, 309
challah, 8, 88, 152, 157–159, 164, 207, 227–230,
323–326
braided, elongated, 88, 151–152, 295, 324–225,
358
crunchy stick (resche Ruten-barches), 90, 289
dairy (butterbarches), 71, 76, 324–325
eggless (wasser challah), 325
egg-rich (eier challah), 325
round, 158, 325
spiral-shaped, 158, 325
sweet, 190, 325
charoset, 8
cheese, 31, 183, 314, 355. See also specific cheeses and
cheese dishes by name
cherries, 78, 212, 213
chicken, 8, 16, 19, 20, 35, 153, 161, 326, 336
boiled, 127, 161
braised, 364
fat (schmaltz), 40, 47, 59, 60, 64, 200
liver, 98
paprikás, 24, 84, 96–97, 118, 243
pörkölt, 81, 84, 96, 97, 149
roast, 160, 169

INDEX OF FOODS

soup, 1, 45, 98, 127, 143, 152–153, 161, 164, 169,
176 –177, 190, 363, 364
symbolic use of, 161
tomato, 81
wing, roasted, 8
chickpeas, 43, 184, 340. See also cholent
chimney cake (kürtős fánk), 169
chocolate, 167, 314, 240, 314. See also tortes
cholent, (sólet, sholet, shalet, skhena, dafina, hamin) 8,
41, 43–44, 57–60, 64–65, 72, 75–76, 80, 87,
100, 112, 114, 152, 154–155, 214, 239,
264–265, 269, 271, 295–296, 335, 337–347,
350–352, 361
bean (dried), 63, 81, 84, 102, 104, 338, 340
canned bean, 154–55
chickpea, 340
fava bean, 340
Krúdy family’s bean, 334
lentil, 340
pea (dried), 58–59, 63, 81
pearl barley and bean (ricset), 104, 267, 340
rice, 81, 84
rice, with goose giblets, 82
wheat, 340
cholent dumplings, 57, 59, 347. See also ganef, kugel
cholent egg, 57, 59, 64–65, 93–94, 102, 336–337, 351
chopped eggs (eier un schmaltz, eier-tzibel, lengyel tojás,
zsidótojás), 64, 93, 100, 102, 335–337
chopped herring (gehakte herring), 317, 335
chopped liver (gehakte leber), 43, 160, 328, 335
chremsel, 81, 100, 178, 365–366. See also latkes
boiled and grated potato, 365
filled matzo, 365
mashed potato, 365
matzo flour, 100
raw potato, 366
sweet, 366
cibere, 136, 176, 179
cinnamon, 64, 134, 370
citric salt (citric acid), 135
citron. See etrog
Coca-Cola, 26
cocoa, 143, 146, 178
coconut, 26, 308
fat (hydrogenated oil), 26, 308
oil, 309
coffee, 98, 129, 143, 154, 162, 168, 178, 184, 195,
208, 238, 240, 242, 246, 277–279, 280, 283,
284, 289
coffee cake, 121, 184, 289

cooked black fish, 66
cookies, 65, 166–167, 183–184, 191, 232, 240. See
also specific cookies by name
from Brno, 133
macaroons, 40, 168
corn, 171, 183, 202, 205
cornmeal, 16, 129, 143, 347, 350, 363
cake (prósza), 143
mush, 128, 137
polenta (Kukurutz-Male, kukoricamálé), 81
cow, 13, 28–31, 51, 67, 113, 351
cream
sour, 4, 24, 34, 96–97, 108, 179, 181–182, 208
sweet (whipping), 98, 168, 183, 193, 283, 289
crêpes, 104, 118, 149, 166, 177, 183
csiperke/csipetke (soup), 148–149
cucumber, 336
fermented pickles (kovászos uborka), 181
salad, 147
sauce, 334
water pickles (vizes uborka), 214
curd cheese, 31, 42, 133, 354. See also farmer cheese
from cow’s milk, 31
from sheep’s milk, 133
dafina, 338
dairy products, 24, 28–31, 165, 219, 308, 314. See also
specific products and dairy dishes by name
dairy (milchig) meals, 13, 21, 22–26, 75–76, 146,
181–183, 223–224, 226–227, 308, 354
deer, 13–14
delkel, 149, 153, 166, 181, 359
cheese (farmer cheese), 149, 153, 166. 181–182
poppy seed, 149
walnut, 149
desserts, 47, 65, 67, 71, 73, 75–76, 149, 167, 271,
360–361. See also cookies; cakes; pastries; tortes
dietary laws (kashrut), 3–4, 7, 13–35, 39, 57, 64, 66,
72–73, 77, 79–83, 96–97, 99, 103, 107, 110,
114–115, 202, 215, 219, 221, 259, 301, 304
djuvece, 47, 132–133
dough, 3, 26, 42, 46, 57–58, 60, 63, 65, 80, 89, 118,
171–72, 174, 207, 308, 323
bread, challah, 133, 151–152, 207, 289
nasseh, 187
pasta, 64
potato, 69, 108
short, 65, 87
starter, 207
strudel, 47, 118, 185
yeast, 88, 149, 162, 187, 225, 284, 360–361, 370

