The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York

by Claudia Roden

A monumental work - the story of the Jewish people told through the story of Jewish cooking - The Book of Jewish Food traces the development of both Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jewish communities and their cuisine over the centuries. The 800 magnificent recipes, many never before documented, represent treasures garnered bu Roden through nearly 15 years of traveling around the world. 50 photos & illustrations

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Cooking, Nonfiction, Judaism, Jewish, History

688 pages, Hardcover

First published November 26, 1996

About the author

Claudia Roden was brought up in Cairo. She finished her education in Paris and later studied art in London. Starting as a painter she was drawn to the subject of food partly through a desire to evoke a lost heritage - one of the pleasures of a happy life in Egypt.
With her bestselling classic, A Book of Middle Eastern Food, first published in 1968, Roden revolutionized Western attitudes to the cuisine of the Middle East. Her intensely personal approach and her passionate appreciation of the dishes delighted readers, while she introduced them to a new world of foods, both exotic and wholesome. The book received great critical acclaim.
Mrs Roden continued to write about food with a special interest in the social and historical background of cooking.
Then came the BBC television series, Mediterranean Cookery with Claudia Roden and the accompanying book entitled Claudia Roden's Mediterranean Cookery.
In 1992, she won the Glenfiddich Trophy, the top prize in the Glenfiddich Awards.

Reviews

[Nick Grammos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used this book quite a bit over the years. I have many Jewish friends and we always seem to talk about food. They must eat as much as Greeks, then. My favourites include sephardic fish balls in a tomato sauce, really simple but really good. Well, to be honest, the sephardic dishes are terrific compared to the Ashkenazi ones. I mean food of northern Europe, especially peasant type food is fairly limited to potatoes, cabbage, fish and chicken. (though I do like cabbage rolls and variations on potatoes, necessity is the mother of invention. But they manage to squeeze a lot of tasty stuff out of pastries and biscuits. I've had friends make me blintzes and matzo ball soup, roast chicken, kugel and knaidlech pirogi and on and on. Its OK, but it comes from another place. I don't wish to offend as I'm sure the sentiment is big. As expected, there are so many ways to prepare chicken, it must surely be the most universal of meats. What is interesting is the north African and middle eastern dishes so closely match what everyone else ate. I could happily exist on okras and eggplants and lamb and chicken and spices and rices and tomatoes and on and on.

I like all the historical and cultural introductions to each country. At times it's a toss up between the cultural and historical notes and the recipes. Roden suggests that even egg and lemon soup, what I call as greek as greek can be, may have originated in Iberia. Which is a disappointment as I could never tell my mother that this is even possible. She may die on the spot. But Roden only hints, hedging her bets, culture is sensitive. And I will never, never tell my mother of Roden's Egyptian moussaka either. Heart attack followed by a stroke.

[Maria Thermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply the best cook book I've ever come across, a delight from start to finish. I originally bought this book as a birthday present for a friend of mine...but before it had a chance to disappear in layers of gift wrap, I had a sneak look...and hours later I was still utterly engrossed in reading about the history of Jewish food and a people who have had to endure more than is humanly possible over the centuries. The stories attached to the recipes are both moving and thought-provoking, often funny and told with great warmth and humanity.

The recipes are easy to follow, invariably delicious and take the reader around the world, back and forth in time, leading to a very different culinary experience than other cook books do. Frankly, no kitchen or book shelf should be without this book.

[Belinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5 sterren - Nederlandse hardcover - ☘️☘️☘️
Voor mij een uitleg van de twee aparte keukens binnen het joodse koken. Ook heerlijke recepten. 🌹🌹🌹

[Belinda Vlasbaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,75 sterren - Nederlandse hardcover

De eerste uitgave verscheen in 1955. Daar had ik een exemplaar van. Van mijn oma gekregen. Domme ik heb nooit gevraagd waarom en alles wat ik van haar geschiedenis in de oorlog weet is dat ze bij boeren ondergebracht waren met haar man en kind (mijn moeder).

Het is een klassieker. In menige boekenkast ben ik het tegen gekomen. Meer dan vijftig jaar en inmiddels twee generaties later staat het boek in de boekenkast van kinderen en kleinkinderen, vaak met ezelsoren en vetvlekken op de bladzijden van de kippen-soep, de gremsjelies, de pesachschotel en de boterkoek.

