All posts by Melissa Reynolds

Melissa Reynolds is a PhD Candidate in History at Rutgers University. Her dissertation compares "practical" knowledge in fifteenth-century manuscripts to sixteenth-century printed books to understand how changes to the presentation, circulation, and reception of mundane but useful information shaped early modern English culture. She is one of the RP's social media editors and is a current 2018-19 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow.
Culinary History, Food and Drink, Posts, Summer 2026

Marton Family Crescents: Adapting Vanillekipferls with Walnuts

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By Jacquelyn D. Deppe (Marton)

Vanille-Kipferl ohne Ei, found in Die Süddeutsche Küche by Edle von Katharina Prato Scheiger (1903), is one of the earliest published mentions of vanillekipferls – small, crescent-shaped biscuits or cookies, traditionally made with almonds and vanilla sugar during Christmas time. Although these cookies originated in Vienna, Austria, they have since become a part of German, Swiss, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian culture.

Recipe for Vanille-Kipferl ohne Ei in German found in Die Süddeutsche Küche by Edle von Katharina Prato Scheiger from 1903.
Vanille-Kipferl ohne Ei recipe from Die Süddeutsche Küche by Edle von Katharina Prato Scheiger (1903). Image credit: HathiTrust from the University of California, digitized by Google.

The Vanille-Kipferl ohne Ei recipe roughly translates as follows:

“Cut the dough—made from 280g flour, 210g butter, 100g blanched and finely ground almonds, and 70g sugar—into walnut-sized pieces. Shape these into slender little rolls, curve them into crescent shapes, and bake them gently until pale golden. Remove them from the baking sheet while they are still piping hot, immediately roll each one in vanilla sugar, place them on paper, and let them cool completely.”

When Austrians immigrated to the United States, recipes like vanillekipferls came with them. However, the name changed through a mix of translation, assimilation, and Americanization, as its original German name was unfamiliar to many Americans. Its ingredients also changed due to socio-demographic characteristics and availability of ingredients. By examining different cookbooks published in the United States along with an unpublished family recipe, these changes can be seen.

Recipe for butter almond crescents in English as found in The Settlement Cook Book from 1921.
Butter almond crescents recipe from The Settlement Cook Book (1921). Image credit: HathiTrust from the University of California, digitized by Google.

In the 11th edition of The Settlement Cook Book (1921), vanillekipferls adopted a new name, butter almond crescents. The recipe calls for flour, butter, blanched almonds, powdered sugar, and vanilla bean. With directions that say to:

“[p]ut flour into bowl, add butter, grated sweet and bitter almonds and 2 or 3 tablespoons powdered sugar, and knead into a dough. Roll quite thin, put into small rounds, then into half moons or crescents. Place in tins and bake all at one time in a moderate oven. Grind vanilla bean, add powdered sugar, dip the hot cakes in the sugar mixture.”

While The Settlement Cook Book compiled by Mrs. Simon Kander (1901) was published to help Eastern European Jewish immigrant families adapt to life in the United States, the cookbook contains recipes from other parts of Europe. The cookbook serves as an early example of how traditional European and Jewish recipes blended with American cooking, and specifically, how vanillekipferls started to change in the United States.

Moving into the postwar period in the United States, the name changed again. The Meta Given’s Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking by Meta Given (1957) refers to vanillekipferls as almond crescents. The recipe calls for almonds, flour, salt, butter or margarine, packed xxxx sugar (fine confectioner’s sugar), vanilla extract, and almond extract. With directions that say to:

“[p]ut almonds through nut or food chopper using coarse blade. Sift flour, measure, resift with salt. Cream soft butter until shiny, add sugar, put through sieve; cream well. Stir in flavorings, then almonds and flour. Knead dough to blend smoothly. Divide dough in half, then lay on board and with palms of hands roll each into a rope 15 inches long. Cut ropes into 1-inch lengths, then roll each piece between palms until 2 inches long. Place on baking sheet, curving into crescent-shape. Bake 15 to 17 min or until a pale golden color. Remove at once to cake rack, then sift xxxx sugar over tops. Attractive, crunchy, good keepers if you can keep them. 30.”

Similarly, in the Acornucopia, a community cookbook compiled by the Valley Hospital Auxiliary of Ridgewood, New Jersey (June 1989), the vanillekipferl also appears as almond crescents. These almond crescents, credited to Mrs. George Young, include sweet butter, confectioner’s sugar, flour, and almonds. The directions say to:

“[b]reak off pieces [of the batter] and roll in palm of hand. Shape into crescents. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet about 10 minutes until very light brown. Cool thoroughly and then roll in additional confectioner’s sugar.”