[ 411 ]

[ 412 ]

INDEX OF FOODS

doughnuts, 47, 64, 130, 149, 165–166
baked (tarkedli, csehpimasz, Dalken), 131
filled, 47
duck, 13, 19, 149, 153, 199, 204, 350–351
giblets and vegetables soup, 153
liver, 335
roast, 245
soup (becsinált), 149
dumplings, 42, 45, 47, 133, 145, 336, 350, 362–363.
See also matzo balls, cholent dumpling, ganef,
gefilte fish, kugel
cabbage, 147, 369
galuska, 222
ganef, 60, 350–351
kugel, 346–347
liver, 98
matzo-potato, 73, 364
potato, 149
tiny, 81, 84, 148–149
tiny, with scrambled eggs (tojásos galuska), 262
egg barley (farfel, tarhonya), 108, 149, 178, 349,
352, 366. See also matzo farfel
egg cake (eier-kuchen, tojásos lepény), 9, 128
egg “matzo” (Schlüsselmazzes), 90
eggplant or aubergine. 40, 47, 102, 104, 135–136
eggs, 13, 25, 58, 64, 90, 127, 179, 186, 189, 199, 308,
324–325, 327, 336–337, 346, 350, 360, 366.
See also specific egg dishes by name
hard-cooked, 143, 157, 167, 172, 176, 178–79,
182, 195, 317, 335
scrambled, 73, 146, 178, 262
soft-boiled, 216
symbolic use of, 8
eierkichli, eierkuachli, eier kichlach (egg cookies),
168, 170, 336
etrog (citron), 210–211, 230–232
and quince preserves, 211
in sugar, 210–211
preserves, 210
ewe. See sheep
Fächertorte, 354–355
Falshe fish, 93, 326
farfel See egg barley
farmer cheese (túró), 154, 181, 208, 288, 359,
360–361, 363. See also curd cheese; delkel
biscuits, 72
crêpes, 181
fladen (pite), 181
matzo, 34

noodles (túróscsusza), 34, 64, 81, 111
ravioli (túrós derelye), 182
fava beans See cholent
feta, 57
fish, 2–3, 8, 14–16, 25–26, 40, 42–43, 51, 57–58, 65,
75, 89, 98, 100, 113, 129, 151, 152, 155, 169,
177, 181, 207, 220–221, 314, 317, 355. See also
specific fish by name
black, cooked, 66
chopped, 127, 327
gefilte, 1–3, 43, 76, 111, 126–127, 136, 188, 190,
326–328
hash, 127
head, 159–160
in Polish style, 128
jellied, 127, 153, 161, 188, 190, 267, 297, 326, 343
jellied paprika, 184, 194
Jewish, 93, 150
marinated, 150
paprika, 169, 184
paprikás (halpaprikás), 184, 267
Polish-Jewish, 93, 150
roe, soup, 104
sliced, poached, 2–3, 127, 328
soup, 79
sour, 58, 326
stuffed, 102, 127, 327–328
sweet and sour, 43
symbolic meanings of, 7, 25, 153, 327
walnut (in walnut sauce), 40, 65, 170, 328–331, 370
Fledel-Fächer, 355
floating island (madártej), 183
flódni, 8, 47, 65, 81, 87, 100, 102, 167–168, 170, 192,
271, 296, 354–356, 358
flour, 3, 16, 25–26, 64–65, 81, 118, 171–174, 199,
264, 270, 310, 323, 326, 346, 352, 363
brown, 155
buckwheat, 46
rye, 171, 207, 326
wheat, 118, 171, 207, 326, 340
flourless cakes, 47, 180
flour mush (Mehlsterz), 132
fluden or fladen, 120, 159, 170, 181, 192, 266, 296, 354
focaccia, 143
fowl, 13, 190
at weddings, 190
fritters, 149
Haman’s ears, 170
matzo, 67, 70–71, 81

