Category Archives: Culinary History

19th Century History, Culinary History, Family and Household, Posts

Kinship in the Kitchen: Reading Mexican Cookbook Manuscripts for Familial Sentimentality

Leave a comment

By Amalia M. Sosa Haby

Cookbooks form important, though often overlooked, parts historical research. Despite cookbook manuscripts not always having clear marginalia, I posit that they offer an avenue for understanding Mexican familial sociability and relationships as they relate to activities around food – primarily, cooking. Perhaps, they are a starting point for offering insight into the more sentimental and interpersonal aspects of mother-daughter relationships, intergenerational knowledge production, childrearing, and even children’s (or young women’s) pastimes.

In Mexico, Jeffrey Pilcher has studied them in the context of nation-building.[1]  Luce Giard has argued that eating is not solely an activity to satiate a bodily need but is also a way in which a person relates to the world around them; and that – these relations are embedded in specific times and places.[2] Giard then directly links one type of social relationship with food to childhood. The food and flavours eaten in childhood can have strong sentimental bonds that are tied to specific people: for example, mother and grandmother. [3] The nineteenth century Mexican manuscript cookbooks explored here: Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor para sus hijas (Recipes That My Mother Wrote with Love for Her Daughters) and the two volume Herencia de sabores (Inherited Flavours) and Delicias y sabores (Treats and Flavours), directly invoke familial and matrilineal relationships. [4]

Figure 1 Cover page of Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor para sus hijas, 1888.

Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor para sus hijas (1888) contains recipes on only forty-eight of the pages with the rest left blank (figures 1 and 2). The notebook is unlined, and only forty-eight of the pages contain written recipes, with the rest of the pages left blank. On the first page there is a pasted cut out of a woman and young girl embracing, and a girl of toddler age seated, and reaching out to them. The facing page contains the title: Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor para sus hijas, and information such as the year: 1888, origin: Mexico, the initials V.R., and two additional paper cut outs of a bird and a woman. This title conveys sentimentality and love between a mother and her daughters, which is further emphasised when paired with the cover picture (fig. 1). It seems that the cut out of the woman with the two young girls is supposed to represent the mother and daughters from the title.

The production of this cookbook manuscript implies that there were at least two people involved in its creation: a mother who wrote the recipes, and at least one of the daughters who compiled them. The possessive of “my mother” in the title gives ownership of the manuscript to one of the daughters and, thus, it is unclear whether the mother or one of the daughters transcribed the recipes. Recetas differs significantly from other cookbook manuscripts, in structure and presentation from the same period. For example, it was not uncommon for people to title, number their recipes, and write page numbers.[5] This shows that there was a commonly used format for putting together manuscripts, even if they were for personal use. By contrast, in Recetas the handwriting is not as clearly legible and, whilst the recipes are titled, it is not as distinct to effectively separate it from the method of the recipe itself – structurally, and visually, this manuscript is much messier.

Figure 2 Facing page of Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor a para sus hijas, 1888.jpg

 

The second set of primary sources, Herencias de sabores (1888) and Delicias y sabores (1889) are a set of two volumes that follow a similar visual format to Recetas. In Herencias (fig. 3), the cover page contains a pasted picture of two young women outside and a young girl. The facing page contains the following information: Deliciosas recetas que me heredo mi abuela y mi madre (Delicious recipes passed down to me from my grandmother and my mother), 1888, Mexico, and the initials V.R.. Similarly, the cover page of Delicias y sabores (fig. 4) has a pasted in banquet scene, and the facing page has the title: Delicias llena de sabores y aromas herencia de mi mama (Delicious treats full of flavours and aromas, inherited from my mother). Additionally, it also has the date: 1889, Mex., and the initials V.R..[6] The final page has another pasted cut out of a woman sitting in a chair with a book in her hand and an inscription underneath: con amor a mi madre (with love for my mother). Despite these three manuscript cookbooks being housed by two different collections they contain almost identical formatting, and, potentially, could be from the same family given the same initialling. The main, noticeable difference is that the handwriting in Recetas is different to Herencias and Delicias which suggest that these were a family project involving the mother and multiple daughters.

Figure 3 Cover pages of Decliosas recetas que me heredo mi abuela y mi madre, 1888.

Perhaps, what we see here is a merging of an oral tradition with that of textual recording, and the passing down of culinary knowledge through the matrilineal line. The title of Herencias indicates that the recipes come from both the mother and the grandmother, making it at least two generations of culinary knowledge that is being recorded. But it really is only in the titles – and in the final note of Delicias – where familial bonds are explicitly expressed. The titles invoke sentimentality and love from the side of the daughter towards her mother. Recording these recipes appears to be a way of maintaining intergenerational connection. The recipes themselves seem to hold enough sentimental value that writing them down was deemed a worthwhile endeavour.