Although both recipes differ in measurements, Meta Given’s recipe calls for vanilla beans, allowing bakers to create a coating similar to vanilla sugar,while Mrs. George Young’s recipe omits vanilla entirely, relying instead on only confectioners’ sugar.

Each recipe from these three published cookbooks contain almonds as an ingredient, while two contain ingredients and directions to make an adaptation of vanilla sugar. As Susan Kalc̆ik discusses in Chapter 2 of Symbol and the Performance of Identity in Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States (1985), immigrant families adapted traditional recipes in response to economic conditions and ingredient availability while preserving cultural meanings attached to recipes.

This can further be seen in a family recipe from the Marton family, where vanillekipferls are called crescents. The recipe is quite different from early renditions, using walnuts and confectioner’s sugar rather than almonds and vanilla sugar. The recipe also calls for chilling the dough overnight and sifting confectioner’s sugar over them after baking as opposed to baking them without chilling and rolling them in either confectioner’s or vanilla sugar while still warm. This variation developed due to a lack of income and the inability to acquire all the correct ingredients after the Martons immigrated to the United States. By using a cheaper nut and confectioner’s sugar, they were able to continue making these cookies, preserving their family traditions and culture. As Norma Baumel Joseph discusses in Cookbooks Are Our Texts, this blending of old and new helps to preserve recipes.

As the vanillekipferl demonstrates, recipe adaptations found in published cookbooks and family recipes help preserve family and cultural traditions. The persistence of the crescent shape alongside changes in names and ingredients illustrates that the survival of any immigrant recipe often depends on adaptation rather than exact replication.

Jacquelyn D. Deppe (Marton) is the Technical Services Archivist at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey where she catalogs materials and processes archival collections. Deppe holds an MI with a concentration in Archives and Preservation from Rutgers University and an MS in Professional Communication and Digital Media Arts from Seton Hall University. She has a passion for studying published and unpublished cookbooks and recipes from tracing recipe adaptations to the way in which people interacted with these texts.

Food and Drink, Global Exchange, Summer 2026

Chocolatey Kichidi: An Adoptee’s Portal to the Past

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By Janaea Eads

If you are what you eat, I am dhal and rice and fried chicken with gravy. Adopted by the daughter of Punjabi immigrant parents and the born-and-raised-in-Kansas son of a World War II veteran, I developed a complex American identity with a love of Indian food and dancing to Bollywood songs, along with mucking out horse stalls and driving a pick-up truck. Because of the many transitions in my life, my memories of life preadoption are hazy. At three years old, I was abandoned at a train station in Pune, India, and brought to a nearby orphanage where I lived for two years. After meeting my adoptive parents in 1999, I moved from a flat in India to Maryland after an arduous five-month journey to complete the adoption process. Since moving to Maryland, I’ve gone to college on Long Island, moved to Kansas, taught high schoolers on a Pacific island, moved to Massachusetts, got married, and bought a house in Massachusetts, where I now live with my husband and dog. Every step of the way, I needed to reinvent myself, building on an unknown foundation. 

This picture was taken during my adoption ceremony with my parents. This picture is from the author’s collection of family photographs.
This is a picture taken after my adoption ceremony. This picture is from the author’s collection of family photographs.
This is a picture of my friends and I enjoying a healthy meal at the orphanage. I am in the bottom right corner. This picture is from the author’s collection of family photographs.

Although many people go through transitions, I found myself constantly renegotiating my identity as a transnational adoptee. Instead of belonging to all the places I have inhabited, I belonged to none of them. I found clarity reading ethnographer Sarah Pink’s theory of seeing physical places as unbounded, rather than fixed. Places from our past are fluid. Like a river, once you step into it, it changes and it changes you. It becomes a part of you. Before reading Pink’s theory, I had not recognized how accessible my past is, especially through food. Through the power of Maryland blue crabs (with Old Bay!), Kansas chicken fried chicken, Long Island bagels with cream cheese and lox, and Massachusetts bar pizza, I remain connected to all the places I have lived and can access my memories of where and who I have been.

While the orphanage in Pune, India, is harder to access due to the time and distance in between, one recipe anchors me to it: Sabudana Kichidi, a savory dish of tapioca pearls, a staple in Maharashtrian cuisine. At the orphanage, I called it “Chocolatey Kichidi” because of its brown color caused by crushed peanuts and spices. I loved Chocolatey Kichidi so much it became synonymous with my name; the two times I visited the orphanage while growing up, the cook would make the dish for me, feeding it to me as she did when I lived there.