INDEX OF FOODS

fruits, 13, 25, 112, 143, 159, 164, 166–167, 178, 193,
207–209, 212–213, 271, 317, 346, 343,
352–353, 360. See also specific fruits by name,
also preserves
candied, 284
dried, 325, 348, 352
jelly, 209
juice, 67, 172
paste, 209
sauces, 11, 111–112, 159, 334
stewed, 143, 149, 159, 177, 225
fruit butter. See lekvár
game, 14
ganef, 59–60, 64, 80, 346, 350–352
goose, 65, 351
Transylvanian, 350
garlic, 40, 43, 58, 96, 146, 206, 335–336, 340
sauce 334
gehakte eier. See chopped eggs
gehakte herring. See chopped herring
gehakte leber. See chopped liver
ginger, dried, 67, 69, 130, 134, 167, 363
gingerbread (lebkuchen), 52, 58, 185, 192
ginger-flavored soup biscuits, 130
goat, 13, 51–55
milk, 55
kid, 55. See also capretto per pesach
golden soup (goldzup, goldene Suppe), 3, 190, 192
goose, 13, 19, 21, 64, 75, 84, 166, 200–207, 249,
270–271, 301, 317, 336, 340, 350–352, 367.
See also specific dishes by name
“bacon,” 146, 206
breast, 60, 146, 149, 162, 266, 268, 268, 350
cholent with, 268, 340
cracklings, 75, 146, 207, 269, 271
drumstick, 132, 267
fat (schmaltz), 4, 19, 40, 47, 64, 129, 200–202, 207,
266, 271, 287, 308, 334, 360
ganef, 65, 204, 351
giblets, 82, 84, 367
liver cheese, 95
liver, 60, 63, 75, 180, 205, 206–207, 246, 271, 269,
337, 350–352
liver, Polish-style, 93
meatballs of breast meat, 149
neck, stuffed, 57, 60, 64, 154, 264, 270, 351–352
roast, 166, 177, 191, 246, 249, 268, 271, 296
sausage, 269, 308
smoked, 202, 269, 270, 301
smoked sausage of, 270

soup, 75, 159, 268–269, 270, 363
stewed with vegetables (libabecsinált), 266
gooseberries
jelly, 213
sauce, 148
goose giblets with rice pilaf, 352, 367
grains, 16, 25–26, 78, 171–172, 214. See also specific
grains by name
grapes, 26–28, 42, 182, 311
green beans or string beans, 81, 97
in a roux sauce (zöldbabfőzelék), 111
soup, 112, 181–182
green peppers. See peppers
gribenes. See goose cracklings
grimseli, vermesel, 42, 365
gruels, 42
gugelhupf, 154, 162, 168, 289
gulyás, 84, 118, 350
meat, 77, 81, 84, 118, 350
soup, 118, 350
gyuvecs (djuvece), 132–133
halsli, helzel. See goose neck, stuffed
ham, 32–33
Haman’s ears (Hamanowe ucha), 169–170
Hamantasche, humentas, 103, 170, 359–360
hamin, 43, 337
hare, 64
marinated, in puréed vegetable sauce, 64
harisa, 43
harissa, 43
hazelnuts, 167–168, 188, 220, 334
hen (mature fowl). See fowl, soup
roast, 214
herbs, fresh, 134. See also specific herbs by name
herring, 40, 45, 157, 183–184, 188, 314, 317
chopped, 335
chopped, with eggs, 317
pickled or marinated, 112, 146, 317, 326
rolled fillets, 157
“Russian” (ruszli), 326
Salt, 314, 317
hollandaise sauce, 246
honey, 8, 25, 45, 111–112, 128, 143, 158–160, 164,
168, 170, 181, 186, 188, 192, 340, 353, 360.
See also gingerbread; lekach
symbolic use of, 8, 158–159, 188
honey cake (lekach), 129, 170, 184, 186, 188, 190
aleph-bazyn, 129
horseradish, 213, 334
grated, 150, 180, 213