Figure 4 Cover pages of Delicias llena de sabores y aromas herencia de mi mama.

 

Notes

[1] Jeffrey Pilcher, ¡Que Vivan Los Tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (University of New Mexico Press, 1998).

[2] Michele de Certeau, et al., The Practice of Everyday Life, Vol. 2 (University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 183-4.

[3] de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 183-4, 188.

[4] Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor para sus hijas (Mexico: 1888), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/16106.; Rivera, Virginia. Herencia de sabores (Puebla de Zaragoza, 1888), https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb8062193q.; Rivera, Virginia. Delicias y sabores (Puebla de Zaragoza, 1889), https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb8062193q. 

[5] See: Guadalupe Perez, Libro de Recetas de Cocina (Acatzinco, 1884), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/11257.;

Cocinera Mexicana, (1882), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/15737.;

Manuela Heredia y Cervantes, Mexican Cooking Notebook: Manuscript (1886), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/12094.;

Concepción Lerma de Chacón, Libro de Cosina de la Sra Concepción Lerma de Chacón (Mexico, 1899), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/19468.;

Coleccion de Recetas para Guisos y Dulces, (1860), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/18907.

[6] The metadata from UCSD Special Collections names the creator as Virginia Rivera.

 

By Amalia M. Sosa Haby

Cookbooks form important, though often overlooked, parts historical research. Despite cookbook manuscripts not always having clear marginalia, I posit that they offer an avenue for understanding Mexican familial sociability and relationships as they relate to activities around food – primarily, cooking. Perhaps, they are a starting point for offering insight into the more sentimental and interpersonal aspects of mother-daughter relationships, intergenerational knowledge production, childrearing, and even children’s (or young women’s) pastimes.

In Mexico, Jeffrey Pilcher has studied them in the context of nation-building.[1]  Luce Giard has argued that eating is not solely an activity to satiate a bodily need but is also a way in which a person relates to the world around them; and that – these relations are embedded in specific times and places.[2] Giard then directly links one type of social relationship with food to childhood. The food and flavours eaten in childhood can have strong sentimental bonds that are tied to specific people: for example, mother and grandmother. [3] The nineteenth century Mexican manuscript cookbooks explored here: Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor para sus hijas (Recipes That My Mother Wrote with Love for Her Daughters) and the two volume Herencia de sabores (Inherited Flavours) and Delicias y sabores (Treats and Flavours), directly invoke familial and matrilineal relationships. [4]

Figure 1 Cover page of Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor para sus hijas, 1888.

Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor para sus hijas (1888) contains recipes on only forty-eight of the pages with the rest left blank (figures 1 and 2). The notebook is unlined, and only forty-eight of the pages contain written recipes, with the rest of the pages left blank. On the first page there is a pasted cut out of a woman and young girl embracing, and a girl of toddler age seated, and reaching out to them. The facing page contains the title: Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor para sus hijas, and information such as the year: 1888, origin: Mexico, the initials V.R., and two additional paper cut outs of a bird and a woman. This title conveys sentimentality and love between a mother and her daughters, which is further emphasised when paired with the cover picture (fig. 1). It seems that the cut out of the woman with the two young girls is supposed to represent the mother and daughters from the title.

The production of this cookbook manuscript implies that there were at least two people involved in its creation: a mother who wrote the recipes, and at least one of the daughters who compiled them. The possessive of “my mother” in the title gives ownership of the manuscript to one of the daughters and, thus, it is unclear whether the mother or one of the daughters transcribed the recipes. Recetas differs significantly from other cookbook manuscripts, in structure and presentation from the same period. For example, it was not uncommon for people to title, number their recipes, and write page numbers.[5] This shows that there was a commonly used format for putting together manuscripts, even if they were for personal use. By contrast, in Recetas the handwriting is not as clearly legible and, whilst the recipes are titled, it is not as distinct to effectively separate it from the method of the recipe itself – structurally, and visually, this manuscript is much messier.