To reconnect with my orphanage and my adoptee identity, I recreated Chocolatey Kichidi. To do this, I drew from Jennifer Brady’s ethnographical “Cooking as Inquiry” methodology, which centers food and the body as sites of knowledge that help in exploring identity. From the woman who makes masala peas to remember her mother, a father who is young-at-heart when he barbeques, to the elaborate, ritualistic dessert that one friend loves to make, food and the body while cooking can transport us to a place where we can sense who we are and how we got here. However, Brady’s methodology goes beyond just cooking, so I also talked to my parents about their memories of the orphanage and revisited a photo album the caretakers put together for me. The album has pictures of me with friends as well as notes from the caretakers themselves, wishing me a happy life with my new family. I also went through miscellaneous items my mom collected over the years: letters to camp, a favorite t-shirt, and so much more. Through the gathering of ingredients and memories, I entered the mindset I had as a child, filled with wonder, curiosity, and the fear of inevitable change. Chocolatey Kichidi became a portal that transported me to a place where I could connect my past senses, my evolving identity, and my current wisdom to embrace who I am today. 

Chocolatey Kichidi is a simple recipe but requires some preparation in advance. The necessary ingredients are tapioca pearls, potatoes, peanuts, ginger, green chilis, cumin, curry leaves, and garam masala. The night before cooking the kichidi, I soaked the tapioca pearls until they doubled in size and peeled and parboiled my potatoes. I also toasted and ground the peanuts, leaving some chunky for texture. When the peanuts are added to the tapioca, they coat each pearl and turn them “chocolatey.” The next day, in a skillet, I added cumin seeds, minced ginger, green chilies, and curry leaves. Once all the spices were aromatic, I added the parboiled potatoes and fried them, followed by the peanuts and garam masala. I toasted everything together and added the tapioca to cook until the pearls became translucent. 

Author’s picture of recreation of Chocolatey Kichidi. 

My recreation of Chocolatey Kichidi was delicious; however, the process of cooking was the most enlightening. I imagined the cook crushing peanuts and washing the tapioca pearls like I did, mincing the green chili and ginger while I used my microplane grater. She must have heard the sizzle of the cumin and ginger. And had she also coughed as the green chilis sputtered in the pan? Repeating these actions brought me back to the kitchen of the orphanage. Through mimicking the actions the cook might have taken, I stepped into her body, seeing the dish and myself from her perspective. She put so much effort into feeding us every single day; it truly was a labor of love. It is heartbreaking I do not remember her name. While my intention with recreating Chocolatey Kichidi was to revisit a time and place from my past, I did not anticipate revisiting the people I once knew. With the love and support of the cook and caretakers at the orphanage, I found my adoptive parents. Through them, and Chocolatey Kichidi, I found myself. We are not only what we eat. We are also the places we have been to and the people we meet along the way. 

Works Cited

Brady, Jennifer. 2011. “Cooking as Inquiry: A Method to Stir up Prevailing Ways of Knowing 

Food, Body, and Identity.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 10 (4): 321–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691101000402.

Pink, Sarah. 2015. “Principles for Sensory Ethnography : Perception, Place, Knowing, Memory 

and Imagination.” Doing Sensory Ethnography, 25–50. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781473917057.n2.

      Janaea Eads is a master’s candidate in Boston University’s Gastronomy program. Her research interests include the intersections between adoption, food, and identity. She is also represented by Starling Literary + Media Agency and is currently working on young adult books that center adoptee narratives. When she isn’t writing, cooking, or thinking about food, she is being outsmarted by her pit-mix rescue.

 

Food and Drink, Summer 2026

Between Kitchens: My Yiayia’s Finikia and the Culture We Inherit 

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By Stephanie Sorosiak

A few weeks ago I sat with my mom amongst a pile of oil-stained pieces of paper. They were from my grandmother’s recipe box, and to our dismay, mostly written illegibly. My yiayia referred to these when making her most popular dishes, but to us it was a jumbled mix of misspelled and slang words. As we struggled to decipher one thing from another, I realized that my yiayia didn’t document these recipes for anyone else. This cooking space was entirely hers. 

My grandmother’s recipe.

Since her passing I have taken on the task of translating, interpreting, and recreating my yiayia’s recipes. This is partly because I love food history and recipe research, but it’s also to better understand their place in my life. The recipes our elders leave behind impose a significant influence on our cultural ties. 