[ 413 ]

[ 414 ]

INDEX OF FOODS

sauce, 334
ice cream, 14, 16, 193
inarsz. See goose “bacon”
jam, 87, 131, 168, 207
jellied calf ’s feet. See p’tcha
jellied fish. See fish jellied; fish jellied paprika
kasha. See buckwheat
kashrut. See dietary laws
kidney. See veal
kindli, 65, 72, 81, 87–88, 100, 102, 104, 116, 118,
120, 149, 167–168, 170, 266, 271, 287, 293,
355–358, 360
elegant kindli 73, 357
kishke or derma, 108, 351
kohlrabi, 149, 353
diced in flour-thickened sauce, 143
stuffed, 143
kolach, kalács, 155
kreplach, 45, 161, 164, 169–170, 181, 349, 360
kugel, 43, 57, 59–60, 64, 76, 80, 100, 102, 112, 116,
132, 336, 346–350
apple, 62, 65, 347
bread, 71, 72, 81, 84, 102, 347–348
bread with apples, 346–347
lokshen (noodle), 45, 64, 81, 181, 347–348
matzo, 34, 81, 348
meat, 84, 349
Polish, 84, 349
Potato, 348
Schalet, 347–348
lamb, 7, 34–35, 54–55. See also sheep
head, 194
marinated, in puréed vegetable “game” (vadas)
sauce, 64
pörkölt, 81
shank, roasted, 8
lángos. See bread
lard, 4, 32, 99, 149
latkes, 165–66, 336
layered cabbage, 143, 164
layered potatoes (rakott krumpli), 182
Leberkäse, 95
Lechem, 324
lechem mishneh, 324
lecsó, 47, 120
leek, 336
legumes, 42, 171, 184, 195, 340. See also specific
legumes by name
lekach See honey; honey cake

lekvár, 118–120, 129, 149, 167, 170, 209, 212–213,
355, 359, 360, 361
lemon, 153
lentil, 16, 171, 195, 340
liver 22. See veal; beef; chicken; goose
pörkölt, 93
lobster, 32
lung, See veal or beef
macaroons, 40, 168
mamaliga, 137
mandlen, 190
manna, 227, 230, 324, 336, 340
margarine, 16, 193
marjoram, 134
marzipan, 168
matzo, 3, 34, 127, 171–181, 207, 232, 310–311
apple “strudel” for Passover, 178, 180
balls (knaidel), 3, 8, 34, 67, 69, 80, 95, 97, 100,
104, 116, 128, 176, 181, 270, 327, 349, 363,
362, 364
coffee, 178
egg, 90
enriched (ashirah), 172
farfel, 73, 178
filled sweet matzo-and-potato dumplings, 364
fritters, 67, 70–71, 81
kugel, 34, 81, 348
matzo-and-potato dumplings, 73, 364
meal, 64, 177, 178, 180, 346, 363, 365, 366
mitzvah, 174–75
shmurah, 174
torte, 67, 180
with farmer cheese, 34, 64
with scrambled eggs, 73, 178
Maultasche, 359
mayonnaise, 181, 245, 246
meat, 30–31, 35, 42–43, 51–55, 63, 66, 75, 77, 81, 88,
93, 111–113, 129, 141, 143, 160, 177, 182,
246, 308, 331, 336. See also specific animals
and dishes
kosher, 13–22, 35, 72, 80, 102, 113, 182, 301–305
meals (fleishig), 22–26, 75–76, 96–97, 146, 184,
219–227, 305–308, 354
products, 22, 30, 304
smoked, 13, 22, 63, 301, 304
tzimmes, 81, 112
melon, 212, 336
milk, 13, 24, 28–31, 129, 145, 154, 162, 181–183,
188, 208, 240, 283, 314
cow’s, 31, 64, 67