Figure 2 Facing page of Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor a para sus hijas, 1888.jpg

 

The second set of primary sources, Herencias de sabores (1888) and Delicias y sabores (1889) are a set of two volumes that follow a similar visual format to Recetas. In Herencias (fig. 3), the cover page contains a pasted picture of two young women outside and a young girl. The facing page contains the following information: Deliciosas recetas que me heredo mi abuela y mi madre (Delicious recipes passed down to me from my grandmother and my mother), 1888, Mexico, and the initials V.R.. Similarly, the cover page of Delicias y sabores (fig. 4) has a pasted in banquet scene, and the facing page has the title: Delicias llena de sabores y aromas herencia de mi mama (Delicious treats full of flavours and aromas, inherited from my mother). Additionally, it also has the date: 1889, Mex., and the initials V.R..[6] The final page has another pasted cut out of a woman sitting in a chair with a book in her hand and an inscription underneath: con amor a mi madre (with love for my mother). Despite these three manuscript cookbooks being housed by two different collections they contain almost identical formatting, and, potentially, could be from the same family given the same initialling. The main, noticeable difference is that the handwriting in Recetas is different to Herencias and Delicias which suggest that these were a family project involving the mother and multiple daughters.

Figure 3 Cover pages of Decliosas recetas que me heredo mi abuela y mi madre, 1888.

Perhaps, what we see here is a merging of an oral tradition with that of textual recording, and the passing down of culinary knowledge through the matrilineal line. The title of Herencias indicates that the recipes come from both the mother and the grandmother, making it at least two generations of culinary knowledge that is being recorded. But it really is only in the titles – and in the final note of Delicias – where familial bonds are explicitly expressed. The titles invoke sentimentality and love from the side of the daughter towards her mother. Recording these recipes appears to be a way of maintaining intergenerational connection. The recipes themselves seem to hold enough sentimental value that writing them down was deemed a worthwhile endeavour.

Figure 4 Cover pages of Delicias llena de sabores y aromas herencia de mi mama.

 

Notes

[1] Jeffrey Pilcher, ¡Que Vivan Los Tamales! Food and the Making of Mexican Identity (University of New Mexico Press, 1998).

[2] Michele de Certeau, et al., The Practice of Everyday Life, Vol. 2 (University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 183-4.

[3] de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 183-4, 188.

[4] Recetas que escribió mi madre con amor para sus hijas (Mexico: 1888), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/16106.; Rivera, Virginia. Herencia de sabores (Puebla de Zaragoza, 1888), https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb8062193q.; Rivera, Virginia. Delicias y sabores (Puebla de Zaragoza, 1889), https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb8062193q. 

[5] See: Guadalupe Perez, Libro de Recetas de Cocina (Acatzinco, 1884), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/11257.;

Cocinera Mexicana, (1882), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/15737.;

Manuela Heredia y Cervantes, Mexican Cooking Notebook: Manuscript (1886), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/12094.;

Concepción Lerma de Chacón, Libro de Cosina de la Sra Concepción Lerma de Chacón (Mexico, 1899), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/19468.;

Coleccion de Recetas para Guisos y Dulces, (1860), https://digital.utsa.edu/digital/collection/p15125coll10/id/18907.

[6] The metadata from UCSD Special Collections names the creator as Virginia Rivera.

 

Culinary History, Food and Drink, Posts, Summer 2026

Marton Family Crescents: Adapting Vanillekipferls with Walnuts

Leave a comment

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.

Culinary History, Global Exchange, Summer 2026

Rice with Soda

Leave a comment

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 ↩︎
Culinary History, Summer 2026

Carping about Gefilte Fish: Love, Labor and the Evolution of a Demanding Recipe in the Jewish-American Kitchen

Leave a comment

By Tamar Gonen Brown

Although gefilte fish plays a central role in Jewish culinary tradition, many American Jews have grown up unfamiliar with the homemade recipe. Traditionally made with de-boned carp, ground and mixed with matzoh meal or breadcrumbs, onions, eggs and seasoning, then poached in a broth made from the fish bones, gefilte fish was once an intricate and labor-intensive dish that offered Jewish home cooks an opportunity to display their virtuosity. Beginning in the 1950s, it was marketed to American Jewish homemakers as a convenient jarred product, and today many who know the dish are familiar with it only as a packaged food. Asya Vaisman Shulman writes in Pakn Treger, or “Book Peddler,” the magazine of the Yiddish Book Center, that “access to variety of prepared foods and a growing disengagement from tradition caused a rapid decline in gefilte fish preparation in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century.”  

Barbara Cohen’s children’s book The Carp in the Bathtub, first published in 1972, tells a story centered on old-fashioned gefilte fish preparation that was already a cultural memory for many of its young American-Jewish readers. Leah and Harry, the main characters in Cohen’s book, know gefilte fish only as a homemade dish. In fact, it is precisely because they have seen every step in the preparation process that they harbor a secret: they have never tasted a single bite of their mother’s famously excellent version. After days of playing with the fish their mother brings home alive, and feeding it bits of bread and lettuce, the children can’t bear its fate: “Could you eat a friend?” As a child, I could relate to this jarring question—I remember covering my ears so that I would not hear the thud of the fishmonger’s club when my grandmother bought carp for her gefilte fish. Even so, unlike Harry and Leah, it never occurred to me to not eat the product of my grandmother’s labor. My grandmother’s gefilte fish was delicious. 