Deze nieuwe editie van werd door Bea Polak en haar twee dochters geheel herzien en verbeterd. Het bevat de bekendste gerechten uit de Nederlands-Joodse keuken. Daarnaast bevat het een aantal unieke, bijna vergeten Nederlands- Portugees Joodse recepten, zoals prioletes (matzemeelkoekjes) en patinhos (eend), en zijn er recepten uit de moderne Isra sche keu ken. Deze uitgave heb ik aan mijn schoonzoon gegeven. Die met de ezelsoren hou ik zelf. Jeugdsentiment.

[Hana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a serious Jewish cook and do a major meal (similar to a Thanksgiving dinner) at least once a week, but I also read cookbooks for fun and this one scores on both fronts. I love all of the photos and stories about different Jewish communities and about the history of Jewish cooking.

The high points of this cookbook are the recipes from the Sephardi world, most of which I've tried, and all of them superb. My particular favorites (though it's a tough choice) are the holiday special dishes. Her Passover Gateau au Sirop d'Orange and Torta di Manorle e Cioccolata are something beyond the earthly realm--a veritable taste of heaven.

My now basic cooking style is Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and points East; I'm not a fan of old-style Eastern European Ashkenazie cooking, so beyond her excellent recipe for Yerushalmi kugel, I can't vouch for that half of the book, but the stories are great!

[Kecia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily the best cookbook I've ever read. I never expected to discover my own family history in a cookbook but...

The morning before I went to the library to pick this cookbook up I went to the gym. My spinning class ends at the same time an aqua-aerobics class that has a lot of Jewish grandmothers in it. That day the grannies were talking about how they were all getting rid of their cookbooks (give them to me!!!) in favor of internet recipes. How sad...within an hour of picking this cookbook up I knew if I owned it, I could never get rid of it. In fact, I'm now on the hunt for a nice used copy to purchase for myself.

This cookbook does not have gorgeous, mouth-watering photographs of food. It does not have the best recipes I've ever used (Jamie Oliver gets that distinction). What it does have is fascinating writing about Jewish history and culture as it relates to food. I could not put this book down. I never knew a cookbook could be a page-turner!

Yes, I did try some recipes...Arroz kon Leche - yummy!, potato salad, cabbage in sour cream, a curried peas with cheese. They were all good.

Then I got to reading the section about Jews in Italy. I didn't know those awesome fried artichokes in Rome where brought there by Sicilian Jews. My mouth waters just thinking about them! It was that paragraph or two about Jews in Sicily where curosity got the better of me and I did more research on my own. And in that research I found my family was one of the Sicilian Jewish families to convert during the expulsion of 1492! I seriously kept staring at the page and going back it over and over again...but there it was. Extraordinary!

I'll be adding this book to my own collection as soon as possible. I highly recommend this one all foodies!

[Louise Davy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be my favourite cookery book. I have cooked every cake, especially when in lived in tropical Darwin where the flourless cakes worked every time.

I use the Sephardi recipes more than the Ashkenazi section. I found the history, woven through Roden's own family to be fascinating reading. I've always enjoyed recipe books wth an anecdote or two. This takes titbits of information to new heights and is now the benchmark by which I measure other cookery books.

I own ten of her books so can thoroughly endorse her recipes.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this book is clearly a culinary landmark. Almost every serious Jewish cookbook references Roden's work here. It's part history, part cookbook. Some of the recipes are stunning, especially her Sephardic desserts and handpies. She does admit that Sephardic food (dates, pistachios, almonds, rich meats stewed with apricots) is better than Ashkenzi food (boiled cabbage, herring), which pretty much needed to be said anyway. The only thing is that many of these recipes are highly labor intensive. Not for the casual cook.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a delightful and useful book. The Sephardic section (the latter 2/3 of the book) is particularly fascinating, for just how broad the range is - from Morocco to India and parts in between.

I also love the all-embracing-ness of the book: everything is Jewish food. For example I stopped in my tracks at fesenjan on page 362. I had known fesenjan as a Persian stew. Sam Sifton describes it as a "rich, tangy Iranian chicken stew ... a highlight of the Persian holiday Shab-e Yalda, a winter-solstice tradition that predates Islam by thousands of years. The chicken is drenched in pomegranate molasses and cooked with a copious amount of ground walnuts, which results in a gravy that is sweet, tart and thick with flavor." But here it is, in a "version of a famous Iranian dish which survives in Jewish homes from London and Los Angeles."