INDEX OF FOODS

goat’s, 55
sheep’s, 133
milk soup, 111, 133, 182
Mohntasche, 170, 359
moussaka, 102
mudfish, 14
mushrooms, 98
mutton. See sheep
mutton with green beans, 81
muszáka, 100
noodles, 42, 111, 133, 144, 153, 208, 365
cabbage (káposztás kocka), 111, 116, 164
fried (vermesel), 365
lokshen kugel, 44–45, 59, 64, 176–177, 336, 344
matzo meal, 127
noodle squares with farmer cheese (túróscsusza), 34,
64, 81, 111, 146, 181, 111, 146
poppy seed, 293, 297
potato starch, 177
Nussenkuchen, 95, 102, 103, 167
Nussenbeigel, 170, 232
nuts, 8, 188, 314, 348, 360. See also specific nuts by name
oats, 171
offal, 80, 143. See also specific offal by name
oil, 25–26, 65, 98, 129, 135, 165, 207, 284, 308,
324, 366. See also specific oils by name
olive oil, 40, 165
dough made with, 57
onion (tzibel), 40, 43, 45, 47, 63, 64, 75, 81, 129, 145,
149, 151, 152, 184, 199, 206, 260, 296, 317,
326, 331, 335–337, 340, 346, 352, 367
onion-lemon sauce, 112
orange, 102, 104, 207, 210. See also tortes
glaze 180
ox, 13
palacsinta. See crêpes
pálinka, 115, 184, 188, 190–192, 312
Palmin (brand of kosher cooking fat), 308
pancakes. See chremsel; crêpes
paprika, 63–64, 67, 75, 81, 128, 134, 143, 146, 184,
206, 243, 264, 305, 350, 352, 367
paprikás, 24, 81, 350, 367. See also chicken; veal; fish
pareve foods, 25–26, 129, 190, 222–226, 305–308
parfait, 193
pastries, 26, 47, 65, 87, 90, 98–100, 118–121, 143, 146,
166–168, 170, 184, 189, 208, 232, 240, 277,
283–289, 354–361. See also specific pastries
by name
Pfeffer beigli, feferbajgli, krenczli (pepper rings) 65, 102,
166

pea, 184, 340, 353. See also cholent; soup
fresh, 143
dried, 58, 155, 184, 339
sugar, 213
pear stew, 102, 103
penets. See toasted or fried bread
pepper, black, 4, 64–65, 69, 102, 111, 116, 128,
166–167, 183, 266, 287, 305, 336–337,
351–352, 363, 366
pepper rings. See under pastries
peppers, 40, 118. See also stuffed pepper
sweet peppers, baked, 47
sweet peppers, roasted, 47
pesce freddo all salsa di noce, 330
Pfefferkuchen, 287
Pfeffer-kugli, 287
pickles. See cucumbers
pies, 64
meat, 42
pig, 13, 98, 270, 317–318
pig-killing feast (disznótor), 97–98, 270–271
pigeon, 13, 19, 200
pike, 44, 127, 328
boiled, 191
head, 79
poached whole or in slices, 127
stuffed, 127, 266, 327
with walnuts, 246, 328–329, 331
pike-perch (fogas), 150, 182
roast, 182
piroshkes, 46
pite, 168, 354
plums, 162, 212, 364
plum butter, 87, 118, 170, 209, 212, 355, 359, 361
pogácsa. See biscuits
Polish-style, 93, 128
poppy seed crescents, 149
poppy seed noodles, 293
poppy seeds, 65, 120–121, 149, 168, 170, 271, 287,
325, 354–56, 359
filling, 65, 81, 149, 168, 170, 271, 287, 293, 354
355, 358
pork, 31–33, 35, 96–97, 99, 110, 149, 246, 270, 318.
See also sausages
cracklings, 34
pörkölt, 93, 143, 350. See also beef; chicken; liver;
turkey; veal
porridge, 43
potato, 40, 45, 59, 69, 102, 143, 149, 155, 181, 184,
207, 213–214, 340, 346–348, 352, 365–366.