 Despite the traditional dish’s starring role in Jewish celebratory meals, the shift away from traditional recipes is not surprising considering the laborious process of making gefilte fish. Gefilte, in Yiddish, means stuffed, though the actual step of re-filling the carefully preserved head and body of the fish with the gefilte mixture is a flourish not all home cooks include. Harry and Leah’s mother is a master of the dish, but even she has dispensed with this challenging step. As Leah exclaims, “At least Harry and I were spared that!” Her mother, too, may have been grateful to skip that painstaking work.

Xenophobic attitudes toward “smelly” foods of immigrant cultures (see, for example, “Garlic and Social Class”) may be another reason why jarred gefilte fish took over the American-Jewish table throughout the twentieth century—and then, ironically, the strange-looking jarred product itself became a source of shame in itself. Rebecca Flint Marx describes her own childhood alienation from the authentic Eastern European recipe in “Learning to Love Gefilte Fish” (2016). She knew only the industrialized version of the dish, and remembers watching her mother eat “nugget after terrible nugget, and feel[ing] embarrassed that Jews ate such ugly, mysterious food.” She also reflects on her own reading of The Carp in the Bathtub as an “anti-gefilte fish cautionary tale.” Gefilte fish here is a source not of beloved cultural memory, but of deep-seated immigrant shame.

One place to trace the story of the jarred gefilte takeover is in culinary pamphlets of the mid-twentieth century. A 1960 pamphlet of Passover menus produced by Philadelphia Gas Works encourages “the housewife” to seek out traditional Jewish foods that are newly available in convenient cans and jars.  The Mansichewitz Company’s “8-Day Menu Planner and Recipe Guide,” produced for Passover in 1971, includes a checklist “for easy shopping at your local grocer” featuring no fewer than nine jarred variations on gefilte fish. Perhaps even Leah and Harry’s own mother would have welcomed the respite these products offered. 

Pamphlet marketing Manischewitz products for Passover, 1971. Image courtesy of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard-Radcliffe Institute.

Despite easing the home cook’s labor, mass-produced gefilte fish has shortcomings in flavor and visual appeal. In fact, a jar of prepared food on a festive holiday table is hard to swallow for many reasons. When a host sets a table with silver and linen, as many Jewish families continue to do for Shabbat and for holidays, they are unlikely to place a recognizably industrial food product at its center. Instead, family recipes and community cookbooks trace a new genre of recipes focused on doctoring up a jar of gefilte fish to make it more appealing. One such example lies within the recipes of Rose Maybush Flax. Rose’s handwritten recipe cards include a recipe dated 1985 that calls for many of the same ingredients as Mama’s gefilte fish—carrots, celery, eggs, matzoh meal. However, the key ingredient is not a live carp but a 24 oz. jar of gefilte fish. 

Recipe designed to improve the flavor and appearance of jarred gefilte fish. Recipes of Rose Flax (2016-M128), Card Box 2. Image courtesy of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard-Radcliffe Institute. 

Similar recipes are scattered in synagogue community cookbooks, produced by Jewish women’s groups from across the country (see The Recipe Project’s Summer 2024 issue Cooking Up Community for more on this genre). These cookbooks trace the survival of gefilte fish recipes across the United States. Many of them also document traditional techniques for preparing gefilte fish (though none call for a live carp). 

Community cookbooks from synagogues and Jewish organizations across the United States that include variations on gefilte fish recipes. Image courtesy of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard-Radcliffe Institute.

Detailed instructions for the preparation of gefilte fish also hide in surprising contexts, including a 1988 episode of the radio show Laugh Lines, broadcast by the feminist Boston Women’s Community Radio. Here, a grandmother and granddaughter acknowledge the labor that is inherent in the recipe while sharing their commitment to passing on the technique. Finding this conversation in a secular feminist context is striking—these women reject the marketed “ease” of the  industrial product in favor of the traditional recipe, accepting its historical difficulties in order to access its culinary delights. 

Tamar Gonen Brown is a librarian who currently serves as the head of education and outreach at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, located at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, MA. She earned her doctorate in English and American language and literature from Harvard University, her master’s degree in library and information science from Simmons University, and her bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago, and has sampled gefilte fish on or around all three of these campuses. Her professional interests include teaching and learning with primary sources, culinary history, women and gender studies, and the history of the novel. If you are interested in learning more about some of the culinary collections at the Schlesinger Library that helped inspire this piece, this research guide will help you get started.