[Steph · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

I never thought I would be the type to have *fun* reading a cookbook— God, am I getting old??
This book, I genuinely did enjoy reading— the pages were beautifully designed, the cover was gorgeous, and it was full of anecdotes, both familial and personal, histories, and pictures. Recipes were from known regions, and acknowledgments of where the dishes were popular and originated, if they’re still popular today, and how Jews may have adapted them, or why they loved them.

I much enjoyed the histories behind the dishes and the familiarity Claudia Rodin had with them, as well as her own connections— growing up in Cairo, with family, friends, and companions from different Jewish heritages. She truly loves what she’s doing, enjoys her research, and it was visible on every page I excitedly devoured. While I’m a terribly picky eater, there’s definitely several recipes that have caught my eye and I look forward to sharing with friends and family.

This book, however, was published in 1996. Due to this, some terms or concepts might be slightly outdated, and research was certainly tougher. There is a page explaining why there are no recipes from Ethiopian Jews, and the reason given (recipes and dishes were difficult to find) seemed strange, particularly after the well-researched recipes of Ashkenazic Jews, Sephardim, Maghrebi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Indian Jews, Bukharian Jews, presented along with histories. It is for that reason and that singular reason alone that I am not rating it 5/5.

[Ayali Hawa Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't recommend this book enough! I am Sephardi, and I absolutely approve of this book! Claudia Roden is amazing and deserves all the awards coming her way. This is not just any cookbook, it is an ethnographic and historical compendium of Jewish food and all of its incarnations through the Jewish diaspora. The Jewish experience is such that our culinary developed in creative and unique ways. For example, Kashrut ( the laws of kosher food) helps to create unique cuisines wherever Jews have lived. We have had exile upon exile, and it is interesting that our food gets brought along with us as we go. Apparently oranges spread throughout the Sephardic diaspora because of the festival of Sukkot, as used as Etrog (a ceremonial fruit for this holiday). Or how celebrations such as Mimouna (a Moroccan Jewish celebration in particular) create community with our neighbors used food to strengthen communit bonds.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do adore a cookbook with food history. This is a serious tome. I will admit there are sections where the recipes feel a bit receptive but I still really enjoyed this cookbook. Definitely one for reading. I learned at lot, not just about food, but also about Sephardi Jewish communities past and present that I didn’t even know existed.

[Belcairn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the first foodie books that I actually owned (vs reading my mother’s…). The Book Of Jewish Food by the acclaimed food writer Claudia Roden came out in 1997 and won multiple awards including the coveted Glenfiddich Food Book Of The Year. As a non-Jew, this book really educated me not just about the food but the culture and history of the Jewish people. Truly a remarkable read.

After the introductory chapters, the book is split into Ashkenazi and Sephardic sections which elaborate on the food traditions of these two Jewish groups, including many fascinating recipes with ingredients and preparation dictated by religious laws. If you want to know how to make an authentic Challah or Bagel, Hamin Eggs, or Gefilte Fish, this is the book for you. Even if you don’t cook this book is worth reading. Whether you’re coming at it from a food or a social history perspective, this book is incredible.

[Joel Haber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another of my top three Jewish Food books (unsurprisingly), this perennial favorite does an exquisite job of covering the breadth of Jewish cuisine form around the world. In fact, it was the first to do so, fairly comprehensively. I say fairly, because even this incredible book leaves out some cuisines, and under-explores others. But for its time, it was way more broad than any prior work, and goes into a fair amount of depth as well. One of the book's greatest strengths is its blending of separate types of materials together. There are of course tons of recipes, but also some longer essays on various communities and their foods, and shorter multi-paragraph explanations that are longer than standard recipe headnotes, and occasionally stand alone without a recipe at all. Slightly dated at times, it remains a popular book, with good reason! Truly one of the best, and a classic.

[Kathryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Joseph Henning · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderfully written book full of Jewish history and traditional recipes.

[Harry Nijkamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

It makes you a big friend of Claudia

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, it's classed as a cookbook and it is. But it is also the history of Jewish communities, with much more diversity of community than you see in a lot of typical Jewish history books.