[ 415 ]

[ 416 ]

INDEX OF FOODS

See also specific dishes, dumplings; chremsel;
kugel; latkes; salads; soups
boiled, 179, 365
home-fried, 75
mashed, 146, 176, 352, 365
potato starch, 3
fried dough pellets made with, 3, 176
thin pancake strips made with, 176
yellow torte made with, 170
poultry, 16–22, 24, 35, 54–55, 81, 102, 112, 133,
152, 159, 166, 168, 199, 200, 207–208, 296,
314, 317, 331, 341, 351. See also specific poultry
and poultry dishes by name
cracklings, 176
fat, 335
roast, 21, 166
preserves, 67, 100, 102, 145, 243, 209–214, 219, 360
Pressburger crescents (pozsonyi kifli), 118, 358
prósza. See corncake
prunes, 183, 361
p’tcha (pce), 155, 349
puddings, 34, 43, 45, 104
liver, 160, 180
Shabbat pudding (kugel), 43, 350
smoked beef, 106
puliszka, 129, 137
quince, 211
etrog-quince preserve, 211
paste, 209
preserve, 209
sauce, 148
stewed, 148, 208
rabbit, 64, 73
raisins, 112, 128, 143, 153, 159, 167–168, 187, 190,
283–184, 325, 334, 347–348, 354–355,
360, 370
ravioli, 182, 359
resche Rutenbarches, 90, 289
Resegrüten, 88, 186
rice, 40, 60, 143, 164, 171, 367
cholent, 59, 81–82, 84, 340, 350
kugel, 347
pilaf, 352, 367
ricset, 267, 340
with goose drumsticks and breast, 267
roast 64, 169, 191 See also chicken, goose, hen, lamb,
poultry, pike-perch, veal
avoidance of, 177
rosl, 136, 179
roux, 111, 133, 148–149, 153

saffron, 134, 190
salads
cabbage, 296
cucumber, 147
French, 246
potato, 47
vegetable, 181
salami (kosher), 22, 301, 304–305
salt, 22, 25–26, 35, 64, 69, 111–112, 116, 128,
152–153, 159, 161, 164, 176, 183, 195, 205,
221, 272, 287, 326, 337, 345, 352, 366–367
symbolic use of, 152–153
sandwich, 95, 143
sardines, 314
sauces, 40, 74, 112, 143, 148, 153, 177, 214, 225,
328, 334. See also other specific sauces by name
béchamel, 98, 102
lemon-raisin, 153
puréed vegetable, 14, 64, 369
roux, 293
scallion, 81
walnut, 40, 65, 151, 170, 326, 328, 331
sauerbraten, 14, 112
sauerkraut, 149, 164, 213, 242
sausage, 22, 108, 270, 301, 340
beef, 59
beef or veal lung, 108
goose, 269–270
homemade from minced beef and veal, 146
pork, 31, 97, 270
schav, 328
schmaltz (poultry fat), 335
semolina, 352
coarse (gríz, Gries), 60, 111, 352
dumplings, 332
soup, 265
toasted, with noodles, 111
sheep, 13, 31, 52, 271
casing, 271
ewe 133
lamb. See lamb and also specific dishes by name
milk, 133
mutton, 52, 54–55, 81. See also specific dishes
by name
shellfish, 14, 32. See also specific shellfish by name
shortening (vegetable fat), 25, 129, 305
shrimp, 32, 99
slivovitz (plum pálinka), 162, 312
smalcbájgli, 170

INDEX OF FOODS

smoked meat, 22, 58, 63, 106, 270, 301, 304. See also
beef; goose sorrel
sauce, 331
soup, 328
soup, 42, 45, 67, 73, 80, 100, 143, 149, 153, 177,
192, 289–297. See also beet, chicken, fish,
goose, green beans, semolina, sorrel, tomato
and specific soups by name
bean, 182, 297
bean broth, with tiny dumplings, 148
becsinált (duck soup with vegetables), 149
bread, 84
cabbage, 149
cauliflower, 219
cherry, 78, 118
fermented beet (cibere), 104, 136, 176, 179
gulyás, 118
hen (mature fowl), 190
Ignotus, 93
kidney, 80
meat, 132, 170, 178, 181, 296
matzo ball, 116, 266, 361
milk, 41, 133, 182
pea, 182
potato, 176, 182
ragout, 34
vegetable, 42, 143
soup biscuits, 132, 296
ginger-flavored, 130
soup garnish, 98, 143, 168, 360
sour cherries, 212–213
sour cream, 4, 24, 34, 96–97, 108, 179, 181– 182, 208
spelt, 171
spice cake, 170
spices, 60, 67–69, 134, 152, 161, 168, 192, 360. See
also specific spices by name
spinach, 57. See also boreka de espinaka
creamed, 333
spleen (miltz). See beef
sponge cake, 170, 191
roulade (jelly roll), 168, 188
strudel, 47, 118–121
apple, 62, 159, 178, 180
cabbage, 164, 245
cherry, 181
poppy seed, 121
sweet-cream (Milchrahm) strudel, 183
stuffed derma, 108, 351
stuffed cabbage, 111, 127–128, 143, 149, 164,169
Inczes’, 242, 244