Fredrik Barth, a social anthropologist known for his text Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, argued that ethnic groups are more relatively defined by the boundaries they create rather than the contents within each group.1 It’s the boundaries separating one group from another that maintain and strengthen a group’s ethnic identity. As our world continues to globalize and adapt, these conversations about ethnicity grow more complex. These complexities make me wonder if my Greek heritage can maintain its cultural boundaries as we shift through social, economic, political, and geographical changes. My family, like millions of others, shares the same sentiments and emotional attachments to our homelands. But what of our traditions, and ultimately our cultural identities? Can they remain relevant now that we’ve settled elsewhere?

Society’s ethnic boundary lines are inevitably softening as more cultures co-mingle, but I view family recipes as a defining glue that keeps these boundaries intact. Through the grief of my yiayia’s passing I feel an increased desire to master what she left behind. What started as a simple project of reading through recipe cards unearthed a lot more. As her granddaughter, and  a lover of food and the importance it carries, I feel it is my duty to honor her in the best way I know how. Ultimately I want to know how her cooking choices, both from the ingredients she used and how they were executed, created one of my favorite cookies called finikia. 

So what are finikia? Well to start, most of Greece calls them melomakarona. The name ‘finikia’ is used in regions closer to Turkey, a relationship my elders denied but is constantly referenced in our family’s recipe names. Finikia are a buttery cookie soaked in a spiced syrup typically served around the holidays, but there is not a time of year when I don’t remember eating these. At large gatherings when there were several plates of the same cookie, I could always pick out which ones were my yiayia’s. Her finikia were tender on the outside with a slight crumble in the middle. They were soaked in the right amount of orange and cinnamon syrup and were topped with just enough crushed walnuts. My yiayia’s finikia were simply the best, but it was only after I read and recreated her recipe that I understood her special techniques. 

Here are some of my yiayia’s adaptations which I believe make her finikia, hers: 

  1. Using a cheese grater to perforate the dough balls. Most recipes will instruct you to prick the dough with a fork, but my yiayia rolled them against the coarse side of a grater to create the most uniform perforation. This allows for adequate soaking after they bake. 
  2. A longer bake time. My yiayia was known to overcook everything – vegetables, poultry, and these cookies. Most recipes average a 15 minute bake time, but her finikia need around 30-35 minutes at 350ºF to achieve the signature golden color. 
  3. A longer long soak time. This probably has to do with how dry the cookies become from doubling the bake time, but allowing the cookies to soak in that delicious spiced honey syrup a tad longer (30-45 seconds), gets them even more fragrant and soft.
  4. Pastel cupcake liners. My yiayia never swayed from serving finikia in pink and yellow baking cups. While I’ve used other colors, they don’t provide the same nostalgia. 
My grandmother’s kitchen.
My version of finikia (without the pastel cupcake liners)

My grandmother came from Rhodes, Greece, to the United States in the 1950s, a period that also saw the standardization of electric appliances, prepackaged products, and fast-food chains. These heavily influenced the American eating experience, but to a newly emigrated Greek? Well, it’s hard to say. My grandparents made do with what they had while constantly navigating a language barrier, economic and social differences, and a palette for foods from a distant land. But what’s most interesting is how in the decades that followed, my yiaiya’s cooking became synonymous with what it means for us to be Greek. Even through the mass-produced conveniences that shaped her cooking choices, my family views her recipes as an authentic connection to our heritage. The choices my yiayia made in the kitchen may have seemed insignificant to her, but this is what shaped my cultural boundary. 

Embarking on this project got me thinking about the recent rise in diasporic food media – authors eager to share the stories of their family’s recipes but admitting to the unconventional swaps that their elders used once they arrived in the States. These cookbooks represent the immigrant movement, an ability to welcome adaptations while maintaining a strong relationship with specific cultural boundaries. My yiayia’s recipes are rooted in traditional Greek cuisine but with American swaps like using Mazola oil instead of olive. This is what it means to be a Greek-American. It’s something my yiayia naturally adapted to, one batch of finikia at a time. 

My grandmother, Sevasti Lambros 
  1. Barth, F. (Ed.). (1969). Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organization of culture difference. Universitetsforlaget / Little, Brown. ↩︎

Stephanie is a New England native and a recent graduate with her Master’s in Gastronomy from Boston University. She focuses on the intersection of personal customs, cultural history, and food writing. She’s been in the hospitality industry for over a decade and through her education now studies group’s foodways and their food choices to enhance restaurant business. Stephanie hopes to publish more of her work including a cookbook in the future. She currently lives in Massachusetts. 

Culinary History, Global Exchange, Summer 2026

Rice with Soda

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By Chong Ntxoo Moua

Servings: Home
Total Time: Displaced
Ingredients
  • Fresh cooked Jasmine rice
  • Soda
  • Bowl
  • Spoon
  • Memories
Recipe Notes

When I was growing up, every now and then, there would be a bowl of red tinged rice in the refrigerator. These were the leftovers of my father’s rice with red soda or punch. He was the only family member I recall who ate rice with soda. 