[Carol Bonigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well… this is a masterpiece. I’ve learned so much and will never stop revisiting this book

[Olya · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of recipes, not a lot of histories. Basically a very hefty volume of not much.

[Soph · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a recipe book, this is a cultural history and celebration of Jewish food across time and space. Richly satisfying.

[June Hersh · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wonderfully comprehensive book. Claudia Roden gives context to al the foods that Jewish people have enjoyed for centuries, it's a must have on your bookshelf

[Carole King · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't used this book as a recipe book but as a history book. Claudio Roden's books are a delight as they're very well written & extremely interesting. I recommended this to everyone as I enjoyed it so much.

[NoBeatenPath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just as with another of her books, Arabesque, with The Book of Jewish Food Roden manages to combine food writing with recipes that make this book a delight to both read and cook from. She explores her own Jewish roots and the culture and history of the whole diaspora by writing about the meals, traditions and recipes she uncovers on her search for Jewish food.

The recipes are organised in two broad sections - Ashkenazi and Serphadic - and within different food categories within these two broad distinctions. Some of the recipes are complicated or time consuming, but many are simple and plenty could be made from regular ingredients you have in the kitchen right now (though half the fun is finding out about new ingredients or new ways to use ingredients you thought you already knew about). For this household there is the added bonus that many of the recipes are vegan - especially those of the Bene Israel, the Jews of India - or are easily 'veganised', though this is more true for the Serphadic than Ashkenazi section.

I also found it very interesting to find many recipes my non-Jewish grandmother cooked, obviously influenced by her Prussian roots - much of what is perhaps now considered 'Ashkenazi food' was once just 'poor middle European people food'.

Even if you are not Jewish or even interested in Jewish culture, try and get your hands on this book. The food writing is fantastic and the recipes are worth exploring.

[Belcairn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the first foodie books that I actually owned (vs reading my mother’s…). The Book Of Jewish Food by the acclaimed food writer Claudia Roden came out in 1997 and won multiple awards including the coveted Glenfiddich Food Book Of The Year. As a non-Jew, this book really educated me not just about the food but the culture and history of the Jewish people. Truly a remarkable read.

After the introductory chapters, the book is split into Ashkenazi and Sephardic sections which elaborate on the food traditions of these two Jewish groups, including many fascinating recipes with ingredients and preparation dictated by religious laws. If you want to know how to make an authentic Challah or Bagel, Hamin Eggs, or Gefilte Fish, this is the book for you. Even if you don’t cook this book is worth reading. Whether you’re coming at it from a food or a social history perspective, this book is incredible.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book, less for its recipes (although the ones I tried were actually pretty good, if written in a less user-friendly way than I'm used to) than for the many well-written and enjoyable history sections throughout. I really enjoyed reading about how Jewish cuisine developed in different world regions. It's a fun book to take out on a long Friday night and flip through, reading whatever section interests you at the time. It was an expensive book, but I really love it and I think it makes a beautiful gift.

[Lissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the history in this book slightly more than the recipes. As the baker in my family I really only tried the bread and dessert recipes. My kids loved most of the dessert recipes we tried and several have become repeat favorites. It does have a couple good challah recipes but I prefer another I found more. I've checked it out multiple times since reading it and definitely need to consider adding it to my growing collection.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a profile of Claudia Roden in the food issue of the New Yorker last month and it made me want to read one of her books. This is as much food history as cookbook and meticulously researched. I doubt I'll ever make a single recipe in the book, but it was a fascinating and enjoyable read and her reputation as a preeminent food writer is well deserved.

[Laurie Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've owned this book for two years and love it without having cooked anything from it. It's packed with history and anecdote, which is my idea of what a cookbook should be. And if I ever do cook from it I'll have every confidence in the recipes.I know from experience that with Claudia Roden I'm in safe hands.

[Dido · Rating 5 out of 5]

Het commentaar van Simon Schama op de stofhoes is helemaal terecht.
Claudia Roden schrijft niet alleen kookboek, ze is gelijk geschiedkundig etnograaf, antropoloog en veel meer. De Joodse keuken geeft dan ook een mooie kijk op het joodse leven, met de keuken als doorlopend thema. Met veel genoegen dit boek gelezen.