small, ball-shaped, 128
sweet, 128
stuffed fish. See fish
stuffed goose neck. See goose
stuffed pepper, 97, 118, 143
sturgeon, 14
sugar, 25, 45, 65, 90, 111–112, 116, 128, 168, 178,
183, 209, 210–211, 281, 284, 314, 317, 325,
334, 360, 361
beet sugar, 45, 111, 186
cane sugar, 186
confectioners’, 111, 162
sugar pretzels, 71
summer squash, 74–75, 97, 111, 112
candied, 100, 102
slaw in tomato sauce (paradicsomos tök), 74
slaw with dill (tökfőzelék), 111
sweet dishes, preference for, 111
sweet-and-sour flavors, 14, 43, 74, 112
preference for, 112
Swiss cheese (Emmentaler type), 31
tarhonya. See egg barley
tarragon, 134
tea, 129, 143, 184, 206
thimble noodles (gyűszűfánk, fingerhitl), 190, 192
toasted or fried bread, 93, 94, 96, 143, 206, 337
tojásos lepény. See egg cake
tokány (made with cornmeal, not with meat), 129
tomato, 40, 69, 97, 143, 207, 212–213
candied slices, 102
canning of, 207, 208, 212–213
jelly, 71
sauce, 74, 81, 97–98, 111–112, 263, 265, 334
soup, 97, 111
tongue, veal or beef, 80, 93, 112, 133, 143, 178,
194, 334
smoked beef, 77, 178
tortes, 47, 121, 177, 180, 189, 286, 354
almond, 180
carob, 180
cheese, 166
chocolate, 104
Fächertorte, 354–355
flourless, 47, 180
hazelnut, 168
honey, 168
Linzer, 168
matzo, 67, 180
matzo meal, 64
orange, 104

[ 417 ]

[ 418 ]

INDEX OF FOODS

Pischinger, 132
Sacher, 132
sponge dough, 168
walnut, 168, 180
wartime Sacher, 370
yellow, 168, 170
tripe. See beef, veal
turkey, 13, 168, 191, 241, 351–352
breast of, with almonds, 93
pörkölt, 81
roast, 168, 191, 245, 246
tzimmes, 81, 112, 152, 349, 352–354
carrot, 353
meat, 81, 112
vanilla crescents, 118
vays kichli (coffee cake), 184
vays kinlach (cookie), 184, 191
veal, 19, 54, 326. See also calf ’s head; calf ’s liver
brain, 80, 98
brisket (Jewish “ham”), 102
grilled breast of, with tomato sauce, 81
calf ’s foot. See p’tcha
cutlet in onion-lemon sauce, 112
kidney, 80
lung, 108, 143
paprikás, 81
pörkölt, 84
roast, 219
sweetbread, 80
tongue, 143
stomach (tripe), 80, 110
vegetables, 2, 3, 13, 25, 40, 47, 69, 73, 77, 81, 89, 97,
100, 102, 112, 120, 135, 143, 149, 155, 160,
164, 169, 170, 178, 181, 183, 199, 207,
208–209, 212–214, 216, 225–226, 246, 296,
336, 317, 352–353. See also specific vegetables
by name
preserving in sand, 213
preserving in root cellar, 199, 213
putting up, canning, 213
root, 45