Rice is an integral part of Hmong life–from birth to being an ancestor in the spiritual realm. One of the first solid foods Hmong mothers introduce to their babies is rice. The soft, puffy pillows of cooked rice and its gentle aroma teach babies that rice is love and rice is home. For families like mine, who practice Hmong animist beliefs, rice is often offered in ritual ceremonies to ancestors. 

Hmong people say that as long as you have rice, you will never go hungry. In the aftermath of the U.S.’s secret war in Laos (1962-1975), when Hmong people had to escape Laos due to persecution from the communist government, rice and a cooking pot were essential among the few items they carried with them. As many made their way to refuge in Thailand, mostly on foot, they tried to make the rice last as long as possible on the long journey. When rice ran out, they dug for roots and tubers in the jungles. Even then, many still died along the way from starvation. 

This belief in the sustenance power of rice is why Hmong elders, during the coronavirus pandemic, rushed to the stores to buy as much rice as they could. Award-winning Hmong American writer Kao Kalia Yang framed this by asking “How do you brace for a coming pandemic? You buy rice…When there is nothing else, if you have rice, your children will not starve.” Hmong people know that rice is life.

In my family, rice with soda is a Hmong American thing. Prior to resettling in the U.S. as refugees, it was not something we ate. Rice with soda is also not just Hmong American. Acclaimed Filipino American chef Dale Talde shared a recipe of Pepsi Rice, from his grandmother that represented “the intersection of fast food with home cooking.” Before rice with soda, there was rice with water–a meal well-known in all Hmong homes. Of rice and water, Hmong American writer Kou B. Thao writes, “Every Hmong child grew up eating mov ntse dlej (rice mixed with water), whether they were raised in Chiang Mai, Thailand, or Milwaukee, Wisconsin.”1 Hmong elders like to eat rice with water with slices of ginger on the side. Or a side of fresh chili peppers dipped in salt. If they crave something sweet, they will have a small side dish of sugar. A bowl of fresh cooked rice swimming like a school of fish in an ocean of cold drinking water is a favorite meal of mine. The perfect spoonful is equal parts rice and equal parts water. At the end, when only the water is left, resembling a lighter version of horchata, I pick up the bowl and drink the rice-flavored liquid. It never fails to quench my nostalgia for home. Hmong people know that when there is nothing else, rice with water is all you need.

My father is the only one in my family that eats rice with soda. I did not care for rice with soda because I did not like soda. I was not a fan of the texture of the bubbly carbonation in my mouth–the airy, slightly salty effervescence felt strange. My father, on the other hand, has always loved sweet drinks. There is not a soda, punch, juice, or sweet tea he meets that he does not like. Growing up, we did not often have soda or punch or juice at home. As a refugee family of 11 (my parents had nine children) and living on government welfare, there was not a lot of money for luxuries like candy, junk food, or soda. The rare occasions when we did have soda, it was not the individual cans or bottles in a tidy six-pack or 12-pack, but rather the big, clunky 2-liter bottles because they were cheaper for more quantity. And we rarely bought name brand Coke or Pepsi products. Instead, on the front of our 2-liter bottles, written in generic font were store brand names like Dr. Thunder, Signature SELECT Cola Soda, or Great Value Twist Up. 

The other occasions where we had soda was when we had parties or attended parties. These were often family gatherings to celebrate birthdays, the new year, babies, graduations, or weddings. There was always plenty of soda leftover, and we would bring a few home. I don’t remember my father being picky about a particular type of soda or juice he preferred with rice. What stands out in my memory are the times when he had rice with red or orange soda and would leave the uneaten portions on the kitchen table or in the fridge. My father is much older now and age has started to make his mind hazy. He still has a sweet tooth for soda, but I haven’t seen him eat it with rice for many years. I wonder if he still remembers rice with soda. 

In my memories, rice with water is home.

And rice with soda will always be my father. 

Chong Ntxoo Moua (PhD) is a refugee daughter of Yaj Mim Hawj and Npuag Looj Muas. Her expertise in Hmong history and community-based research has contributed to numerous arts- and community-based exhibits, public history, and public humanities projects. She has a co-authored piece on HMoob/HMong Indigeneity and Peoplehood. She is also part of a community-based exhibit and digital archive called HMoob Stories Project.



  1. What We Hunger For: Refugee and Immigrant Stories about Food and Family, 2021, 107 ↩︎