vegetable fat, 129, 193, 305, 312. See also by brand
name: Ceres, Palmin, Venus
venison, 14
Venus (brand of kosher cooking fat and oil), 26
vinegar, 104, 112, 127, 221, 314, 317, 326, 350
walnuts, 58, 65, 81, 94, 103, 149, 167–168, 187, 220,
328–331, 354, 361. See also sauces, tortes,
specific dishes and desserts
cake, 95, 219
crescents, 149
filling (for pastries), 65, 81, 149, 167–168, 170, 271,
284, 287, 293, 354–355, 358, 370
ground, 170, 180, 361
slices, See Nussenkuchen
squares (a cake), 95
symbolic use of, 158, 165, 168, 188, 356
wheat, 46, 171, 174–175, 265, 281, 340
berries, 340
cholent, 340
cracked, 40
flour, 170, 175, 207, 326, 340
wine, 8, 33–34, 42, 51–52, 115, 167, 182, 184, 253,
272, 283, 314
kosher, 26–28, 42, 51–52, 65, 115, 162, 167, 169,
178, 182, 184, 187, 189–191, 195, 230,
311–312
of idolatry, 254, 311
pasteurization of, 26, 254
symbolic use of, 7, 8, 33, 152, 177, 195, 232, 253
yeast, 118, 360. See also doughs, breads
active dry, 118
cake, 118, 133, 154–155, 283–284
compressed fresh, 118
dough buns, 149
zachar peas, 183–184
zucchini, 46

[ 419 ]

Acknowledgements
Aside from Katalin Fenyves, who as the editor of the original Hungarian text was my first reader and who
participated in shaping this book, I owe the greatest gratitude to my sister, Zsuzsa Körner Fábri, and my
friend, Laurent Stern. My sister helped me tremendously by researching the internet for relevant old newspaper and magazine articles and by collecting pictures for the book. Numerous elderly people shared their
memories about pre-1945 Jewish cooking with me, but Laurent Stern was in a category of his own among
them, since his account was by far the most detailed. From the distance of eighty years he was able to vividly
recall his parents’ Orthodox way of life and as a person who ever since his childhood had been much interested
in cooking he could give an accurate account of the dishes they had prepared for their meals. Although I have
been researching the everyday lives of Hungarian Jews for years, I am not religious, and for this reason it was
great help that Balázs Fényes, an outstanding scholar of rabbinical traditions, reviewed and corrected my
manuscript. As he had done for my previous books, András Szántó shared with me his exceptionally rich
collection of picture postcards and documents of gastronomic history, while Tamás Lózsy provided important
information about the work of ritual slaughterers and the trade of kosher cooking ingredients. In addition,
he allowed me to get photographs of related objects—shochet knives, stamps, shop signs, etc.—in his collection. Last but not least, I would like to thank László Kúnos, the director of Corvina Books, and Krisztina Kós
and Linda Kúnos, the former and current directors of CEU Press, for publishing my work, Anna Hidalmási
for her excellent editorial suggestions, and Teodóra Hübner, the outstanding book designer and photographer,
for creating a book that is not only beautiful but in which pictures and text form an inseparable unity.
In addition to them, I wish to thank the following people who also provided important help: Veronika Babarczy,
André Balog, Mrs. Pál Bognár, Anna Borgos, András Cserna-Szabó, Szilvia Czingel, Gábor Dombi, József
Donáth, Tamás Gajdó, Júlia Gidáli, Veronika Görög, Mrs. Péter Halász, Tamás Halász, Györgyike Haskó,
Elsa Honig Fine, Larissza Hrotkó, Victor Karády, Krisztina Kelbert, Bettina Kiss, János Knopp, Kati Koerner,
Katalin Koltai, Géza Komoróczy, Szonja Komoróczy, László Kőszegi, Mrs. István Köves, Ágnes Losonczi,
Frank Mecklenburg, Anett Neumann, János Oláh, Katalin Reguly, Miklós Rékai, the late Andrew Romay,
Róbert Rosenstein, Tibor Rosenstein, János Rudas, Noémi Saly, Ivan Sanders, Gábor Schweitzer, Mrs. József
Schweitzer, Young Suh, Ágnes Széchenyi, Judit Szilágyi, Sándor Tárkányi, Gábor Andor Tooth, Zsuzsanna
Toronyi, and Daniela Wolf.

Originally published in Hungarian as
A magyar zsidó konyha
Corvina, Budapest, 2017
© 2018 András Koerner
Images © See list on page 399
Layout and design: Teodóra Hübner, András Koerner
Illustrations: András Koerner
Co-published in 2019 by
Central European University Press

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and
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Corvina ISBN 978 963 13 6497 2
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